Brazilian Landless Workers Movement Land to live, not to speculate!

Logo of the landless Movement in Brazil

Brazil is a country which suffers a large problem with homelessness. There are approximately 6,9 million homeless families, while we have 6,05 million properties that do not serve a social function. Therefore, we shall look at a movement that fights against that: The Landless Workers Movement (MST).

Landless Workers Movement (MST) is a movement which acts in rural parts of Brazil, with the objective of installing agrarian reform. They search for land expropriation of unproductive property, i.e, land that does not serve a social function. They fight for that through occupying those unproductive land, and setting up workers co-operatives and housing for peasants who have lost their land, and act mainly on rural areas (although there are urban subsects of the movement).

The Landless Movement is often portrayed by rightists as a “criminal” movement, as they “invade” private property to expropriate it. However, The Landless Movement argues that under the Brazilian Constitution, every land needs to serve a social function, as foresaw in Art.156, §1, and that, therefore, even in the Bourgeois state of Brazil, Private Property is not absolute.

Although the movement is not exclusively Communist, there are lots of Marxist-Leninists in the movement, like Laura Sabino, a well-known Marxist-Leninist public figure. However, in some cases, they have broken with the movement and built their own wings, like The League of Poor Peasants (LCP) which is the Maoist Line of the movement, which works in a very secretive fashion, and don’t let much information about them.

It is important to know and understand said movements throughout the periphery and semi-periphery of capitalism to develop solidarity for the workers of the world, our brothers who struggle against capitalism everywhere. Finally, the people of Brazil struggle in the present for a better future.

Communication from G. Escarlate.

来自G. Escarlate的通讯。