MST celebrates 40 years of struggle for land distribution in Brazil
The fight for land has always been present in Brazil's history, as a result of the concentration of land since the colonial period. Revolts, wars, and repression have marked the struggle for survival in the country, including the efforts of peasants, indigenous peoples, and quilombolas.
In the late 1970s, land occupations by peasants resurged, especially in southern Brazil, amidst severe repression from the dictatorship, while Brazilian society mobilized for redemocratization.
On January 22, 1984, in Cascavel, Paraná state, peasants, small farmers, squatters, and rural outcasts convened for the 1st National Meeting of the Landless Rural Workers. This event marked the foundation of the Landless Workers' Movement (MST), the largest social movement for land distribution in Brazil.
Sérgio Sauer, a professor at the University of Brasília and an agrarian researcher, notes the expansion of MST's struggles over the last four decades. "The organization's fight for land has extended to other areas: education, health, and decent living conditions in rural areas. Ensuring life in the countryside involves not only land access but also dignity, credit, technical assistance, and healthy production conditions, resulting in the reduction of violence," he states.
But violence in the countryside has always accompanied the struggle for land. In 2022 alone, 70 people were killed in agrarian conflicts, as reported by the Pastoral Land Commission. Professor Sérgio Sauer points out that impunity prevents this violence from diminishing.
Sauer highlights that land reform remains a social demand due to existing rural inequalities. "From a structural, economic, and social standpoint, land reform remains a social necessity. While there are approximately a million families settled in agrarian reform projects, there are at least another million, if not one and a half million, families without land or with insufficient land for subsistence," he explains.
Ceres Hadich, a member of MST's National Directorate, views violence as a strategy of agribusiness against rural marginalized groups, "whether through organized militias or by farmers and the force of agribusiness, which is increasingly organized and violent in the Brazilian countryside."
Hadich notes that the MST has matured and adapted its instruments of struggle. "At every historical moment, the movement has organized itself to ensure our goals are achieved and our principles upheld, a consistency maintained over these 40 years," she adds.
The Landless Workers' Movement has grown and now comprises 1,900 associations, 185 cooperatives, and 120 agro-industries for production and marketing of agrarian reform products.
According to MST, the movement is active in 24 from a total of 27 Brazilian states, with 400,000 settled families and 70,000 families in encampments.
