Brazil MST Announces Agrarian Reform
The Fifth Congress of Brazil´s MST (Landless Rural Workers Movement) concluded on Friday by announcing a proposed agrarian reform, the result of two years of debate within the grassroots organization.

The proposal will be announced along with a "letter to the Brazilian People" with the large agenda the movement hopes to discuss with society, to debate the current development model along with the MST Agrarian Reform.

Maria de Fatima Ribeiro, a member of the MST National Coordination, told press in advance some aspects of the text and characterized the project as "the dream the MST hopes to achieve."

Among the proposals are expropriation of unproductive and illegally held land, as well as those using slave labor and growing prohibited crops (such as marijuana), and handing over of such lands to the agrarian reform.

The Congress considered the current agricultural model causes environmental and human degradation because it grants privileges to monoculture and agribusiness crops for export.

Although MST has already sent Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva their proposed Agrarian Reform and want to discuss it with him, Ribeiro insisted that the conditions are not yet right since the democratization of this proposal needs a democratic and popular State.