On Thursday (16), Brazil’s Landless Workers' Movement (MST, in Portuguese) announced that the movement’s 7th National Congress, which was to take place in July this year in Brasília, will be held in July 2025. The postponement was decided in solidarity with the people of Rio Grande do Sul, who are facing the worst floods ever recorded in the state.
When informing the postponement, the MST reaffirmed solidarity “as the foundation for resistance and struggle”. The movement also highlighted the postponement as “a reaffirmation of our commitment to stand by those who need it most."
Solidarity actions on behalf of the people of Rio Grande do Sul, such as offering meals prepared in solidarity kitchens and fundraising on behalf of those affected, will be reinforced by the movement in the coming days and weeks.
“In times of adversity, solidarity becomes concrete action, and the MST joins society in demanding effective public policies and government initiatives that meet the urgent needs of the affected population,” the movement said in a statement.
The confirmation of the postponement was accompanied by a letter from the movement, which can be read in full below:
LETTER FROM THE MST ON THE POSTPONEMENT OF ITS 7TH NATIONAL CONGRESS
Guararema, São Paulo state, May 16, 2024
Throughout our 40-year history, we have learned that solidarity is the tenderness of peoples, a revolutionary principle and a human value. We recognize that our existence and resistance are the fruit of the solidarity of the peoples of the world. In these times of violence and degradation of life, it is necessary to place solidarity at the center of our political action. Therefore, at this time of pain and mourning for the people of Rio Grande do Sul, the MST has decided to postpone its 7th National Congress to July 2025.
We will dedicate our strength and the best we have built throughout our history to contributing to this reconstruction, caring for and welcoming people. Offering our solidarity, best food, militancy, organization and best hugs. [We offer] all our affection for the reconstruction of humanities and interrupted dreams.
We will continue to join forces in solidarity actions with society, in addition to demanding public policies and initiatives from the federal government to rebuild our homes, culture, educational system, productive system, cooperatives and care spaces. As a concrete action, the MST, at a national level, will organize support brigades in the different areas to rebuild a new memory, history, and dignified structural conditions of existence for the families affected [by the flooding]. We will stand together, hand in hand, with the entire working class from rural and urban areas who are feeling the brunt of the environmental crisis, expressed in the catastrophe that has hit the state of Rio Grande do Sul since the end of April.
This catastrophe is a tragedy foretold. Scientific studies have been pointing for decades to the acceleration and intensification of extreme weather events, resulting from the capitalist development model and agribusiness, which targets profit in an unbridled way: with the concentration of land, deforestation and burning, the intensive use of pesticides, the production of extensive monocultures, the appropriation of nature's common goods and the dismantling of environmental protection laws. This is not a natural disaster or divine vengeance, but rather the expression of the destructive model of capital, represented by those who want to “let the cttle go in”, who are directly linked to the interests of agribusiness, hydro-business and mining, infiltrated into the most diverse political decision-making spaces in the country.
Against this backdrop of capital's structural and prolonged crisis, we continue to fight, reaffirming our commitment to building the People's Agrarian Reform – as a necessity and an urgency, based on agroecology – the democratization of land and with human beings and nature at its core.
The postponement of MST's 7th National Congress in this context means extending the process of preparation and debates with our base and society, deepening the study of environmental issues in our territories and the rooting of our agrarian program.
To this end, we call on all our encamped and settled families and militants, and we restate our invitation to friends and people’s organizations to get involved in a broad process of working grassroots organizing, training and fighting with creativity and discipline. Because postponing is not paralyzing: it is organizing, mobilizing, showing solidarity and humanizing ourselves.
Onwards to MST’s 7th National Congress and all our solidarity with the people of Rio Grande do Sul.
National Directorate
Landless Workers' Movement
Fight, Build Popular Agrarian Reform!
