Here is a list with important peoples movements from all over the world. Not all of them have connections with the PGA and this list isn't complete.

The Movimento Sem Terra (MST) is Brazil's largest and most important social movement, which since 1984 has organised land occupations on a massive scale. The MST has no membership, anyone who is landless and does something about it is part of MST. By 1997 there were approximately 50,000 families illegally squatting 244 tracts of unused land. Once occupied, a judge (eventually) decides whether to expropriate the land and give it to the peasants. So far 150,000 families have secured legal title to the land they have invaded.

In addition to the occupations the group has taken direct action, like a thousand strong camp outside the offices of the Brazilian government's land reform agency, and hijacking food trucks to feed landless peasants!

As you would expect this hasn't made them very popular. Over 1,600 peasants and activists have been killed in land conflicts since 1984 - but only two convictions have been secured against the killers. In May this year the Minister of Agrarian Reform, read the names of 40 alleged MST leaders out on TV. Already two are dead.

However, this has not intimidated them, with up to 50 land invasions a month!

"They are going to have to kill off all of us, and even so, the trees will continue to be Zapatistas, as will the rocks and dogs."

While the Mexican rich toasting 1994 celebrated their new status as a "First World" country, thousands of Zapatista freedom-fighters came out of the jungle and highlands in the previously forgotten state of Chiapas.
Timing their uprising with the first day of NAFTA, the rebels quickly stripped away the official mask of economic well-being and exposed the reality of worsening hunger, malnutrition and repression. With agricultural production shifted to export and animal feeds, the Zapatista army called the treaty a "death sentence" for the indigenous population.

Hundreds of Zapatista communities have organised themselves into 38 "autonomous municipalities" to regain control from big business, landowners and the 70-year dictatorship of the ruling party. In these liberated zones, villages elect their own community representatives, teachers, and indigenous councils - creating political and social structures firmly rooted in their Mayan past. The Mexican government continues to wage an
intensive propaganda and military campaign to undermine the Zapatistas and destroy the autonomous municipalities, failing to comply with the peace accords it signed in 1996. On March 21st this year, 5000 Zapatista women and men will travel throughout Mexico as part of a national consultation on the recognition of the rights of Indian peoples and for an end to the war of extermination. According to recent communiqués, resistance is stronger than ever.

For more info: http://www.ezln.org/

Amnesty International site about Mexico

links:

page about Mama 86 on site of 'Young Women and Democracy': http://www.antenna.nl/ywd/Gatherings/NIS/mama86.html

The International Union of Food, Agricultural, Hotel, Restaurant, Catering, Tobacco and Allied Workers' Associations (IUF) is a world-wide federation of trade unions representing workers employed in:

• agriculture and plantations
• the preparation and manufacture of food and beverages
• all stages of tobacco processing
• hotels, restaurants catering services and the tourism industry

link to the IUF-homepage