El MST

Continuidad y ruptura en la lucha por la tierra en Brasil

Abstract

As every social movement, the Movement of Landless Workers (MST) arouse from a social problem. Brazil, the most extensive country in South America and the fifth largest in the world is, nowadays, the country with the biggest land concentration just after Paraguay. This problem, that turns out to be the binding element of about two million people that form the MST, is not, nonetheless, a new issue. Since the colonial period, the latifundio became the main land property regime in Brazil. In this sense, at the same time that forms, structure and discursive content have distinguished the Landless Workers from traditional organizations and precedent peasant movements, constituting a break with the past, their main claim, struggle for land, inserts itself in a line of historical continuity.