Movimento dos Trabalhadores Rurais Sem Terra (MST)
Brazil’s Landless Workers Movement, or Movimento dos Trabalhadores Rurais Sem Terra (MST), is a mass social movement formed by rural workers and others working toward land reform and greater social equality in rural areas. MST was born from the various independent struggles for land that rural workers were mounting in Brazil at the end of the 1970s and became a national movement in 1984. In its first decades, MST carried out more than 2,500 land occupations, resulting in the settlement of hundreds of thousands of families. Since its founding, MST has maintained three central objectives: fighting for land; fighting for food sovereignty; and fighting for a more just and fraternal society.
A 2022 grant from our sister organization, the L/G Foundation, supported an educational center run by MST called Escola Nacional Florestan Fernandes (ENFF). ENFF operates ten educational centers throughout the country which offers programming as well as resources such as libraries. The grant award was used to add laptops, projectors, film screens, and several thousand books to multiple education centers. These centers act as schools of political education for the working class, aiming to strengthen the educational processes and organization of MST territories. ENFF is located in Guararema and was built by thousands of landless worker volunteers and several sponsors from 2000 to 2005.
Support from the Cultures of Resistance Network contributed to MST’s solidarity efforts, which it carries out as a member of La Via Campesina, an international movement of the landless, peasants, small- and medium-sized producers, rural women, indigenous people, rural youth and agricultural workers. Specifically, the Foundation’s grant supported MST’s 1st National Meeting of Solidarity with Palestine, which was held in Sao Paulo in November 2011 and brought together political leaders from different political parties, religious organizations, social movements, and civil society groups.
Websites: www.mst.org.br, www.mstbrazil.org (English), and ENFF
