The MST recently took to the streets to protest against the drastic budget cuts – over 60%- that the National Program of Education in Areas of the Agrarian Reform (Pronera) is suffering. This had been a historic victory of the groups struggling for land in Brazil.

The lack of resources endangers the already existing courses. Most of the students are the children of settled peasants. This measure would leave behind those who had not access to this right. Hundreds of landless peasants have mobilized outside the headquarters of the National Institute of Colonization and Agrarian Reform (Incra) across the country, to ask to lift the budget cuts to Pronera.

Besides, in the case of Rio Grande do Sul, the MST is being victim of the attacks of the most hardliner sectors, which have put the movement’s itinerant schools in the crosshairs for over two years, with the final aim of damaging the organization.

The big estate owners and the agribusiness transnational corporations have the support of the most conservative representatives of the Attorney General’s office and of the state government, and finally they are achieving the goal of killing the MST’s educational projects.

The right-wing describes the education model promoted by the MST with outrageous phrases like “training guerrilla men” or “brainwashing” the new generations.

“Closing down schools has never been the solution to anything, the solution is to open them”, Janaina Stronzake, from the MST in Rio Grande do Sul, told Real World Radio.

The background of this conflict is a struggle of antagonistic models. It is worth recalling that the eucalyptus monoculture model is causing havoc in Rio Grande do Sul. Only three companies of the sector - Aracruz, Votorantim and Stora Enso- control 400,000 hectares of land. The result is well-known: high mechanization, creation of few jobs, no jobs for women and the slow disappearance of the rural populated centers.