Landless Workers Movement - MST
Written
in the Brazil constitution is the principle
that land must be productive. The Landless
Workers Movement bases its actions on this
principle.
The movement identifies land that is not used productively or has not had taxes paid on it or was acquired by dubious or unlawful means.
The Landless Workers Movement then occupies the land and makes its case to the government that the title of the land should pass to those who will develop the land to benefit people.
In this clip several people who are occupying land in Sao Paulo explain the process by which poor landless people petition the government for title to the farmland they are cultivating.
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The movement identifies land that is not used productively or has not had taxes paid on it or was acquired by dubious or unlawful means.
The Landless Workers Movement then occupies the land and makes its case to the government that the title of the land should pass to those who will develop the land to benefit people.
In this clip several people who are occupying land in Sao Paulo explain the process by which poor landless people petition the government for title to the farmland they are cultivating.
Video on Landless Workers Movement is loading below (choose Broadband or Phone Modem):
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PBS Frontline examines the Landless Workers
Movement.
This week on Rough Cut, we travel to a dusty patch of rural Brazil where FRONTLINE/World Fellows Adam Raney and Chad Heeter witness a land occupation by a thousand poor people and activists who take over a strategic corner of a ranch that is about an eight-hour drive west of Sao Paulo. As you'll see in their video, "Cutting the Wire," it is an invasion conducted in the middle of the night, with stealth and precision.
Half of Brazil's farmland belongs to just 4 percent of the population -- a glaring inequality in a nation known for its stark division between rich and poor. Brazil has one of the biggest GDPs in the world, larger than the combined economies of all the other countries in South America. But nearly a quarter of Brazil's 186 million people live below the poverty line, many of them in notorious urban slums, or favelas. As author John Krich once caustically asked, "Why is this country dancing?"
This week on Rough Cut, we travel to a dusty patch of rural Brazil where FRONTLINE/World Fellows Adam Raney and Chad Heeter witness a land occupation by a thousand poor people and activists who take over a strategic corner of a ranch that is about an eight-hour drive west of Sao Paulo. As you'll see in their video, "Cutting the Wire," it is an invasion conducted in the middle of the night, with stealth and precision.
<</span>http://www.pbs.org/frontlineworld/rough/2005/12/brazil_cutting.html>
Links:
Wikipedia: Landless Workers Movement
Friends of the MST
BBC: Brazil landless visit president
This week on Rough Cut, we travel to a dusty patch of rural Brazil where FRONTLINE/World Fellows Adam Raney and Chad Heeter witness a land occupation by a thousand poor people and activists who take over a strategic corner of a ranch that is about an eight-hour drive west of Sao Paulo. As you'll see in their video, "Cutting the Wire," it is an invasion conducted in the middle of the night, with stealth and precision.
Half of Brazil's farmland belongs to just 4 percent of the population -- a glaring inequality in a nation known for its stark division between rich and poor. Brazil has one of the biggest GDPs in the world, larger than the combined economies of all the other countries in South America. But nearly a quarter of Brazil's 186 million people live below the poverty line, many of them in notorious urban slums, or favelas. As author John Krich once caustically asked, "Why is this country dancing?"
This week on Rough Cut, we travel to a dusty patch of rural Brazil where FRONTLINE/World Fellows Adam Raney and Chad Heeter witness a land occupation by a thousand poor people and activists who take over a strategic corner of a ranch that is about an eight-hour drive west of Sao Paulo. As you'll see in their video, "Cutting the Wire," it is an invasion conducted in the middle of the night, with stealth and precision.
<</span>http://www.pbs.org/frontlineworld/rough/2005/12/brazil_cutting.html>
Links:
Wikipedia: Landless Workers Movement
Friends of the MST
BBC: Brazil landless visit president