MST’s Internationalist Brigades and the fight against COVID-19 and for life in Africa and Latin America
The world is currently undergoing a serious health crisis and is possibly facing the biggest social and economic crisis of the 21st century. While scientists strive to find ways to overcome the COVID-19 pandemic, hypotheses about the origin are being made. The fact is that there is a high probability that the virus that caused this pandemic may have originated from the environmental crisis we are also facing and the actions of the capital, especially in agriculture. Agri-business has been promoting deforestation and the destruction of forests while pesticides continue to poison rivers, soils, the environment and our food.
At the time of the pandemic’s advance, with increasing extreme poverty and increasingly difficult access to food, peasants became an essential subject for overcoming this crisis. This is because they have the possibility of feeding the population by producing and providing food free of poison and by building and strengthening a technological matrix of agricultural production based on the principles of agroecology and solidarity which is capable of opposing the selfish and destructive model of agribusiness.
On the other hand, these same peasants are in a vulnerable situation. In most countries there is no state policy that preserves the integrity of this subject and that encourages the production, sale and distribution of the food produced for the population. In addition, most of these families, who live and work in the fields, are far from health centers prepared to diagnose and care for those infected. In addition, most of these families, who live and work in the fields, are far from health centers that are prepared to diagnose and care for those infected. This fact puts the lives of these farmers at risk.
From the Landless Rural Workers Movement, we are sure that confronting agribusiness and building a society without oppressors and oppressed is a task for the working class as a whole, and that the trenches of struggle must be opened around the world.
For this reason, since our creation, we have constructed internationalism as a political line based on the values such as solidarity and love between peoples. For us internationalism is a principle, as it is one of the foundations of the MST, and as a revolutionary strategy that helps us to define actions that seek the articulation of the working class in different countries, allowing us to accumulate forces to face and defeat capital in all its dimensions and in all places of the world.
Our internationalist brigades are perhaps the best manifestation of this political line. They are collectives of our organization formed by militants from our different regions who live and work in different countries, in cooperation with local progressive organizations, where we stand in solidarity as a class and people’s fighters.
In the face of this global disaster, aggravated by capital and with consequences that affect the entire working class, our internationalist solidarity brigades are redirecting their actions to fight the coronavirus and prevent the increase in the number of deaths and infected people, in the countryside and in poor neighborhoods.
Thus, we are carrying out actions to exchange experiences among peasants on the production of healthy food, reforestation, seed donation, literacy of young people and adults and on the production and distribution of hygiene and protective materials, individual and collective, in countries where we are based.