Marina Dos Santos: Latin America Cannot Accept İts Peoples Being Subordinated To The İnterests Of Foreign Powers

Özge Güneş

As Brazil heads towards the second round of its presidential election, Lula’s first-round setback and the gains made by the right have brought the role of popular movements in political struggle back into focus. Against this backdrop, the Landless Workers’ Movement (MST) increased its parliamentary representation from seven to eight. The MST’s gains also provide an opportunity to discuss the potential of grassroots organising that extends beyond electoral support.

We spoke to Marina dos Santos, a prominent figure in the MST who was re-elected to the Rio de Janeiro state legislature for the Workers’ Party (PT), about popular movements’ experience under Lula, the rise of the right in Latin America and their strategy ahead of the run-off. While making Lula’s re-election a priority, dos Santos stresses the movement’s independence: the struggle to secure people’s demands will continue after the election.

The joint struggle waged by the MST, trade unions and other popular movements played an important role in Lula’s electoral victory in 2022. Looking back today, how do you assess this social alliance’s ability to shape the government’s direction?

The alliance of popular movements was crucial to defeating Bolsonaro in 2022. Today, it remains crucial both to supporting Lula’s government and to fighting to shape its direction. We recognise the progress made in rebuilding public policies, tackling hunger, supporting family farming and putting agrarian reform back on the agenda.

At the same time, we know there are limits and that many of our demands have still not been met with the urgency required. That is precisely the role of the movements: to support measures that represent progress for the people while pressing the government to go further. Supporting Lula does not mean giving up our autonomy.

During this period, popular movements organised a popular referendum on working hours and tax justice. They also sought to influence the international agenda through the BRICS People’s Council. What have these initiatives achieved in terms of popular organisation and participation in decision-making?

These initiatives show that democracy cannot be reduced to voting. We need to build structures that enable sustained popular participation and bring issues that directly affect working people’s lives into political debate, such as shorter working hours, tax justice and the sovereignty of peoples. We do this while preserving our autonomy. The MST is a social movement; it is neither a political party nor a government. We maintain a relationship of dialogue with and support for Lula’s government because we understand the importance of its political project for the working class. But we also have our own demands, and we do not stop fighting when they go unmet.

Despite Lula’s setback in the recent elections, the MST increased its parliamentary representation. How do you interpret these two results together?

I do not see these results as contradictory. The MST fielded 16 candidates from its own ranks across 13 states and elected eight representatives: four federal deputies and four state deputies. I had the honour of being among them, winning re-election in Rio de Janeiro with 66,167 votes.

During the campaign, I met people who acknowledge the advances made under Lula’s government, such as the restoration of income redistribution policies. But people also demand faster responses to concrete problems such as food prices, precarious work, housing and violence. This shows that we need to defend what has been rebuilt while pressing for further progress.

Looking at Brazil alongside other Latin American countries, what lessons should be drawn about progressive governments’ policies and their relationships with the people, in the face of US intervention and pressure from the far right?

The advance of the right in Latin America is largely linked to the far right’s ability to exploit the real problems people face. They offer simplistic answers that appear to solve everything but in reality leave the causes of those problems untouched. That is how they turn fear, insecurity and dissatisfaction into a political instrument.

The lesson for the left is that we need to be even closer to the people and ensure that change makes a tangible difference to their lives. Lula’s government has been rebuilding public policies and rights that were dismantled in recent years. But we need to go further and communicate these gains more effectively.

We also need to confront the far right ideologically and defend our countries’ sovereignty. Latin America cannot accept its peoples being subordinated to the interests of foreign powers. Our response must be greater popular organisation, more democracy and a political programme that genuinely tackles inequality.

What would a possible Bolsonaro government mean for landless workers, Indigenous peoples and the urban poor? Where do you see the most concrete threats to access to land, food sovereignty and the right to organise?

First, we need to recognise that it was Bolsonaro’s government that intensified the dismantling of agrarian reform policy and rendered the National Institute for Colonisation and Agrarian Reform (INCRA) ineffective. When Lula returned to office, we had to rebuild institutions and policies that had been dismantled. Even the Ministry of Agrarian Development was only re-established in 2023, after years without a place in the ministerial structure.

We know that there is still a long way to go in the struggle for land, and we are the first to demand further progress from Lula’s government. But we have also secured concrete gains during this period. In Rio de Janeiro, for example, we secured the establishment and formal recognition of the Cícero Guedes agrarian reform settlement on the land of the former Cambahyba sugar mill, an area where the MST has been fighting for decades.

That is why we cannot act as though it makes no difference who is in government. A new Bolsonaro government would put at risk the entire set of policies we are rebuilding, along with many of the gains we have won through hard struggle. Our task is to strengthen unity between rural and urban communities in defence of agrarian reform, food sovereignty, Indigenous peoples and quilombola communities, decent work and the right to organise.

You face an organising task that extends through the second round and beyond the election. What strategy does the MST envisage for this period?

Our priority in this second round is President Lula’s re-election. We want this not because we think all the problems have been resolved, but because we know there is a concrete difference between moving forward and going backwards. A return to a Bolsonaro government would once again put agrarian reform, workers’ rights, policies to combat hunger, Indigenous peoples, popular movements and democracy itself at risk. We cannot throw away the gains won through so much struggle in recent years.

That is why we will be on the streets, talking to people and explaining why we cannot treat two such different visions for the country as equivalent. After the election, we will remain on the streets, organising and mobilising the working class to demand progress and fight to shape the government’s direction. Our commitment is to the people and to the struggle, before, during and after the elections.