 In the third week of March, the annual Rice Harvest Festival was organized in the state of Rio Grande do Sul by one of the largest rice production cooperatives in Brazil. The cooperative is run by the landless rural workers movement of Brazil, one of the most significant social movements in Latin America. The MST has been in the forefront of a unique movement to take over unused land, render it productive and provide livelihoods and dignity to thousands of families. It has brought about a massive shift in social relations in Brazil. The MST was also one of the movements that has stood firm by former President Lula da Silva as he was persecuted by Brazilian state over the years. After his acquittal and as Brazil heads to a significant election, mobilizations are taking place across the country to bring about an alternative to the far right represented by President Jair Bolsonaro as well as other systemic forces. Zoe Alexandra of People's Dispatch talks about the work of the MST, what it has brought to Brazilian society and the mobilizations around the potential presidential candidacy of Lula da Silva. Hello and welcome back to People's Dispatch. Today we're going to talk about Brazil and the people's movements on the ground in Brazil that are working to rebuild the country and build a new project for Brazil. Annual Rice Collection Festival, this takes place in the southern state of Rio Grande do Sul on the settlement of Santarita and it is organized by the agricultural livestock production cooperative. This is one of the largest agricultural production cooperatives in Brazil. They're the largest producer of organic rice in the country and actually the MST, which runs as agricultural cooperative, the movement of the landless rural workers, is the largest producer of organic rice in Latin America. They held their annual festival to begin the harvesting of this organic rice. It's a very important moment for the MST, for the country. It's always a moment of great celebration of not only the start of the harvest season, which for centuries is a moment to be celebrated in many communities across the world, but it is also a moment of recognition of what the movement has been able to achieve. So the landless rural workers movement has been organizing for over 30 years, organizing people without land to take unproductive land that is not being used, where the owners or the property holders of this land have in somewhat violated a certain clause of the Constitution, which says that all land must be productive, that it cannot endanger the environment, that slave labor cannot take place, and that of course all the owners must pay their taxes, and so the landless rural worker movement has been working for the past couple of decades to retake this land and make it productive again, not only to produce food, but also to give a life and a life of dignity to all these families, hundreds of thousands of families that don't have access to land. Brazil is one of the most unequal countries in not only the region of Latin America and the Caribbean, but also the world, and it has one of the largest disparities in terms of those that own land and those that don't own land, meaning that a large amount of land is concentrated in the hands of very few, and even though agricultural production, family farming is a very big aspect of a Brazilian economy and of sustaining the Brazilian people, many people are excluded from this, and so the landless rural workers movement has been fighting for decades for the people's land reform, and they're fighting not only to be able to have this land and to live on it and work this land, but also to make healthy food, and that is why when they celebrate this rice harvest festival, it's organic rice they're harvesting, because this movement is fighting so that all people in Brazil, both in the countryside and in the cities, can have access to healthy food, can have access to conditions to survive, because Brazil, like many other countries in Latin America and across the world, relies a lot on agrotoxins, on pesticides in order to grow their food, and actually under the government of far-right president, Jair Bolsonaro, over 500 pesticides that were previously illegal were made able to use, he made them legal, and this means that the Brazilian people are dealing with even higher levels of chemicals in their food, of poisonous chemicals that are very, very bad for their health, and so in this sense, the landless rural workers movement has been fighting this by creating, by producing healthy food, by distributing it to the communities that need it during the pandemic, the movement organized mass amounts of food donations to poor communities both in the countryside and the city, they organized many community kitchens where hot food was distributed to the people in the cities, to homeless people, to people who lost their jobs, to anyone who needed it, and so in this moment they're celebrating for the first time in three years this rice harvesting festival, it's a moment of great victory and it's a moment of unnecessary to recognize the achievements of this movement that has really held up Brazilian society, and so concurrently at the same time that this rice harvest festival, which is so symbolic and so important, was taking place the next day, there was another large celebration that took place in Paraná, just to the north of Rio Grande do Sul, and it was at another very, very large agricultural production settlement of the MST, which is called Eli Vive, and that is in Londrina. Londrina in Paraná is the largest area that has been taken back by the people for agrarian reform in Brazil, there's over 501 families settled in this region, and all of them are engaging in family agricultural and agroecological production, and producing products such as milk, cheese, other dairy products, harvesting food, making alcohol even, harvesting beans, rice, so many different things that are so necessary to support the people, and so this weekend after the Organic Rice Festival, Lula da Silva visited this agricultural settlement along with other leaders from the MST, Joe Pedro Stegile and Joe Paulo Rodriguez visited this MST settlement and celebrated not only the work of the MST, but also the work that was done by the MST and many other social movements and organizations in Brazil to fight for the freedom of Lula da Silva, so in 2018 Lula was imprisoned on false charges over corruption, and the MST and many other movements held a vigil every single day outside of the prison demanding his release, demanding that he be freed and that the charges be dropped following the Organic Rice Festival, Lula celebrated all of those people that organized this vigil and he also along with MST launched the base committees of the movements, and so this year is an election year, it's very important to remember this, Lula is not officially candidate yet because the candidate registration has not happened, but he is most likely going to be the presidential candidate for the Workers' Party of Brazil, and so many social movements, people's movements across the country are going to be working so that Lula can be a candidate, making sure that his political rights are respected in 2018, they were not respected, he was not able to be a candidate, so there's going to be a large push to make sure that this candidacy happens, but people are going to be organizing and mobilizing on the community level to make sure that the dreams, the aspirations and the desires of all people in Brazil are reflected into a proposal for the country, and this is not only about who gets elected president, but it's about transforming the country, the last couple of years under the Jair Bolsonaro government, there has been a severe setback in the quality of life for Brazilians, the poverty levels have drastically rise, hunger which before Luno da Silva, when he was president, had managed to almost eradicate in the country because of many different social programs that he developed and that were continued by Dilma Rousseff also from the Workers' Party, however under Jair Bolsonaro, hunger has returned to Brazil, there is very high levels of unemployment, the Brazilian currency has significantly devalued which of course has many full impacts on the Brazilian economy, so right now people are really focused on organizing once again, now that the pandemic has slightly abated, the vaccination rates are high, people are beginning to organize on a community level around the project of country that Lula is presenting, but also organizing their communities and strengthening the grassroot organizing and making sure that what happened in 2018 when Jair Bolsonaro through WhatsApp through social media was able to disseminate so many fake messages about the other candidates, about what would happen to Brazil if the Workers' Party candidate Fernando Jada was elected, that all of these be combated with more organization that the base, more organization like how the MST organizes working with people directly in their communities providing them what they need and so this is a very important moment for Brazil, we see this in the strengthening of the work of the MST, we see people's movements coming together and dreaming of a new country because this is so desperately needed in Brazil right now, I think the MST is presented and has worked for creating a new model of society of where people can get healthy food, of where they can have dignified homes, where they can have dignified lives and so this is what people are working towards, it is going to be a crucial year, there's no clear candidate from the far right from the, even from the moderate right currently, there's no standout candidates, it's going to be an interesting year, Lula is the favorite in these elections, he's polling the highest currently, so it'll be interesting to see how this pans out but I think this past weekend in Londrina, Emre O Grande do Sul with these celebrations of the movement and of the work of the people's movements, it's giving a breath of fresh air back into political life, engaging people at the base in the community level and reviving all of this very important work that is done by the Brazilian people to save the country.