In a Letter to the Brazilian People, the Movement reaffirms its confrontation with capital, imperialism, racism, patriarchy, and all forms of oppression.
Between January 19 and 23, the Landless Rural Workers' Movement (MST) held its 14th National Meeting with more than 3,000 landless militants and representatives of popular organizations from Brazil and around the world. During the final act, a Letter to the Brazilian People was released, in which the international and national context is analyzed, its historical principles are reaffirmed, and the working class is called upon to fight for sovereignty, social justice, and People’s Agrarian Reform.
According to the Movement's assessment, the world is going through a period of change marked by the deepening of wars, the crisis of capitalism, and the advance of imperialism over the peoples of the Global South. The Letter denounces aggressions against sovereign countries, such as Venezuela, Palestine, and the nations of the African Sahel, in addition to the recurring attempts to destabilize Cuba, Haiti, Iran, and other countries that resist the imperialist logic.
According to the MST, the central objective of these offensives is the plunder of common natural resources — such as oil, minerals, water, land, and forests — and the blocking of alternatives to the capitalist model, such as multilateralism and people’s projects of sovereignty.
Agribusiness, the far-right, and the crisis in the Brazilian countryside
In Brazil, the Movement points out that the advance of imperialism is expressed in the consolidation of agribusiness as an arm of national and international capital in the countryside. This model, based on the production of commodities, the intensive use of pesticides, and environmental destruction, concentrates land, wealth, and political power, while simultaneously deepening poverty, violence, and environmental collapse.
The Letter denounces that agribusiness controls significant portions of the National Congress, the Judiciary, and the media, blocking Agrarian Reform and preventing the implementation of structural public policies. As a consequence, more than 100,000 families remain camped out, waiting for their right to land.
The MST also warns of the strengthening of the far-right in the country, fueled by the capitalist crisis and the ideological manipulation promoted by big tech companies and the hegemonic media, especially among young people. For the Movement, "confronting this scenario will not only happen through electoral means, but above all through people’s organization and mass struggle."
People’s Agrarian Reform as a Strategic Project
In this context, the MST reaffirms People’s Agrarian Reform as a strategic project for Brazil. According to the Movement, it is a concrete alternative to the destructive agribusiness model, capable of confronting land concentration, producing healthy food, recovering biomes, combating illiteracy and violence in rural areas, and building dignified territories to live in.
Inspired by historical struggles such as Canudos, Contestado, and the Peasant Leagues, and carrying the memory of the martyrs of the struggle for land — especially in the year that marks the 30th anniversary of the Eldorado dos Carajás Massacre — the MST reaffirms its commitment to confronting capital, imperialism, racism, patriarchy, and all forms of oppression.
During the Meeting, the Movement approved the updating of its People’s Agrarian Reform Program, its General Norms, and the reformulation of its organizational structure, with the aim of expanding grassroots participation and strengthening the construction of people’s power.
The MST also reaffirmed its 42-year trajectory in the struggle for land, education, health, decent housing, and agroecology, highlighting literacy initiatives, political training, cooperation, solidarity, and strategic projects aimed at the reindustrialization of the country.
"We are determined to reinvent ourselves," states the Letter, pointing to the massification of agroecology, the training of militants and political cadres, the ideological and cultural struggle, and the strengthening of mass struggles against class enemies as central tasks.
Commitments and Call to the Brazilian People
Among the reaffirmed commitments, the MST highlights the struggle for land, for Popular Agrarian Reform and for socialism; the confrontation with the agribusiness, mining, and energy model; the unity of the working class; support for candidacies committed to a popular project for the country, including President Lula's candidacy; and the defense of internationalism and solidarity among peoples, with emphasis on Venezuela, Palestine, Haiti, and Cuba. In the end, the Movement calls on all of Brazilian society to join the struggle for better living and working conditions, for the defense of nature, against pesticides, against wars and military bases, and for the construction of a sovereign, popular, and just country project, with Popular Agrarian Reform as one of its central pillars.
The Carta ao Povo Brasileiro is included below. It is in Portuguese and we will have it translated soon.
