1/25/2005: Porto Alegre, Brazil - The Movement of Landless Rural Workers (MST) has occupied and controls huge amounts of arable land in Brazil. Because of militant action, and in some cases ambiguous land ownership issues, the MST has given hope to the millions of Brazilians living in poverty and who are without land. Over the last 20 years these landless farm workers have taken over and now occupy more than 20,000 square miles of land - that is about the size as the entire Tulare, Fresno, Madera, Merced, and Stanislaus counties combined.

Vardoci Mostarda is typical of the landless farmworkers who are driven by poverty and desperate conditions to participate in land seizures with the MST. “I lost my job in the rice fields and was forced to move to a slum in a large city. There, I began to sell fruit from a cart, but there was no future in that.” Mostarda said he met a militant from the MST who told him about the movement and showed him that it was possible to have a better life and return to the land. He ended up at Camp Monte Pill, outside of Porto Alegre in Southern Brazil, about a year ago. The camp sits on the roadside next to 1,800 hectors of land (approximately 4,450 acres) which is now occupied by 110 families. Read More | mstbrazil.org