João Pedro Stédile was born in 1953 into a family of small farmers in the Lagoa Vermelha district of Rio Grande do Sul in southern Brazil. He studied economics at the Pontifical University of Rio Grande do Sul and then at the Autonomous National University of Mexico (UNAM). Since that time he has devoted himself to the struggle for agrarian reform in Brazil, both as a writer and as a national leader of the Landless Workers Movement (MST), of which he was a co-founder. His numerous publications include the three volumes of A Questão Agraria no Brasil (2005) and, with Francisco de Oliveira and José de Genoíno, Classes Sociais em Mudança e a Luta pelo Socialismo (2000).

João Pedro Stédile lives in São Paulo, where he gave this interview to Francisco de Oliveira in 2002.