"There is perhaps no organization with a better reputation among leftists around the world than the MST. Its admirers will tell you that the group has managed accomplishments that elude progressive movements elsewhere: It maintains a radical approach, pushing for revolution in the long term while providing homes and incomes for working-class Brazilians in the short; it has adapted to shifting conditions without suffering major rifts; and it fought to get Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, Brazil’s once and current president, out of prison in 2019 and back into power, all while keeping its independence from the ruling Workers’ Party. “We have been very inspired by the MST as a political and social movement,” Enzo Camacho, from the ALPAS Pilipinas, a group that works to organize the Filipino diaspora in Berlin, told me. Belén Díaz, a sociologist and a member of the left-feminist Bloque Latinoamericano collective, put it more bluntly: “The Landless Workers’ Movement is the most respected social movement in the world.”
In October 2022, the Workers’ Party won back the keys to the presidential palace and, despite a January 6–like coup attempt by Bolsonaro and his supporters, Lula took up residence the following year. With democracy secured and the reactionaries out of the executive branch, the MST shifted into a more offensive posture: It began to seize more unused land and to occupy illegal farms once again. The movement’s return to its pre-Bolsonaro form seemed to surprise Lula’s administration, and it generated some mainstream attention
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Though Bolsonaro was defeated in 2022, his Partido Liberal won the largest bloc of seats in Congress. Lula must work with the right-wing forces funded by rich landowners and rapacious agribusinesses, lest his administration risk impeachment or abuses of the legal system"
https://www.thenation.com/article/world/brazil-mst-landless-workers-movement/
