Post on 13-May-2023
THE MST CHALLENGE TO THE NEOLIBERALISM
By
Mônica Dias Martins
“Quando eu morrer
Cansado de guerra,
Morro de bem
Com a minha terra.”
(Francisco Buarque de
Hollanda,
Assentado,Terra,
1997).
Monica Dias Martins is a sociologist who has twenty-five years of
professional and political activities among rural workers in Brazil,
combined with academic studies at the Federal University of Ceara. She
is the author of The Challenges of Cooperation in The Rural Settlements
(Sao Paulo: Peres Press, 1994). She came to the University of
California/Riverside as a visiting scholar, sponsored by FULBRIGHT-
Comissao de Aperfeicoamento do Ensino Superior/CAPES. During 1998-1999, she joined
the Latin American Perspectives editorial collective. She is currently
writing her PhD thesis on the Northeast of Brazil. She is indebted to
Timothy Harding, Robert Austin, Pablo Pozzi and James Petras for their
useful comments. An earlier version of this article was presented at the
21th Congress of the Latin American Studies Association (Chicago:
September 24-26, 1998). This article is dedicated to the memory of the
MST activists assassinated on the struggle for a better society.
THE MST CHALLENGE TO THE NEOLIBERALISM
In contemporary Latin America, the Movimento dos
Trabalhadores Rurais Sem Terra ( Landless Worker’s Movement or
MST) is one of the most combative popular forces. The MST is
the Brazilian landless movement that emerged on 1979. During
this year, their first land occupation in Encruzilhada Natalino,
Rio Grande do Sul, was supported by church organizations,
like the grassroot communities and the Comissao Pastoral da Terra
(Land Pastoral Comission or CPT), and by the Partido dos
Trabalhadores (Workers’ Party or PT), among others. The
2
movement spread all over the country as land reform was
included in the political agenda during the
redemocratization days of the mid-1980s (1). It became an
important mass organization in the nineties.
Their rural settlements are characterized by
cooperative relations, collective planning and self-
management. Solidarity, social justice and autonomy are
fundamental ethical values in the landless’ daily life. They
have established a monthly newspaper to communicate their
ideas, an educational system based
on the “work & study” methodology and an intense process of
political-ideological formation through study groups on
radical theory. Within these groups is emerging a newly
developed consciousness of the necessity for socially owned
means of production. Their leaders appear on the media and
negotiate with the government. Their actions have
consolidated an alliance with workers’ trade unions and
urban movements.
The MST’s complex practice is designed to deal with a
central question: How can a peasant organization, a
3
“vanishing” social category (2) according to many
intelectuals and politicians, challenge the so-called
benefits of “free-market” capitalism and its ideology,
neoliberalism? Recent facts show that landless workers have
become a powerful new social force in Brazil. Despite
repressive violence and attempts at co-optation, they
promote mass mobilization to occupy unproductive properties
and public buildings. Land occupations increased from 43 in
1990 to 180 in 1997, totaling 698 in these seven years. The
MST’s beliefs have already become integrated in a popular
movement, which has thousands of activists fighting for land
with a revolutionary passion.
This article analyzes, after a brief presentation of
the controversial concept of land reform, the main features
of MST actions and perspectives on resistance to neoliberal
state as well as their efforts to construct an alternative
project, using a class struggle approach.
LAND REFORM
4
Land reform does not necessarily have a radical
character. For US scholars like Barrington Moore and Samuel
Huntington, the concept of land reform has been used to
measure “vulnerability” to social revolution in developing
countries (Silva, 1971). During the period of the Kennedy
Administration and the Alliance for Progress, many Latin
American governments were put under pressure to carry out
land reform programs (3).
During Joao Goulart’s presidency (1962-1964), popular
mobilization focused on land reform as the key reforma de base
to democratize Brazil and modify the social structure. In
the military dictatorship period (1964-1985), it was
considered a national security issue, strategic to
capitalistic development, mainly to meet the needs of the
industrialization process. It has also been used as a state
policy to restrain class struggle in rural areas and to
transform potentially revolutionary peasants into
conservative small farmers. But land reform has also been
important to revolutionary structural changes, as in Mexico,
Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, Cuba, Nicaragua, Peru, etc.
5
Thus, land reform can be better defined as a
contradictory process of transforming production and power
relations that depends, in its formulation and
implementation, on the correlation of political forces and
the specific course of class struggle (Martins, 1994). The
present concept reinforces the links between economic,
political and ideological conditions, as opposed to current
views in Brazilian society that land reform is either an
economic issue or a social policy, or simply an ideological
problem.
The reproduction of the “class of small farmers”,
through access to rural property, is occurring in a
conjuncture of intensive proletarization (expropriation of
means of production). This challenging contradiction helps
to explain why land reform cannot be labeled as
“conservative” or “revolutionary” per se. It is a tool, and
what makes the difference is: who controls it? The answer is
complex and leads us to analyze land reform as a real
movement where the social classes are forces that direct
this contradictory process.
6
The capitalist or socialist character of land reform
should be discussed in the context of a new proposal
emerging from the hands and minds of hundreds of acampados
and settlers; a proposal antagonistic to the ruling classes’
agrarian project.
The political-ideological polarization between the MST
and the Uniao Democratica Ruralista (Rural Democratic Union or
UDR), a landowners’ organization (4), particularly during
the elaboration of the first National Plan of Land Reform in
1985 and the 1988 Constitutional Assembly, led to the
construction of two different models of land reform. They
express the capital-labor force confrontation. A central
issue is the decision concerning the ownership of the means
of production (individual or collective) and the process of
wealth distribution (private capital accumulation or social
capital accumulation, and the development of productive
forces) (5).
The UDR’s proposal defends individual interests and
private property, and, to the extent that the bourgeoisie
accepts redistribution, it must be through the parceling of
7
the land in hundreds of units after its legal dispossession
occurs. The “model of private appropriation” is similar to
the classical capitalistic agrarian redistribution that
promotes agricultural modernization under agroindustries’
control of the workers’ production process. In the 1970s, it
was implemented in a limited way under the Brazilian
military dictatorship through the establishment of
colonization projects. In fact, the so-called colono or
parceleiro “received” an individual title of property that
allowed him to apply for credit and technology. As he was
isolated from the other families and the decisions
concerning what and how to produce or to whom and when to
sell his products were imposed by the governmental
institutions and the agricultural policies, the major
benefits went to the hegemonic agroindustrial sector. This
is the paradigm of land reform accepted by different
fractions of the dominant classes.
The MST’s “model of social appropriation” is based on
cooperative relations among direct workers and alternative
patterns of land appropriation and use. Through democratic
8
structures of decision making the settlements can be
organized varying in form from family basis to collective
possession, depending on the workers experience, the quality
of the soil, the kind of crops, the market structure and
many other factors. For instance, the property can be
individually owned, but the work and the production done
collectivelly; or on part of the land, work and production
can be individual and on another part, collective; or all
the property can be collective but the families work on part
of the land to produce for their own use. A growing
percentage of settlers’ monetary income are not divided, but
used in a collective way to maintain the existing means of
production, for new investments or for educational, health
and technological assistance to their families. These
different kind of fundos (reserves) provide some evidence
that an experience of socialized capital accumulation is
going on. Land reform as proposed by the working class has
the potential to become a more egalitarian means of wealth
distribution.
9
The rural owners argue against cooperative forms of
possession, production and work. They seem aware that these
experiences can consolidate new practices of social
organization and political participation, which undermine
private property rights, and that these experiences can
escalate from the local to the national sphere. They
revealed their class position in the journal of the Sociedade
Brasileira Rural (Brazilian Rural Society or SBR) (1985: 09):
From the end of World War II to our days, it is evident
that agrarian chaos doesn’t exist in Brazil, but instead
there is perfect coherency between the land’s structure
and its use and the present economic-social system in
this country and the current neoliberal ideology.
The links between the land’s structure, the economic-
social system, and the neoliberal ideology are clear in this
statement (6). A new massive and radical land reform
proposal is not simply land redistribution to incorporate
more farmers into the capitalist system, but involves
shifting the entire agrarian structure: production, power
and cultural relations. It means that the whole economic-
10
social-political system is going to be changed. Even before
the MST became a nationwide influential organization, the
agrarian bourgeois leaders were conscious that the landless’
project of collective occupation and production represented
a challenge to their class interests and to capitalism (7).
ACTIONS OF RESISTANCE
To analyze the importance of the MST’s resistance
against neoliberalism, the concept of class is essential. A
class struggle approach allows us to understand the limits
and the possibilities of its proposal of land reform vis-à-
vis the classical redistribute agrarian reform and Brazilian
state policy and legislation.
The specific course of the battle between the two
antagonistic models of land reform in Brazil, starting in
the 1980’s but that remain in flux, is the key to understand
why the MST has become the most important source of
resistance to the neoliberal project. In brief, the
confrontation could be expressed in the following duality:
privatization vs. occupation.
11
The MST developed an efficient strategy of pressure on
the Instituto Nacional de Colonizacao e Reforma Agraria (National
Institute for Colonization and Land Reform or INCRA) (8), a
state institution: massive and continuous land occupations.
By Brazilian land law (1964), a private property can be
dispossessed when it is not cultivated, there are conflicts
between the owner and workers or environmental damages.
Thus, MST’s direct action supports this constitutional
provision and vice-versa.This strategy has also been
effective in revealing land concentration, the cause of most
of the present social problems. The occupation process,
called a festa (the “party”) by the movement, has a special
meaning to the landless themselves. The decision to settle
on and seize a private property, not an easy one, requires
maturity, cohesion, discipline and hope.
This direct action turns “passive” peasants into
powerful actors fighting for land and political
participation. They now name themselves “free workers”. They
rescue their capacity as creators of material and cultural
commodities, denied either in the “traditional” latifundium
12
or in the “modern” agribusiness complex, where they were
“workers for capital”.
The MST threatens the ruling classes that react with
violence, as well as arguing that the occupations are
illegal. According to them, land seizures are leading to a
situation of breakdown of authority in Brazilian society. To
maintain public order, the state representatives respond to
what is considered an evident “sabotage of democratic
institutions”, by prosecuting the MST leaders.
What is being challenged by these radical actions?
Basically private property rights guaranteed by bourgeois
law, one of the values of the capitalist order, that
continues to be reinforced by the neoliberal discourse.
These actions challenge President Fernando Henrique Cardoso
(9), both in his political performance on the national
scene, as well as in terms of the government’s commitments
to structural adjustments imposed by the World Bank and the
IMF, in the international arena.
“Market-assisted land reform” was proposed by the World
Bank, in 1995, as a solution to unstable politically
13
developing countries like South Africa and Colombia.
However, Brazil was included in this same proposal once the
intensity of massive land occupations and the radicalization
of conflicts were considered a “danger” to the neoliberal
regime, according to the World Bank’s appraisal (10).
The agreement with the federal government was to
introduce “market-assisted land reform” in Ceará, in the
Northeast of Brazil, with the support of a “modern” local
administration, controlled by the president’s party, the
Partido Social Democrata Brasileiro (Brazilian Social Democratic
Party or PSDB). Another reason for their choice of Ceara
seemed to be the outstanding success of these settlements,
due to land occupation and cooperative practices (11)
coordinated by the MST, which accelerated land dispossession
by legal means (INCRA)
The World Bank and the government officials had to
recognize that these were important facts to explain Ceara’s
performance. Although they disregarded those practices,
their project purposes to transform agrarian reform into a
private business, stimulating land market as a proper place
14
where landless and owners negotiate, under “equal”
conditions. Through the Bank of the Northeast of Brazil, the
properties are being sold by their owners to the landless,
on an individual basis, so each one buys their own parcel.
Rural workers’ trade unions and local associations have been
involved in this project mostly to guarantee the debt
payment of their members.
In Brazil, despite the proposal to privatize land
reform, sponsored by the World Bank, the struggle goes on!
Occupation and production are both considered part of the
MST’s economic and political strategy against neoliberalism.
The settlement is conceived of as a whole production unit
and not only a legal property.
Indeed, production and management have been crucial
activities to the success of the MST’s alternative proposal:
agricultural cooperation (MST, 1993, 1996). It is defined in
their words as the way to gather or sum the efforts of each individual
worker to do things in common, buying machines and tools, raising cattle,
sharing the land. To settlers’ organizations, planning implies
democratic decisions concerning production, marketing,
15
education, health care, politics, culture, etc. But this is
not a simple task, especially if hundreds of persons are
involved.
During their frequent assemblies, the family members
participate in many ways: giving proposals, asking
questions, and discussing problems deciding and singing
(12). Normally, the agenda is known in advance and some
methodological tools are used to improve participation. Most
women and teenagers speak independently as companheiras de
luta. In some of the settlements, the married member is
accepted only when the couple joins the organization. There
is an ordinaire assembly in which the annual balance is
presented and the distribution of profit - in machines’
repair, soil improvement, cattle feeding, computers, house
building, teachers’ salary, child care, mobilization and so
on – has to be approved by the majority of the members.
The participatory planning process is influenced by the
previous experiences of the families, the regional and
ecological diversities and the access to the material
conditions of production such as credit, technology and
16
training. The results can be quite different and there is a
heterogeneity of situations in the settlements (Medeiros,
1994).
The concept of collective working and living is the
core of the MST strategy to develop sustainable actions of
resistance in the setllements. It is well-known that once
the land is aproppriated, a period of demobilization may
occur. Peasants who fought for a place to live and work, now
could be seduced by the supposed benefits of “free-market”
capitalism. To the extent that this is true, confrontation
also takes place in the subjective field of battle.
Education to eliminate not only illiteracy but also the
technological gap and political misinformation is a priority
in MST’s land reform program. In a general sense, as Paulo
Freire said (1983: 58):
... a settlement, precisely because it is a
production unit (there is no production outside the
man-world relation), should also be a whole
pedagogic unit.
17
Educational activities involve the setllers choosing
their own teachers, changing subjects and methodologies of
the regular public education learning process, organizing
brigades for the political-ideological formation of their
activists, and coordenating training courses for
entrepenurial and technological improvements. The MST’s two-
year school that prepares second level technicians in
agricultural cooperation was recently acredited by the
Ministery of Education.
In Brazil, there are two cooperative organizations. The
Organizacao das Cooperativas do Brasil (Cooperatives’ Organization
of Brazil or OCB), the oldest one, congregates the rural
owners and is linked with UDR and SBR, which have been
described above. On the other hand, the Confederacao Nacional
das Cooperativas de Reforma Agraria do Brasil (Cooperative’s National
Confederation of Brazil or CONCRAB) was created by a network
of land reform cooperatives, in 1994, and is called the
“economic arm” of MST, supporting its social and political
mobilizations.
18
As efficient as the large private farming sector, the
MST settlers organize agricultural production cooperatives
locally (Cooperativa de Producao Agropecuaria/CPA), at the state
level (Cooperativa Central dos Assentados/CCA) and nationally
CONCRAB. Nevertheless, there is an essential difference
between this system and OCB.
In fact, the MST’s cooperative structure emphasizes
social needs and political results as much as economic
returns to the settlers. Credit, marketing support and
techinical assistance are services offered by the
cooperatives to increase agricultural activities,
profitability and living standards (MST,1998). The CONCRAB
system has come to be an instrument to establish solid
relationships among producers and consumers, to show the
relevance of land reform to the urban population and to
guarantee relative financial autonomy, at least compared
with other popular organizations that do not have control of
their own production. Although the MST believes that
economic power is fundamental to achieving political power,
19
most of their efforts are aimed at creating “a new man and a
new woman for a new society”.
THE ALTERNATIVE PROJECT
To focus mainly on the actions of the popular movements
has been a major tendency among social scientists. Despite
their importance, this is an elitist view of the social
process. It legitimates the authoritarian argument that
workers’ organizations should be tutored, for they are
presented as being unable to articulate ideas and to
transform them into a coherent vision of changing the whole
society. Action and conception are equally important to
analyze concerning the MST’s efforts to construct an
alternative project for Brazil and the confrontation that is
taking place with the neoliberal state.
The conception of the Popular Project, as democratic
and participatory planning, comes from the day-to-day
practices in the occupations and settlements, as well as
from the study of other peoples’ historical experiences in
the schools and the brigades. The contribution of the MST’s
20
amigos - professors, politicians, technicians, students,
priests, etc - is organized in a network to support several
groups existing in the country, that meet regularly to
discuss the numerous proposals coming from the bases (the
primary level of an organization) and to produce documents
that return to the bases. To confront neoliberalism with its
own political weapons, the strategy has been to make a
consulta popular; mobilizing the population and, at the same
time, stimulating them to participate in the formulation of
economic, social and cultural policies for all Brazilians
(13).
To provoke a broader debate on the Popular Project, the
MST lead a march to denounce the Cardoso administration,
which was transferring peoples’ wealth, through privatization, to the powerful
Brazilians and to insist on their new idea: the construction
of a truly democratic society with social justice, income distribution and
solidarity (MST’s pamphlet, August 24, 1998). From August 3rd
to September 7th of 1998, Brazil Independence Day, almost
six thousand workers, organized in more than 80 colunas,
marched throughout the country discussing, in hundreds of
21
small and big cities, issues like employment, health,
education, housing, etc.
Who called for this nationwide movement and with what
purpose seems to be clear, but how was this process started?
The answer is found back in the 1980s when this particular
form of resistance began.
At the First Landless National Congress (1985), it was
decided that “Struggle and Mobilization” were the only path to
pressure the presidency of Jose Sarney to implement the land
reform program. Their action proposal was: “Land occupation is the
solution”.
The Second Congress (1990), during Fernando Collor de
Mello’s administration, faced a different reality with
neoliberal reforms being imposed all over Latin America. For
the MST to survive as a nationwide movement and overcome the
isolation imposed by the state institutions, the
organization needed larger economic and political
expression. The delegations of twenty states
enthusiastically approved the proposal: “Occupy, Resist and
Produce”. This demand, including production as part of the
22
resistance, became extremely important to invalidate the
state strategy based on economically destroying the rural
settlements and treating the landless as invaders (“Folha de
Sao Paulo”, June 13, 1997).
After Cardoso’s election in 1994, the Third Landless
Congress (1995) discussed a proposal to negotiate with the
new president. The central point was “Land reform: a fight of all”.
It reflected the market experiences of the cooperatives, the
land occupations near the cities and the influence of urban
culture among the settlers. The majority of these were young
couples that improved their living standards and changed
their consumer preferences. But mostly, the proposal
concretized the popular alliance and a new political agenda,
including the needs and interests of the majority.
The government tried to impose some conditions on the
MST, one of them being that negotiation would start only if
there were no more land occupations (“O Globo”, December 26,
1997). Aware that this state practice was directed to weaken
their negotiating leverage, the movement’s answer was to
increase and diversify mass mobilizations. The moral defeat
23
suffered by Cardoso’s administration then raised the idea of
the great “March Against The Neoliberalism“, as it became known.
The “National March for Land Reform, Employment and Justice” in
1997, led by the MST, was an effective instrument to
articulate the demands of the working sectors and the
poorest population. The two months’ march arrived in
Brasilia with the support of the left political parties, the
press and the church. The marchers presented a set of
proposals to the authorities in a public audience. They
constituted the outline of the Popular Project, intended to
be an alternative to the neoliberal policies adopted by
international capitalism and implemented by the Brazilian
State.
A variety of measures were used to intimidate the MST:
massacres like the ones that took place at Corumbiara (1995)
and Eldorado dos Carajás (1996), changes in the legal
apparatus, judicial prosecutions, public accusations of
being marijuana growers and so on.
Cardoso at first tried to ignore the movement, applying
the “modern vs. traditional” duality. “Modernity” is one of
24
the myths of the neoliberal discourse, and Cardoso’s
politics were portrayed as “modern” while the MST was said
to represent an archaic past. The next steps were attempts
at co-optation and isolation, followed by the policy of
“punishment and negotiation”, equally unsuccessful because
of the preceding mass mobilizations. More recently, the
government has tried to divide the MST leaders exploiting
their internal debate in the media.
Meanwhile, the landless have been developing urban
actions. They support progressive urban policies, help
organizing housing occupations, go to the small cities to
make blood and food donations as well as to clean streets.
And, due to the better level of production of the
settlements compared with the previous level of individual
agriculture, they are proceeding to improve their productive
structure and to intensify agro-industrial production under
workers cooperative control.
Why is it so difficult to destroy the growing
credibility of MST among Brazilian population? The secret is
in the extraordinary simplicity of their conduct, almost
25
bordering on the naive. Maybe it is in their collective
structure. Another factor is the declared support from
important organizations such as the Churches and
International Amnesty. In addition, the members act like a
political party with disciplinary rules and Marxist theory
study groups. A contributing element is the cooperation from
intellectuals and artists (14). Survey results show that 94%
of Brazilian population is favorable to land reform. As some
say the MST’s strength comes from the mystique of militancy
combined with their symbols: the red flag, the hymn, and the
emblematic figure of “Che Guevara”. Others argue that it is
due to their military formation, the “brigades”, inspired by
revolutionary popular armies.
There are as many explanations of the success of these
unpredictable peasants’ movement as in scholarly analyses.
Economists will emphasize the production aspects, political
scientists the power relations, geographers the
territoriality, anthropologists the cultural heritage,
historians the roots of the movement, pedagogues the
learning process, sociologists the organizational features,
26
and so forth. Each one focuses on their specific subject,
all of them attempting to understand the landless movement.
Obviously a multidisciplinary approach combined with
participation and militancy would help an academic
understanding and practice.
For me, besides the strategy of the “party” (land
occupation), four challenging concepts arise from MST
practice:
1. the collective way of life that ranges from
production to the artistic creation process;
2. the originality of their educational system marked
by the “study & work" methodology;
3. the respect for diversity of opinions combined with
unity of perspectives; and
4. the insistent confrontation with the neoliberal
project.
The increase of land occupations, the denouncing of the
official agrarian reform data as false and the support to
the Luis Inacio da Silva (Lula) presidential campaign (15),
were important points in the MST agenda for 1998.
27
Nevertheless, the emphasis has been on the elaboration of a
national alternative project focusing as well on global
themes like employment, education, housing, food, health,
and cultural activities. Although the Popular Project deals
with a complexity of problems, land reform still remains an
essential issue. In MST political practice, it has been the
key element to unify Brazilian workers’ - urban and rural,
manual and intellectual - in their struggle for a better
society.
At the present moment, the agrarian issue, while central, takes
second place, since it depends on the adoption of a new model, according to
one of the best-known national MST leaders (interview with
João Pedro Stédile in “O Globo”, December 26, 1997). It
seems that the MST’s proposal of “land reform for all” can
only be thoroughly implemented within new power structures
and a new model of development, different from capitalism.
There are several implications on this polemic debate but
one could expect a radicalization of their successful
strategies of land seizure and collective production. The
immediate challenge is, at the same time, to demonstrate to
28
the Brazilian population that their day-to-day problems are
a consequence of neoliberal policies.
CONCLUSION
The MST practice is being closely observed by the
landless themselves and by Brazilian society in general, not
as a laboratory of experiment for “free-market” policy, as
Latin America has been used in the last decade, but as an
embryo of a new society, which will come to life through the
efforts of the popular sectors.
The Popular Project, involving mass, direct, radical,
continuous and sustainable actions of resistance, has to be
constructed in a process oriented from the base that:
respects the social heritage;
conceives of alternatives for the majority;
presents ideas in a simple and convincing way;
transforms ideas into projects for structural change;
makes people understand and fight for them; and
mobilizes forces.
29
An important component of the Popular Project is land
reform, but a very different one from the capitalistic
model. Instead of individual parcels, the workers
themselves, who fought for and won the access to land,
capital and knowledge, are constructing a new organization
of the production process. In some settlements there is
evidence that socialized capital accumulation is underway.
Mass occupation and collective work are challenging private
property rights and legitimizing another kind of
appropriation and wealth distribution. This emerging land
reform sector has a central role in the economic, social,
political and cultural changes.
This experience of workers’ cooperation does not fit
into the neoliberal project and the next steps are to
mobilize forces. Brazil certainly needs land reform in the
context of changing the whole model of development. The MST
appears to have the capacity to transform the collective
dream of millions of Brazilians that want a better life into
radical actions. It remains to be seen whether it will do
so.
30
NOTES
(1) Particularly important, among the litterature that
examines the significance and the viability of Brazilian
land reform in that period, are the works that reflect the
dynamics of the debate among intellectuals and worker
leaders (CONTAG, 1982; Carvalho, 1982; Figueredo, 1984).
During the so-called Nova Republica (“New Republic”), this
debate intensified and a national campaign for land reform,
Campanha Nacional da Reforma Agraria/CNRA, was organized to
coordinate the proposals and the popular mobilizations
(CNRA, 1987).
(2) The rural population of Brazil has decreased to 23% of
the total population, 156.664.223 inhabitants (IBGE, 1993).
There are nearly 12 million landless peasants in the
country.
(3) Chile, under the Frei government, had a prototype
Alliance for Progress land reform project.
(4) The UDR, the Brazilian rural entrepreneurs’
organization, was created in 1986 (Bruni, 1987). Due to the
31
violence of its actions, hiring pistoleiros (killers) and
maintaining a private army to defend the rural property, the
UDR lost political support in the nineties. Its leader,
Ronaldo Caiado, had a weak performance as a candidate in
the 1990 presidential election.
(5) A theoretical approach to the two models of land reform
is developed in Martins (1997: 57-71).
(6) This statement was made by Miguel Reale Junior, a
Brazilian scholar and lawyer who supports the UDR (SBR,
1985).
(7) In the begining of the 1960s, the landowners were
frightened by a strong movement for land reform, especially
in the Northeast of Brazil. This was one of the causes of
the military coup in 1964 and the brutal repression of
popular organizations untill the mid-1980s. At that time,
the rural workers’ national trade-union, Confederacao Nacional
de Trabalhadores na Agricultura (National Confederation of Rural
Workers or CONTAG), and the most important peasant movement,
the Ligas Camponesas (Peasant Leagues), were more concerned
32
with land redistribution than with the production process
(Silva, 1971).
(8) By Brazilian land law (1964), a private property can be
dispossessed when it is not cultivated, there are conflicts
between the owner and workers or environmental damages.
Thus, MST’s direct action supports this constitutional
provision and visa-versa.The INCRA, according to this law,
is the responsible federal institution for private
properties’ dispossession, through payment either in cash or
public titles. Desapropriacao (dispossession) means that the
owner will be compensated for the land and expropriacao
(expropriation) means that the land will be incorporated as
a public property without payment.
(9) Fernando Henrique Cardoso, from the Social Democratic
Party (PSDB), has been the Brazilian president since 1994
and was re-elected in 1998.
(10) The document Market-Assisted Land Reform was discussed in the
Agriculture Conference of the World Bank in 1995. It states
that the lack of land distribution generates an unstable political situation, with
rural unemployment, civil disorders and armed violence in many developing
33
countries, including Brazil. And continues that there has been a long-time
interest in promoting land reform in the Northeast Brazil, one of the world’s
worst income distribution (Government of Ceara State, September
26, 1995).
(11) An analysis of the agricultural cooperation process in
Ceara, based on a case study of five settlements, can be
found in Martins (1994).
(12) The meetings start and end with the MST hymn and
popular songs about the struggle for land, the alliance with
the proletariat, and women’s participation. One of the most
famous says Pra mudar a sociedade do geito que a gente quer, participando
sem medo de ser mulher (“To change society the way we want, we
have to participate without fear of being woman”). Sometimes
they dramatize or draw “pictures of life” before making
decisions. And prefer to use seeds to approve statutes or
elect representatives rather than raising their hands.
(13) “The Landless Manifesto to the People of Brazil” calls
all the population to construct the Popular Project”.
(14) On May 1997, the Portuguese writer Jose Saramango and
the Brazilian singers Milton Nascimento, Francisco Buarque
34
de Holanda and Sebastião Salgado gave the author’s rights to
the MST. The book, posters and CD were sold during cultural
events held simultaneously in many countries.
(15) Lula was the candidate of the Workers Party (PT) and
the principal contender with Fernando Henrique Cardoso in
the presidential elections of October 1998.
REFERENCES
Bruni, Regina
1987 “UDR: para além da violencia”. Tempo e
Presenca/CEDI, nº 221,
(June).
Campanha Nacional da Reforma Agrária/CNRA
1987 Reforma Agrária na Constituinte: Proposta.
(mimeo). Brasília.
Carvalho, Abdias Vilar e D’incao, Maria da Conceição (ed.)
1982 Reforma Agrária: Significado e Viabilidade.
Petrópolis: Vozes e
35
CEDEC.
Confederacão Nacional dos Trabalhadores na
Agricultura/CONTAG
1982 Posição da CONTAG sobre o Programa Nacional de
Política
Fundiária. (mimeo). (September) Brasília.
Figueredo, Vilma (ed.)
1984 A Questão da Reforma Agrária Nos Anos Oitenta. nº
77
(April/June). Rio de Janeiro: Tempo Brasileiro.
Folha de São Paulo
1997 “Governo muda a lei e quer dar “um basta” a
invasoes”. (June 13).
Freire, Paulo
1983 Extensão ou Comunicacão. 7ª ed. Rio de Janeiro:
Paz e Terra.
Governo do Estado do Ceara
1995 “A reforma agraria assistida pelo mercado”
(September 26).
Instituto Brasileiro de Geografia e Estatística/IBGE
36
1993 Censo Demográfico Brasileiro. Brasília.
Martins, Mônica Dias
1994 Os Desafios da Cooperação nos Assentamentos da
Reforma
Agrária. São Paulo: Peres.
1997 “A radicalidade da reforma agrária”. Cadernos do
CEAS. nº 171,
(September/October): 57-71. Salvador.
Medeiros, Leonilde
1994 Assentamentos Rurais: uma Visão Multidisciplinar.
São Paulo:
UNESP.
Movimento dos Trabalhadores Rurais sem Terra/MST
1993 “A cooperacão agrícola nos assentamentos”. Caderno
de
Formacão nº 20. São Paulo.
1996 “Cooperativas de producão: questoes práticas”.
Caderno de
37
Formacão nº 21, 2ª ed. São Paulo.
1998 CONCRAB: quatro anos organizando a cooperacão.
São Paulo.
O Globo
1997 “Governo se arma para lutar com MST”. (December
26).
Silva, José Gomes
1971 A Reforma Agrária no Brasil: Frustração Camponesa
ou
Instrumento de Desenvolvimento. Rio de Janeiro:
Zahar.
Sociedade Rural Brasileira/SRB
1985 A rural. Ano LXV, nº 594, (December): 7-12.
38