The Landless Rural Workers Movement (MST) is an articulation of peasants fighting for land and agrarian reform in Brazil. It is an autonomous mass movement, within the trade union movement, with no political-partisan or religious ties. It is organized in commissions and is currently in 23 states of the country.
The MST was born as a product of the combination of various socio-economic factors that were consistent with the period 1975-85: the process of capitalist development in agriculture, which has fostered the concentration of land and the consequent increase in the number of landless peasants; the process of conservative transition that has isolated the military dictatorship and encouraged peasants to organize themselves; the pastoral work of the church, particularly the Pastoral Commission on Land, which has encouraged peasants to organize themselves; and the isolated struggles for land that have begun to occur in different states.
Training and research are constitutive elements of the Landless Movement of Brazil, the MST. Training is divided into schooling - duties that fall under the Education Collective's remit - and political training - duties associated with the Training Collective.
The two, though separate, are interwoven in concrete reality.
Throughout its 32 years of existence, MST has built the Pedagogy of the Earth, in schools of fundamental and higher level and in postgraduate courses. Training and education are fundamental parts of the revolutionary process in which the MST is involved.
- Creating networks
- Peasant movement, Peasant organisation