MST - Brazil's Landless Movement

Children of members of the Landless Workers Movement (MST) stand near their homes at a camp in the northeastern Brazilian state of Pernambuco. The MST has ended its honeymoon with President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, who they supported in the 2002 election, and has begun a campaign of land invasions to speed up agrarian reform. The MST says lula is slow on reform an invasions are the only way to pressure the government. Founded in 1985, the Landless Workers Movement is the largest social movement in Latin America and one of the most successful grassroots movements in the world. Hundreds of thousands of landless peasants have taken onto themselves the task of carrying out a land reform in a country mired by an overly skewed land distribution pattern. Less than 3% of the population owns two-thirds of Brasil's arable land. Under Brazil's constitution, the government must redistribute farmland that is unused. Today more than 250,000 families have won land titles to over 15 million acres after MST land takeovers. (Australfoto/Douglas Engle)

agriculturepovertyland issueslabourmst peasant labor worker reform agrarianNACLA