February 6, 2022 4:00 PM - February 7, 2022 6:00 PM
Online Event

This film examines a cooperative of the Brazilian Landless Movement (MST) in the South of Brazil, which struggled for access to land and then transitioned to ecological agriculture, or agroecology. This MST cooperative is demonstrating the possibility of an alternative model of flourishing rural life, which provides thriving livelihoods for farmers, produces high quality and low cost food for the region, and rehabilitates the earth.

Dr. Andreas Hernandez is a lecturer in the UNM Sustainability Studies program. His research, filmmaking and teaching examines just transitions to sustainability and regeneration. His focus is on social movements and ecovillages in Brazil, and their construction of agroecological systems and emergent politics and worldviews. He also examines how social movement activity can be translated and implemented into social policy and may engage with the United Nations System.

Dayana Cristina Machado is an agronomist and currently a doctoral candidate in Rural Development at the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul. Her research focuses on issues of poverty and epistemologies of the South. Dayana was a member of the Via Campesina Brazil Commission on the Environment. With the Brazilian Landless Workers Movement (MST) International Brigade Dayana worked in Bolivia and Haiti organizing with landless workers and small farmers. She also worked in extension in land reform settlements in the states of Minas Gerais and Rio Grande do Sul. Dayana is a member of “Women of the Earth” in the Filhos do Sepe land reform settlement where she lives in Viamao, Brazil.

Jose Luís Rodrigues has been a member of the Landless Workers Movement (MST) since 1995. He has had ongoing leadership roles in the International Relations and Education sectors of the Movement, working in many countries including Paraguay, Venezuela, and Haiti. Additionally, he has represented the MST in meetings and congresses globally. Jose Luis studied in MST schools and holds a degree in History from the Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro and a specialization in Rural Education from the Federal University of Santa Maria. In the past years he has dedicated his work to the production of agroecological food on his land reform settlement, Filhos do Sepe, in Viamao.

Caitlin Schroering, PhD is the Water Equity Postdoctoral Associate with the Pittsburgh Collaboratory for Water Research, Education, and Outreach at the University of Pittsburgh. Her research coalesces around multiple areas of social inquiry, including environmental sociology, resource conflicts, the human right to water, political economy, and transnational social movements, using feminist and decolonial methodologies. Dr. Schroering's primary line of research is based on extensive fieldwork with two movements fighting against water privatization, one in Brazil and one in the United States. She has a background in organizing and activism, with more than 16 years of experience in community, political, environmental, and labor organizing.

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