[News] "Dialogue among family," says Brazilian MST leader on meeting with Colombian Vice President Francia Márquez

[Anti-Imperialist News]

peoplesdispatch.org
<https://peoplesdispatch.org/2022/08/02/dialogue-among-family-says-mst-leader-on-meeting-with-colombian-vice-president-francia-marquez/>
"Dialogue among family," says MST leader on meeting with Colombian Vice
President Francia Márquez
Michele de Mello - August 2, 2022
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[image: image.png]

Francia Márquez met with leaders of Brazilian popular movements on July 26,
in São Paulo - Photo: Vinícius Poço de Toledo

The Landless Rural Workers’ Movement (MST) was one of the organizations
that met with the Vice President-elect of Colombia, Francia Márquez, during
her visit to Brazil on July 26. The meeting at the Perseu Abramo
Foundation, in São Paulo, was a “dialogue among family,” said MST leader
Messilene Gorete, adding, “it served to introduce ourselves and to put
ourselves at the disposal of the people’s government of Colombia.

The Landless Movement is present in 24 Brazilian states, with around
450,000 families who have acquired land through collective and organized
peasant struggle. Created in 1984, the Movement’s principal demand is the
right to the social purpose of the land: land for those who live and
produce on it, with respect for the environment and a guarantee of food
sovereignty and a call for structural changes in the country.

Today, one of the main issues is Popular Agrarian Reform, guaranteeing land
tenure and use for Indigenous, riverine, and quilombolas communities, and
organizing national agricultural production with the goal of delivering
healthy food, free of pesticides and genetically modified organisms (GMOs),
to the population. This year alone, the MST carried out around 60 actions,
including 28 occupations of areas considered unproductive.
With support from MST militants, Comuna El Maizal produces native corn
seeds for national distribution / Comuna El Maizal

Like Brazil, Colombia has one of the highest land ownership inequalities in
the region. Independent surveys indicate that 5% of the Colombian
population owns 87% of the land.

Data from the last National Agricultural Census in Colombia indicates that
of the 113 million hectares of arable land in the country, about 75% of the
productive units have less than 5 hectares and represent 2.1% of the area
covered by the census. Properties larger than 500 hectares represent 0.4%
of the units and account for 41.1% of the territory.

The dispute over territory is what gave rise to the armed conflict that has
lasted 58 years. To defend the land on which they lived and made a living,
Colombian small farmers began to organize themselves into peasant leagues,
which gave rise to the two largest guerrillas in the country: Revolutionary
Armed Forces of Colombia – People’s Army (FARC-EP) and the National
Liberation Army (ELN).

One of the main proposals of the new government is to carry out
comprehensive agrarian reform, as provided for in the Peace Accords, signed
in 2016 between then-President Juan Manuel Santos and the defunct FARC-EP
guerrillas. It was agreed that seven million hectares were to be granted to
the former Colombian guerrillas, which has not happened.

The proposal of the Historic Pact, the group under which Gustavo Petro was
elected, is to move forward with agreements made to the former FARC-EP and
to advance in land concessions and the demarcation of Indigenous and
quilombola lands. “If they manage to carry out agrarian reform in this
context, it will be a great model for us to carry out agrarian reform in
Brazil,” argues Messilene Gorete.

In the conversation with the MST, Francia Márquez showed interest in
learning about the local experience in order to bring examples to Colombia,
and reiterated that agrarian reform is a priority for her government.

“To hear this from a Vice President, knowing what it means for Colombia and
for us, a movement that fights for agrarian reform as its central goal,
inspires us to put pressure on the Brazilian government to consider this
agenda as a priority, because it is a great need. There will only be
justice and equality in Brazil if there is true agrarian reform,” says
Messilene Gorete.
Food distribution in Pernambuco; During the pandemic, the MST donated more
than six thousand tons of food produced in the settlements / Ana Olívia
Godoy/MST-PE

Through cooperativism and projects based on the solidarity economy, the MST
has become the largest producer of agro-ecologically grown rice in Latin
America, with an annual production of more than 3,000 hectares and 15,000
tons of rice. Nationwide, the MST has created 160 cooperatives, 120
agro-industries and 1,900 associations.

For this reason, one of the points agreed upon with the Colombian Vice
President was training on agro-ecological production within political and
technical education. This will occur within the scope of the boosting of
rice production, based on the experience of the MST. “From the Florestan
Fernandes School we want to help them build agroecology schools in
Colombia,” said Messilene.

For the former coordinator of the Internationalist Brigade Apolônio de
Carvalho, the inauguration of a leftist government in Colombia and the
possibility of Lula da Silva’s victory in Brazil marks a new moment for
Latin America.

“We can think of a new cycle of progressive governments that bet on Latin
American integration, based on joint work mechanisms such as UNASUR,
MERCOSUR and ALBA. It will certainly be a new chapter in the history of
Latin America and a chapter in favor of the people,” concludes the MST
leader.

*This article was originally published in Brasil de Fato
<https://www.brasildefato.com.br/2022/08/01/dialogo-entre-irmaos-diz-dirigente-do-mst-sobre-reuniao-com-vice-colombiana-francia-marquez>.*
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