Brasil: MST and the other humanity that is possible

We all know that The Landless Movement, (MST), struggles for agrarian reform. To the Movement, the Earth is not only a means of production, as the capitalist culture would have it, but much more; the Earth is our Common Home, she is alive, with a unique community life and we are her daughters and sons with the mission of caring for her, and liberating her from the devastating consumerist system.

That is the amazing thing. This is their grandest dream, an expression of the new emerging civilizing paradigm.

The Movement leaves behind the academic speech that is oriented exclusively towards instrumental-analytic reason, functional to the present form of production that threatens the common future of the Earth and of Humanity. To grasp this aspect of the MST and of the Peasant Way is to grasp their strength to to bring people together in Brazil and in the world as a whole.

They are at the forefront of the alternative vision, which holds that another form of humanity is possible. With their actions, notwithstanding the contradictions inherent to a historical process that arise here and there, they are showing its viability. It is enough to observe, with watchful eye, what they say, how are they organized and what they do.

The victims of the present order give life to a new dream. Days ago, my compañera Marcia, who has supported MST since its foundation in the Ronda Alta-RS camp, and I were able to take part in the march from Goiania to Brazilia. Those were two days of good fellowship and march with the 12,272 participants. It required much solidarity consciousness, discipline and sense for the common good for this massive popular process to function, with more perfection than a school of samba carioca. [1]

Let’s not talk of the punctual meal time, of the assembly and dismantling of the tents, of the abundant drinking water and sanitary services. The ecological preoccupation was almost obsessive. If someone, the next day, had wanted to know where those thousands of people had camped, it would have been impossible to tell: the cleanliness was so meticulous that not even a scrap of paper was left behind.

Among the explicit objectives of the march, beyond the agrarian reform and the debate of a popular project for Brazil, was "to develop activities in solidarity with and to strengthen the struggles and the dreams of the people." To this end, expositions were transmitted through the internal radio station, followed by group discussions. I was asked to talk about the new vision of the Earth and how to take care of her, in light of the suggestions of The Letter of The Earth. Walking by the groups, I saw the seriousness of the discussions.

But not only that. The march took upon itself "to rescue and to promote Brazilian culture through songs, poems, theater and other typical manifestations of the people." When the group from Parana (more than 800 people) welcomed us, we listened to songs and poems of rare beauty. One stanza called us to "listen to the harmony of equality of the poor." If the system dumbfounds us, through the mass media, with words such as "wealth, pleasure, accumulation, consumerism," what we could hear more here was, "solidarity, cooperation, justice, new women and new men... New Earth." Who is on a better path?

I thought within myself: surely Marx, Lenin and Mao never thought of a revolution that could make this very happy synthesis of struggle and study, of walk and feast. A movement that incorporates poetry and music will be invincible. MST tells us that another world is about to happen.