The Landless Rural Workers Movement (MST) launched this Friday (27) the Letter to the Brazilian People, a document with political messages and guidelines for activists for the year 2023.
The text is a summary of the debates that took place throughout the week in Luiziânia (GO) between the coordination of the movement, which completes 40 years in 2024. Delegations from 22 states, MST brigade members who work in other countries and parliamentarians were present.
After defeating fascism at the polls, the MST claims that popular forces defend a country project that overcomes the aggressions seen in recent years. “We need to defeat the practices of hate speech, fake news, fundamentalism, religious intolerance and mind manipulation.”
The MST reaffirms its commitments to constant mobilization against fascism, in defense of agrarian reform, the production of healthy foods and the fight against predatory agribusiness, among other points.
Read the Letter to Brazilians in full:
We achieved an important victory for the Brazilian people in the streets and at the polls by electing Lula president. We defeated the coup leaders of 2016, the advance of the extreme right, military tutelage and the fascist project, which has hegemonized the Brazilian State in recent years. We won an important battle, but we know that the fight continues.
The challenges are great, as we are experiencing a serious crisis of capitalism, with an economic, political, social and ecological dimension, which puts all of humanity at risk. We are facing a highly destructive scenario, derived from a system of multiple domination and oppression: patriarchal, racist, capitalist and colonial, which increasingly concentrates wealth and deepens social inequality.
In Brazil, the crisis has deepened in recent years, taking on an even more violent character, fascist in nature and ultraliberal economic orientation. The consequences are tragic and have a decisive impact on society as a whole, widening inequalities, from the withdrawal of social rights and environmental destruction.
The popular forces that gave Lula victory – women, blacks, youth, LGBTI+ subjects, native peoples, rural and urban workers – defend a popular project for the country, which faces exploitation, oppression, exclusion, hunger, denial of rights, land concentration, environmental destruction and the poisoning of nature, food, water and people.
Overcoming this violence among the working class as a whole will be the starting point for building a Brazil the size of our dreams, as President Lula stated in his inauguration speech. We need to defeat the practices of hate speech, fake news, fundamentalism, religious intolerance and mind manipulation.
Faced with these challenges, the National Coordination of the MST, gathered in Luziânia – GO, with its more than 450 male and female delegates, from all states of Brazil, reaffirms its commitments:
- To boost popular participation in guiding the country’s direction, through permanent mobilization and the continuity of the fight against fascism in Brazil and in the world;
- Defend the Popular Agrarian Reform as indispensable for the production of healthy food and overcoming hunger;
- Facing the agribusiness model, which concentrates land, destroys nature, promotes deforestation and poisons us with pesticides. This model does not pay taxes, it only produces commodities and does not feed the people;
- Combating the climate crisis, guaranteeing the rights of peoples and nature, with real measures against deforestation, degradation and increased emissions. No to the green economy and its false promises!
- Denounce and permanently mobilize against all forms of violence, discrimination, racism, misogyny, LGBTIphobia and religious intolerance, fostered by agrocoupismo and fascist Bolsonarism;
- Accumulate forces in the next period, through articulation between popular organizations in the countryside and in the city, exercising class solidarity and unity in the struggle, understanding that without organization, training and popular mobilization there will be no real change in the country.
We are committed to cultivating solidarity and building the necessary organization of our people.
We will continue with our Plan to Plant Trees, Produce Healthy Food.
We will prioritize the fight for the education of the people, in literacy campaigns and in the processes of political formation and battles of ideas.
We defend the sovereignty of all peoples and condemn economic blockades, military bases, wars and imperialist aggressions all over the world, which only guarantee a market for the arms industry and cause deaths.
We will join everyone who defends the original peoples and demand the demarcation of quilombola and indigenous lands, so that the tragedy that the Yanomami people face, is not repeated.
The struggle is our strength! Organization is our ground and a just, solidary and socialist society is our path.
Long live the struggle for Popular Agrarian Reform! Long live the legitimate right of the people to occupy the lands and break the fences of destruction. We will continue treading fast, towards the 40 years of the MST!
Fight, Build Popular Agrarian Reform!
January 23 to 27, 2023
Movements of Landless Rural Workers – MST
Editing: Rodrigo Durão Coelho
