The document denounces the power of capital and patriarchy over peasant women and defends the need for Agrarian Reform and the emancipation of women
As part of the 2025 National Day of Struggle of Landless Women, which will take place from March 11 to 14, in all regions of the country, with the motto "Agribusiness is violence and environmental crime, women's struggle is against capital!", this year the peasant women are releasing a Letter of Commitment to society explaining the context of the struggle and the set of demands necessary to combat the advance of capital in the countryside, the power of patriarchy that continues to kill and violate women and girls in the countryside and the need to implement the People’s Agrarian Reform for food production, environmental recovery and the human and social emancipation of people. “This year’s Landless Women’s Day aims to denounce those who have historically been enemies of the people, our class antagonists, who are attacking a project for a society with popular sovereignty, which is truly ecological and socialist. Women’s struggle is against capitalism, against agribusiness and for a fair, dignified life, with land democratized to socialize the care of the common goods of nature, with agriculture and the Popular Agrarian Reform”, the note states.
Landless women also fight for a democratic society, with food sovereignty and social justice, free from all types of violence against people and for a “feminist and anti-racist cultural revolution”, the document states.
Read the full text:
Letter of Landless Women
We live in a society that is unequal in many ways. We women have always been relegated to the task of care, as part of a sexual domination that emerged with patriarchy. No matter how much we work at home or on the land, how much we sell our labor to ensure our livelihood, at the end of the day, we are almost always the ones who are forced to organize the housework, take care of our children, the elderly, and the sick. How many girls and adult women give up their dreams and give up their lives to continue taking care of everyone? We want to build relationships where care is a shared task!
On the other hand, our bodies and our lives remain vulnerable to the risk of sexual, physical, psychological, and political violence, due to the reproduction of a culture that considers us the property of men, whether they are fathers, partners, brothers, or bosses.
We fight to overcome this historical condition of always caring and living with constant threats: to end the sexual and racial division of labor, violence against women, but also to warn that “whoever is alive today is in danger!”, as the song goes.
We, Landless Women, together with other peasants, quilombolas, indigenous women, women from the countryside, waters and forests, who have ancestrally cared for this land and those who live on it, know that there is an enemy on this planet that will not cease its destruction as long as there are ways to exploit people and nature.
Capitalism in the countryside has shown its evil face to all of Brazilian society, with devastating environmental crimes, and yet they continue with their project of profit and death. We cannot forget the toxic mud from Vale, which crossed Mariana and Brumadinho, the sinking of Lagoa Mundaú and peripheral neighborhoods, caused by Braskem in Alagoas, the deforestation caused by pesticides by farmers in the Pantanal in Mato Grosso, and the more than four thousand reports of environmental crimes registered each month in Brazil.
In addition to this, there is violence against those who truly protect life and nature the most. Our young people and elders are increasingly being subjected to violence by the State as they seek to protect forests, fauna and flora from the advance of criminal fires caused by predatory agriculture. Our girls, sisters and elderly women suffer from patriarchal violence in the territories where megaprojects of energy expansion capital are being installed.
There is no point in changing the energy matrix if the development model continues to be based on the logic of capital, since fossil fuels are replaced by “green capitalism” and the impact on nature and people remains the same!
We do not believe in false solutions of sustainability written by agribusiness, real estate speculation or the mining and energy sectors, because these are the agents of violence and the environmental crisis that plague humanity.
That is why this year’s Landless Women’s Day aims to denounce those who have historically been enemies of the people, our class antagonists, who are attacking a project for a society with popular sovereignty, which is truly ecological and socialist. Women’s struggle is against capitalism, against agribusiness and for a fair, dignified life, with land democratized to socialize the care of the common goods of nature, with agriculture and the People’s Agrarian Reform.
The People’s Agrarian Reform that we defend is not only a productive and environmental process, it is a feminist and anti-racist cultural revolution, a rupture with all bonds of domination and a permanent praxis towards human and social emancipation.
Opening the MST's annual calendar of struggles, the March 8th Journey, colored by the chintz scarves, symbolizes the boldness, rebellion and combativeness of the Landless Women. It is the insurgent force that drives us to continue fighting, with raised fists, in the construction of a socially just, democratic, sovereign and popular Brazil.
Agribusiness is violence and an environmental crime! The women's struggle is against Capital!
