Movimento dos Trabalhadores Rurais Sem

Terra (MST)

Brazil’s

Landless Workers Movement

What Happened?

• The Government of Brazil has problems with large amounts of poor and corruption that is found throughout the system.

• The poor masses are forced to work for the rich folk, and are kept oppressed through violence.

Laws of the Land

• In order to have ownership, a person must demonstrate productivity (farming, cattle ranching, etc.), social function or natural preservation of the land.

• The Plan for National Integration (PIN) was meant to provide “a land without people for a people without land” in the Amazon (Aborigines apparently didn’t count)

The Rising Action

• When the masses moved into the Southern Amazon to take their free land, in the years that follow they ended up with none while the large ranchers have large tracts of illegally acquired land. Above is a monument to

murdered Brazilians. They died protesting these ranchers

What’s Wrong with this Picture?

• The lands that were meant to be for the poor to help reduce the large amount of poverty in Brazil ends up making the rich richer and the poor just as destitute, but in a new place.

The most desperately poor are situated around the Amazon Rain Forest

So what IS the MST?

• The MST is an organization founded in 1984 to help the landless masses get land.

• The longest running social movement in Latin America

• A really quick municipality construction company of sorts.

Their Solution

• The MST will covertly select a spot on a large landowner’s land and speedily invade to create an encampment. It only takes about three days to build an encampment for hundreds of people (including the school, public meeting place and plaza (And don’t forget the soccer field)

The above plant is the reason the houses can be built so quickly. The limbs bend and twist easily, but do not break.

How’s it work?

• The people who moved into the new camp plant crops and live life as if the land is theirs. The MST will spend the next few years fighting for the land rights to the encampments and then it becomes more of a municipality as the government begins to give money.

The Dalcidio Jurandir encampment which is named after a martyred leader is pictured above

How can you help?

• Visit http://mstbrazil.org/ to learn more.

• Make donations to the MST

• If you are skilled in both Portugese and English, offer your translating abilities!

Works Cited

• Bucher, Abby. "Hello-Mosquito." Blogspot. Blogspot, 13,05,2010. Web. 26

May 2010. • “Friends of the MST”, http://mstbrazil.org/• Wikipedia contributors. "Landless Workers'

Movement." Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, 28 Apr. 2010. Web. 27 May. 2010.