Activity

In Via Campesina, we’re building a platform independent of the particular tendencies of the farmers’ movements within each country. One plank on which we agree, at the international level, is that there must be the sort of agrarian reform that would democratize the land—both as a basis for politica…

Our relations with the Zapatistas are simply those of solidarity. Their struggle is a just one, but its social base and its method are different to ours. Theirs is, at root, a struggle of indigenous peoples for autonomy—and if there’s a criticism to be made of their experience, it would be that the…

By the simple fact of existing for eighteen years, a farmers’ movement that contests the ruling class in this country can consider itself something of a triumph—it’s longer than any previous one has lasted. We’ve won some economic victories: the lives of the 350,000 families that have occupied land…

In terms of the land occupations themselves, we have a principle: all the costs have to be borne by those who participate. Otherwise things get confused: ‘I don’t know who’ buys the tents, ‘I don’t know who’ pays for the transport; the farmers end up depending on ‘I don’t know who’. At the first si…

For two or three months, our activists visit the villages and communities in an area where there are lots of landless farmers, and start work on raising awareness—proselytizing, if you like. They explain to people that they have a right to land, that the constitution has a clause on agrarian reform…