The so-called Red April, the annual day of mobilization of the Landless Rural Workers’ Movement (MST, in Portuguese), aims to pressure the federal government — whose agrarian reform policies are considered to be “far” from what is needed — and defend that the model that opposes agribusiness is the one that can actually bring food to people’s tables. This year’s motto is “Occupy to feed Brazil.”
Occupations of large estates, marches, food distribution and protests at the headquarters of the National Institute for Colonization and Agrarian Reform (Incra, in Portuguese) are some of the activities planned across the country.
Most of the actions will take place until April 17, the 29th anniversary of the Eldorado do Carajás massacre. Since police repression of a march in the state of Pará, northern Brazil, killed 21 peasants and maimed 69 in 1996, the date has become the International Day of Struggles for Agrarian Reform.
The context of this year’s Red April is the rise in food prices, 145,000 families living in encampments across the country (100,000 linked to the MST) and a recent announcement by the Lula government that it will settle 8% of the encamped families. For Margarida Maria da Silva, from the national coordination of the MST, now is the time to put pressure on the “federal budget for agrarian reform to be restored, so that this debt to the country can be paid.”
“Land reform is an important tool in the fight against hunger, social inequality and the climate crisis, but it can also help to reduce food prices,” argues Magal, as the landless leader is known. The hope, she says, is that the day of struggles will “achieve new victories for our people.”
Read the full interview:
BdF: How does the MST assess the current moment in the struggle for agrarian reform in Brazil?
Margarida Silva: We are facing a food crisis in Brazil, with the concentration of land ownership, rising inflation and food prices, and the poorest are the most affected.
The movement shows how agrarian reform is an important tool in the fight against hunger, social inequality and the climate crisis, but it can also help reduce food prices.
President Lula (Workers’ Party) recently visited a MST settlement for the first time in his current term. He announced some measures, such as the donation of 12,297 land plots for agrarian reform. How does the movement interpret it?
It was an important and symbolic announcement at Quilombo do Campo do Meio in the state of Minas Gerais. But it falls far short of what is needed for agrarian reform in Brazil. Incra alone, in a survey that has not yet been concluded, has already registered more than 150,000 landless families encamped. Of these, 100,000 are from MST. In its announcement, the Lula government informed us that a little less than 5,000 MST families would be included. So the announcement has symbolic importance, but it’s very little compared to what we need right now.
What is the central demand for Red April 2025?
This edition is a denunciation of the agribusiness production mode, with the destruction of nature’s goods and the increase of violence in the countryside. We have experienced this as the Landless Movement, but the Indigenous people have experienced it much more intensely.
In addition, the main banner of Red April is the defense of agrarian reform. We understand that this agenda needs to be at the center of the government’s priorities, with an increase in the budget, but also more presence in debates with society.
Agrarian reform plays an important role in the production of healthy food on an agroecological basis, in the defense of the environment and the commons, but above all in the defense of life, of peasants, traditional communities, riverside communities and indigenous peoples.
We need to occupy the large estates, denounce the crimes they [large land owners] have committed in the countryside. Above all, we want to produce food and communicate with society.
What can we expect from the activities scheduled for this year’s Day of Struggle?
It will be an April focused on struggle, on denouncing the agribusiness model through the struggle for land, but also on various other activities in all regions of our country, such as food donations, blood donations, planting trees.
We’re also going to deliver our agenda to the government and state departments of Incra. We hope to achieve new victories for our people. Whether through the struggle for land by expropriating areas, but also through the development of our settlements.
There are settlements that have not been able to build houses or access any public policy for the last eight years, since the coup against President Dilma [Rousseff]. The government’s announcements are important, but we haven’t been able to access them on the ground.
This is the time to talk to society about the type of agriculture we want for the Brazilian countryside. We want one that respects biodiversity and nature, produces agroecological food and is concerned about the problems the poorest people have been experiencing in the country.
