Relevance of the agrarian question: the struggle of the “landless” in Brazil

Osvaldo Coggiola

In the different Latin American countries, the peasant movement was

rejuvenated against the backdrop of the "lost decade"; particularly, the struggle

of Brazil’s "landless" became an international icon. Contrary to “post-modern”

and “global” theoreticians, the renewed relevance of Latin America’s agrarian

question bore witness to the historical failure of capitalism to solve the

elementary problems of the constitution of the nation in the backward countries,

and moreover, to integrate them harmoniously in a supposedly "global

capitalism". The agrarian question in Brazil not only reiterated the unsolved

problems of the colonial and imperial past, but it was also reformulated under

the conditions of the imperialistic era of capital and its global crisis.24

Since Brazil’s entry in the global market, large property became predominant

through the latifundio (large landed estate) as land grants were unlimited. Only

by the end of the 17th century, in 1695, a royal letter recommended not to grant

lands measuring more than four leagues in length and one league in width, to

each inhabitant. Two years later, this concession was restricted to three

leagues in length and one in width and in the 18th century new procedures came

into being. In 1729, a provision limited the sesmarías (land grants) to three

leagues in length by one in width, or three in width by one in length, or one

league square. Thereafter, this became the standard limit, but by this time the

territories of Brazil were already completely occupied. Sesmarías, even for

scantly populated lands, were conceded to well-known landlords

The latifundio or a vast expansion of acquired land, awaiting valuation and

serving the real estate speculation instead of agricultural production, was also a

characteristic of Spanish America. The dominant ethnic groups could now

possess large properties due to the depopulation. The shortage of manual

labour, along with abundance of land led to the use of the latter as a form of

guaranteeing the first. The minifundio (a very small landholding) within the large

estate was institutionalised, to assure cheap and incessant manual labour and

during the process, theminifundisation of the periphery of the social structure

came into effect.

The basic consequence of the depopulation was that labour, and not land,

became extremely scarce as a factor of production. The major institutions of the

colony were those that assured labour and not those that guaranteed land. In

such a situation, free labour would necessarily have to be well paid, and given

the historical condition in which manual labour was hardly acceptable to the

inhabitants of the peninsula with fundamental inequality within the power

system, as well as the differences between armament and training, slavery was

the logical solution. The colonial institutions conformed to the system of slavery,

which was not born out of the intrinsic characteristics of economic activities

such as mining and sugar plantation but, of the fact that labour was scarce as a

factor for production. Cultivated land was immensely reduced, giving rise to the

unproductive latifundio and in regions away from the centres of consumption

and supply routes, lands were simply abandoned since their value as capital or

investment was nil.

When Brazil became independent, along with the rest of Latin America, the

foundations of its retrogression were already set into motion: “The irrelevance of

Latin America in mid-19th century was incontestable. Though Brazil was

fundamentally an exporter of agricultural products, unlike industrialised Europe,

its agricultural production was just a fraction of Europe’s. In 1850, the total

European production was at least 30 times of Latin America". This despite the

fact that "although Latin America’s participation in global trade visibly declined -

from 11% in 18th century to 5.1% at the end of 19th century, the Latin American

exports increased a great deal in absolute terms”.25 In the case of Brazil, the

exports increased tenfold during the 19th century. As a matter of fact,

independence consolidated the structure of the latifundio and the beginnings of

retrogression. "Since the 17th century, Portugal has its main colony: Brazil and

Portuguese Africa became a major colony of Brazil than of its motherland, for

which it was just a sub-colony. As a matter of fact, Guinea, Angola and, up to a

certain period, Eastern Africa, were Brazil’s suppliers of slaves. They could not

live without this or this without them”.26

If Democracy - citizenship for all inhabitants - did not have roots in a country

of latifundios, it was less so in a country of latifundios and slaves. Slavery, the

distribution of national revenue and even the characteristics of the political

system were questioned in the internal disputes of Brazil’s rich classes, but not

the foundation of the national economy - the latifundio, from which all

(landowners and gentry, retailers and state bureaucracy) reaped benefit.

The latifundio was not affected but, on the contrary, consolidated by

independence. According to Emilia Viotti de Costa, “Since all the expansion of

the latifundio was not utilised for commercial ends, the owner could maintain a

certain number ofarrendatarios (tenant farmers) linked to the economics of

survival, which created a network of personal relations among tenant farmers,

landowners and the Crown. This led to an increase of the landowner’s personal

prestige, since he had control over the free men who lived in his land, and also

over his slaves ".27

The economy of primary export, animated by independence (bankruptcy of the

colonial monopoly) consolidated the latifundio. Instead of favouring the access

to land and small property (like the Homestead Act in the US), the Land Law of

1850 favoured large property. The North American law patronised land

occupation, the Brazilian one made it difficult. The traditional means of access

to the land, co-ownership, leasing, occupation, were banned. The unutilised

lands were returned to the State, which in turn, sold them at a higher price.

In the US, under pressure from the North’s industrial bourgeoisie, land

occupation (mainly in the West) went in favour of small property (and therefore,

the extension of the internal market) whereas in Brazil, it went in favour of large

estates (therefore, the reduction of the internal market) due to the absence of

an industrial bourgeoisie or a social class in the colonial period strong enough

to fight against the latifundio (like the farmers of the US). The absence of that

class ensured the latifundio became a source of capitalist accumulation and not

an extension in itself of the agrarian property (otherwise, the structure based

on latifundios of vast North American regions would have prevented industrial

capitalism from developing in the US).

According to Bukharin (Imperialism and World Economy), Brazil’s growth in the

20th century faced all kinds of difficulties related to "the increasing disparity

between the rapidly developing industry and sluggish agriculture“. Agriculture

was the first productive sector entering the typically chronic crisis of the era of

the monopolies, as Kautsky had already stated at the start of the century, in his

classic The Agrarian Question: "For 20 years, the liberal economists have been

prophesising the end of the agrarian crisis. And yet, with each day the evil

worsens and intensifies. It is necessary to see in it - not a fleeting, but a

constant phenomenon, a true political-economic revolution". From that moment,

the possibilities of capital accumulation from agrarian rent were increasingly

limited due to the progressive fall of the international agricultural prices (the

"deterioration of the Terms of Trade"), and by the scantiness of the internal

market of the countries exporting agrarian products. As Kautsky had already

noted, "Industrial Capitalism looks for its most important market, not in the

working-class proletariat, but in the non-proletarian mass, especially the

peasants".

The power of the agricultural landowners rests in the absolute rent received

from land. The proportional distribution of the profit earned from agriculture is

prevented by the ownership of land, which, being a monopoly, claims a part of

this profit for itself and appropriates the difference between value and

production cost. Thus, land property increases the price of agricultural products

(and not their value) to such an amount that it becomes equal to the absolute

rent. This creates a type of tax forcing the entire society to bear the brunt.

The backwardness of agriculture, as compared to industry, is one of the

fundamental manifestations of the Law of uneven development of Capitalism,

and it is a consequence, not of characteristics of the land, but of social relations.

In a capitalist regime, absolute rent can be eliminated by means of land

nationalisation. The nationalisation - abolishing private property - would not

eliminate the differential rent but would transfer it to the State instead. By

keeping the absolute rent in check, it would reduce the price of agricultural

products to the level of the absolute rent. A greater agricultural development

would be possible by abolishing the monopoly of the private property in

land: therefore, even bourgeois economists defended it.

However, the bourgeoisie did not dare to nationalise land, because the attack

against the private property in land would have been dangerous for the other

bourgeois forms of property. In addition, as a class, the industrial capitalists

clung on to the private property of land. Therefore, a serious bourgeois

movement in favour of land nationalisation was not possible for the simple

reason that no social class acts against itself. Ricardo did not take absolute rent

into consideration; and even refused to accept it, admitting only the differential

rent. Due to of the backwardness of agriculture with respect to industry, the

organic composition of the agricultural capital is lower than that of the industrial

capital, and the formation of absolute rent is linked to this fact. The share of

variable capital (wages) is proportionately higher in agriculture than in industry.

As a result, the capital gain in agriculture is above average, and the value of

agricultural products, generally speaking, is higher than the production cost.

Absolute rent is common to all lands, independent of their location or quality

and if the organic composition of capital were set aside, the possession of land

would only generate income within the speculation. Thus, all rents related to

land-tenure derive from monopoly, and "The only hindrance to the agricultural

surplus profit is the market. The land under the form of limited monopoly can

explain absolute rent, whereas land under the form of differentiated monopoly

explains differential rent. The social mechanism creating the rent is unified and

the agricultural surplus profit, unique. Both the forms of rent have the same

cause, land monopoly ".28 For Lenin, "The theory of rent assumes that all

agricultural population has been completely divided in large estate owners,

capitalists and salaried workers, which is the ideal of capitalism, but not the

reality".29

The capitalist development, though slow, implies a transfer of power from the

large estate owner to the bourgeoisie, in so far as “a large portion of the

agricultural production is absorbed by the leasing and different types of

agreements for sharing the harvest. However, the exploitation of the peasants is

not the prerogative of the landowners; various social groups share the agrarian

production through the rent, the interests on loans, the taxes, etc. The terms of

unfavourable trade for the agricultural producer transform the market into

another kind of exploitation of the peasantry by the urban society in general.

The capital generated in agriculture is frequently absorbed in the urban tertiary

sector, with a new urban bourgeoisie taking charge of many traditional functions

of the landowners. Many intermediaries work in the political economy of the

peasant societies representing the landowners (inspectors, etc.) or the large

bureaucratic organisations (buyers, tax collectors). Sometimes they are

“freelance entrepreneurs”. Nevertheless, this is not simply about mediators:

honest agents in the different social groups and powers. These people are

socially placed between the powerful class and the oppressed lot, and so their

inclination to exploit the farmers seems obvious ".30

The most transparent form of agriculture’s surrender to capital is in the agro-

industry. It is a situation of monopoly, where a group of independent agricultural

producers can be seen as suppliers of insumos (components), as opposed to

industrial monopolies. The reproductive process of the industrial capital is

transformed, not due to the investment of the industrial capital in the agricultural

production, but due to the subordination of agriculture. The capitalist production

in agriculture has specific features: the importance of the natural factor, the

land, the additional time taken by the capital to rotate, and the difficulty in

making the flow of expenses compatible with the flow of income. These

determine a different type of funding with relation to industry.

Until 1950 the requirement of capital in agriculture was negligible in Brazil due

to partial demonetisations of production: slow relations of production, low

technical level, and manufacture of different insumos within the production unit.

For certain types of cultivations (such as sugar and coffee) various state

institutions provided funding, but there was no specific credit line for agriculture

in general. With the capitalist development, the need for capital accompanied

the increasing use of tools and insumos in the production.

Then appeared the subsidised funding of the Bank of Brazil as well as the

official and private banks, along with the automation and the elimination of old

and loss-making coffee plantations of Sao Paulo, Rio de Janeiro and

Minas Gerais. The programme of eradication of coffee completed in the 60s,

discarded the ancient coffee plantations of low productivity and quality, devoid

of market. The colonos (peasant settlers) were expelled from

the fazendas (large estates, plantations or cattle ranches, particularly in Brazil),

ending the system of colonato (a system of tenant farming where hired

peasants cultivate the property of a private landowner and pay rent for growing

a small amount of crop for their own need) that was in vogue for seventy years

since the abolition of slavery (1888). The same happened in the North East,

where technological modernisation expelled the inhabitants for “recovering” the

land in which they produced their own food: and so the “clandestinos”

(unregistered workers), or bóias-frias (daily field-workers, forced to eat cold

meals which they brought with them to the field) surfaced. Also, the expulsion

ofposseiros (land occupants, without holding title to the land)

and seringueiros (mostly indigenous inhabitants, or rubber tappers of the

Amazonian rainforest, who independently produce rubber) from the Amazon

region began in the 60s. In 1965, the National Rural Credit System was

established and with subsidised credits, it could now be ensured that a part of

the bank deposits went towards agriculture, guaranteeing the use of

modern insumos and the linkage of rural landowners to industry and agro-

industry.

During the 1960s, a department for producing agricultural insumos surfaced in

Brazilian economy, followed by the industrialisation of agriculture, and it

operated like an industrial sector. Simultaneously, the agricultural work force

was proportionately reduced in the entire Latin America; in 1950, the

economically active agricultural population represented 54.7% of the total, 40%

in 1970 and 34.9%in 1980. At the end of the 1980s, 126 to 130 million people

lived on agriculture; of which 30-40 million were in Brazil, 25-30 million in

Mexico and 10 million in Colombia. The work force comprised 40 million people,

including the small landowners and the landless workers.

The concentration of production gave rise to the agricultural monopolies. The

land rent merged with the profit made from monopoly. The exploitation of the

peasantry occurred through the sale of products at high price by creating a

monopoly and the purchases at artificially reduced prices; a class of capitalist

intermediaries emerged making profits at the expense of both the rural and

urban workers and the ruin of the farmers during the crisis, when they were

forced to sell land at extremely low prices. Industrial monopolies and banks

benefited from the high prices of industrial products, and from rigid credit rules,

while the State contributed by imposing high taxes. The farmers were indebted,

lived precariously, lost land and assets and ended up strengthening the ranks of

the proletariat (agricultural or industrial).

The surplus was retained by the oligopolies, by elevating the prices of

the insumos (production) and ascribing higher costs to the commercialisation

(circulation). The small producers couldn’t form an accumulation fund. Their

products had to be cheap to guarantee the purchasing power of the workers in

industries and services, which did not have the benefit of wage increases.

The National Development Plan of 1970 resulted in several mega projects of

investment, including irrigation projects for the North East in order to reduce the

regional disparities and the "social inequalities". This soon resulted in

monopolist redistribution. The policy of subsidised rural credit illustrated the

“Triple alliance” among industries, banks and latifundios. Only the big

landowners had access to credit and programmes with maximum benefit,

because they only could buy the required insumos: tractors, fertilisers and

pesticides on a large scale, as well as combine harvesters etc. The banks

gained from granting the loan, and the industrial manufacturers gained from the

sale of the accessories mentioned.

In the entire Latin America, the capitalist development reinforced the latifundio:

"The average area of the establishments varies between 8 hectares in

Dominican Republic and 379 in Bolivia... In Argentina, Chile and Brazil, the

average area covers more than 100 hectares (368, 227 and 112)".31 The

concept of average area distorts reality by offsetting the bulk of

the latifundios with the numerous minifundios, both being worth one unit in the

calculation of the average. In Brazil, in 1978, large-scale cultivations in more

than 1,000 hectares of land, representing 1.8% of the total, occupied 57% of the

total area, with 3,200 large properties comprising 102 million of hectares, more

than thrice the area of 2 million minifundios. In 1989,

6,700 latifundios possessed the same number of hectares (more than 127

million) as 4,166,000 small producers. As for the participation in the agricultural

income, 1% of population of rich farmers held 10% in 1970 and 30% in 1980,

while the 50% population of poor farmers held 22% in 1970 and only 15%, ten

years later.32

While the per capita production of basic foods diminished in relation to 1964,

the export of agro-industrial products increased. So did the poverty of the entire

population, especially in the rural areas (73% people were below poverty line in

1990). Together the latifundios and the minifundiosamassed 3,200,000 assets,

more than 20% of the agricultural work force, with 1,400,000 productive

units.33 Capitalist development did not eliminate agrarian backwardness and

disproportionate growth; on the contrary it increased them. Globally, agriculture

uses 69% of the available water, industry uses 23% and residences uses 8%. In

the backward countries, agriculture uses 80% of the water, with large-scale use

of pesticides and fertilisers that contaminate the rivers. Moreover, the South

East represents 59.2% of Brazil’s GDP, with Sao Paulo producing 35.4% (44%

of the industrial production) in a relatively small area of the Brazilian territory.

Another index of the parasitism of the latifundioowners: according to the

National Institute of Settlement and Agrarian Reform (INCRA),

the minifundios represented 72% of the properties in 1972, and yet they

comprised only 12% of the total area and, even so, they comprised almost 50%

of the area cultivating basic food crops (rice, beans, broad beans, cassava and

maize) and more than 30% of the area planted with products of industrial

transformation.

As for the immense North Eastern terrain, the state policy specialised in fruits

and vegetables for export. This semi-arid region is the world’s best tropical

semi-arid area, with ideal conditions of water, light (more than 3000 hours of

sunlight in a year) and warmth (high and regular temperatures between 25 and

30 degrees, with low humidity) for cultivations. The availability of moisture is

assured as rivers originating in more humid places flow towards the North East.

The result of decades of mega projects is that the North East is today the

country’s second most populated region, with a higher regional percentage of

rural population, a lower per capita product and higher “rent concentration

“(social polarisation). The gross per capita product of the North East is 47.2% of

the Brazilian average.

The golden era of the latifundio was during the military dictatorship; in 1978, the

cultivation of more than 1,000 hectares (1.8% of the officially registered landed

properties) occupied 57% of the total area. Between 1967 and 1978, the extent

of the total registered area was 47,700,000 hectares, of which 45 million (more

than 95% of the agricultural front in the decade) corresponded to large-scale

cultivations (more than 10,000 hectares)! The "super latifundio ", 3,200 gigantic

properties, comprised 102 million hectares, equalling the surface of Peru,

Bolivia or Colombia (and larger than almost every Western European country).

The State was the agent of that growth. The rural credit amounted to the total

value of the agrarian production and 80% of the rural landowners (4 million)

were systematically excluded from the system. Inequality prevailed over the

remaining one million people: the "smaller“ farmers (50%) received 7.4% of

credit in1969 and 5.2% in1979, whereas the " bigger " (hardly 1%) received

25.7% in 1969 and 38.5% in 1979 - during that period the share of the "richer"

5% increased from 27.7% to 42.2% in the rural income...an orgy of

the latifundio owners. The skewed development reached its peak: "Just about 3,

62,000 tractors were manufactured in the last decade, of which 78,800 in the

state of Sao Paulo; 70,700 in the states of Río Grande do Sul. 40 thousand

tractors were distributed among Paraná, Minas, Santa Catarina and Goiás

between 1970 and 1980, the rest being distributed among other states. The

same happened with the use of chemical fertilisers and pesticides concentrated

in the South - on an average 73.6 kg per hectare for Brazil, but 180 kg for the

state of Sao Paulo ".34

Besides providing cheap manual labour to the industrial monopolies

the latifundios created minifundios by expropriating the small producers

(because the industrial development could never catch up with the agrarian

concentration): "Monopolising important portions of the land, which are always

the most fertile and accessible, the expelled rural population must now divide

the worst, least fertile, roughest and farthest portions. The minifundio is also a

product of the collapse of the great dominions that exhausted the land through

plundering techniques, and then disintegrated. The micro-operation is the

functional complement of the latifundio, it gives to the owner what is not

produced in the latifundio, but the amount is insufficient for survival, which binds

the owner to his share and at the same time forces him to be used in the great

dominion.Minifundio helps to determine the manual labour required by the big

landowner for commercial agriculture". 35

The capitalist development also implied the establishment of pre-capitalist

relations of family production, in other words, it is an intensification of the

backwardness - in 1950, the unpaid members of the family amounted to 54.8%

of the population occupied in the agricultural production (almost 11 million

people); in 1975, they were already 80.5% (more than the total of 20 million).

During the 1980s, wages and prices received by the farmers stayed almost

constant, while land price doubled.36

The agricultural front expanded constantly and the minifundio and the family

production grew amidst this Brazilian peculiarity. The settlements based on

family work (in Brazil, up to 20 hectares) increased from 3.2 million in 1970 to

4.3 million in 1980. During the same period, the number of posseiros (land

occupants, without legal title of property) increased from 8, 11,000 to almost

9,00,000; these were the ousted peasants who shifted towards uninhabited

areas (the bushes, for example), in other words, people who did not immigrate

to the city nor were absorbed as wage-earners in the fazendas.

The great capitalist property is basically speculative and unproductive, which

contributes to the high cost of living, the narrowness of the internal market and

the consequent freezing of the productive forces. The value of the capitalist

production is hardly 24.4% of the agricultural product; the value of the small

production - cultivated on 32.5 million hectares (66.2% of the total cultivated

area) was almost 51% of the total agricultural product at the end of the 1980s.

During the phase of the ‘miracle’, the agricultural growth was lagging behind the

industrial growth (less then 5% per annum) and was concentrated in the

exports, relatively reducing the internal supply of foods. In 1966/67, the exports

did not even amount to 2% of the agricultural production, while in 1973 the

figure was almost 19%. During the 1970s, the urban population grew at a rate of

4.5% per annum, much higher than the rate of food supply.

So it is evident that, while the value and the volume of the agrarian production

rose, the real wage fell along with the standard of living. In 1968 the

consumption of rice per inhabitant was 49.5 kg per annum, in 1978 it was 47. In

the same period, the consumption of beans per inhabitant fell from almost 27 kg

per annum to 21 and to 18.3 in 1979. In 1971, the average monthly wage could

buy 46 kg of beef or 69.3 kg of poultry meat or almost 43 kg of pork; in 1979,

28.7kg, 50.2 kg and 28.6kg, respectively.37

The social predominance of the family production is not an index of its

superiority over the capitalist production: "Those establishments of low

productivity harbour the overwhelming majority of the rural population under

extremely insecure conditions of life. The exit of the salaried class from the rural

economy is quantitatively very small and very precarious in the matter of

conditions of life and work".38 The reproduction of the entire work force (urban

and rural) is thus jeopardised - in terms of availability for the human

consumption, there was a fall of 20% per person per day; the worst was for

beans and cassava. In 1965, the caloric availability per inhabitant per day was

3,148; in 1967 3,033; in 1979, 2,986.39

The valuation of the capital of the agrarian bourgeoisie, increasingly related to

capital gain in the global market, systematically narrowed the internal market:

between 1977 and 1983, the food production per inhabitant fell more than 25%,

whereas the exportable products grew 7% and sugarcane almost 57%. Based

on the National Alcohol Programme (for replacing petrol) the growth of

sugarcane was a monumental operation by which factory-owners and banks

plundered the State - in 1980, funding was granted with rates of 25% per

annum, against an inflation of 110%. The barrel equivalent of alcohol was

produced at a cost of 72.5 dollars, while petrol of better quality was sold at 40

dollars per barrel in Rotterdam. 40

Export was increased to earn foreign currency for the repayment of the external debt. Agrarian backwardness, industrial obsolescence, public deficit, external and internal debt, and inflation, all these went together, and at the end of it all, there is always the international finance capital. This explains all the distortions, which made, and still make Petrobrás a cash cow not only for the alcohol barons, but also for the foreign companies in the petrochemical sector. The state investment does not escape the laws of the capitalist market; and in a period of contraction, converts the assets immobilised by the State into a dead weight for evaluating capital as a

whole (from there the wave of privatisations), this is because the state

investment, canalising the investment flows, never yielded to any rationality of

the capitalist investment whatsoever. On the contrary, it always surrendered to

the anarchy of the cycle of capital itself.

Historically, the bourgeoisie intended to resolve the "agrarian question" by

breaking the political domination of the oligarchies, to valorise the entire

national territory and to systematically hold back the dispersed farmers. As

Delfim Netto said, the Statute of the Land and the Rural Worker, promulgated

by the 1964 coup, proposed "a plan for national integration representing the

conquest of a new country, within the Brazilian nation. We are going all out in

order to conquer it ".41 The historical balance of the bourgeoisie failed

completely to eliminate thelatifundio, to promote a democratic access to land

and to generalise the capitalist relations: ‘’Till date, the remuneration of the work

force in the land assumes non-capitalist or pre-capitalist forms of indirect

remuneration, partial or in kind; the colonato of the coffee cultivation of Sao

Paulo, different types of sharecropping or renting, as well as other similar

modalities of subordination ". 42

The Revolution of 1930 planned “to reduce all forms of latifundio to the lowest

possible level, especially in the strips of coastal land and the communication

routes", by creating legislation for tax and disappropriation, which remained just

on paper. The “reformist, radical or moderate initiatives” came later, and these

“gradually shrank to a rhetorical level with numerous proposals lost in the

channels of power circulation and forgotten in the programmes, government

statements, public speeches and parliamentary commissions".43 The fusion of

the industrial bourgeoisie with the agrarian oligarchy occurred under the

auspices of the international finance capital, and this led to the creation of one

of the biggest latifundio owners (with the agrarian properties of the

multinationals, or the Jari Project).

The “Statute” of “Redemption” increased piecework (work remunerated

according to the number of units produced) of the bóia-fria, while the economic

front was expanding “towards areas where manual labour was scarce and

various partial but unquestionable forms of slavery were created ", along with

“highest rates of land rent, exorbitant by any developed capitalist country’s

standard".44 Far from being a specific variant of capitalism (“wild”), the Brazilian

case showcases an extreme variant of the globally prevalent parasitic features

of the finance capital. Tax evasion is typical of the latifundio - during the

dictatorship it was 72% of the Rural Territorial Tax (Impuesto Territorial

Rural, ITR) - figure that was surpassed in the “democracy” - being hardly

0.044% of the value of the rural properties. Almost 67% of the landowners

possessing more than 10,000 hectares ignored the ITR.45

The modern “capitalists” were defeated over defining the role of land in the

constitution of 1988. 46 In fact, the constitution soon rang the death-knell for the

agrarian reform with the connivance of the “modernisers". The military regime

had promoted an auction of public land among owners of latifundios,

industrialists of the Centre-South and multinationals. Under the pretext of

stimulating investment, it reduced taxes on yields by around 50% and turned a

blind eye to the evasion of the ITR. The effects of those measures were drastic

and fast. This can be compared to the way in which new lands were distributed

over the period of several years, in the pioneering zones within the entire

country. Between 1950 and 1960, agricultural settlements, comprising 100

hectares at most, occupied 84.6% of such land, and settlements with more than

100 hectares accounted for only 15.4%. Between 1960 and 1970, when the

Land Statute and the policy of fiscal incentives for the development of

the Amazonia (the vast Amazon river basin) were already effective, land

settlements with less than 100 hectares amounted to 35% against a 65% of

settlements with more than 100 hectares. Finally, only 0.2% of new territories

had settlements with more than 100 hectares, whereas 99.8% was meant for

settlements with more than 100 hectares of land (75% of the latter was

occupied by settlements of more than 1,000 hectares).

As a result, just about 50,000 people (2.6% of the landowners) remained

owners of 286 million cultivable hectares (47% of the total). Consequently, out

of 600 million cultivable hectares hardly 40 million were cultivated; a legal chaos

regarding the ownership of land reigned, with fraudulent titles equivalent to 3 or

4 times of the existing area; the State began to disintegrate, because

armed jagunços (Brazilianbacklanders, who turned into mercenary henchmen,

usually working for the landowners) resorted to repression in the zones in

conflict, while their financers - the owners of latifundios- formed a national group

called the Rural Democratic Union (Unión Democrática Ruralista - UDR). The

struggle of the posseiros and the landless became national and explosive.

Under those conditions, the transition government decreed the National Plan for

Agrarian Reform (Plan Nacional de Reforma Agraria - PNRA) to avoid the

breakdown of the situation and to solve it through decree-law. The bourgeois

left ("modern") got mixed up in the game, taking control of the Ministry of the

Agrarian Reform (Ministerio de la Reforma Agraria, MIRAD) and the INCRA,

defending the "Capitalist coup", against “Patrimonialism ". Nélson Ribeiro

calmed down the owners of latifundios -"Brazil has a capitalist society, invasion

of property is a crime" - alerting them on "political grounds that they return to

agrarian reform without delay". The PNRA anticipated the creation of 1.4 million

jobs up to 1989: a supporter of the plan admitted that "during the 70s, 15 million

workers were expelled from the fields. In the next 15 years, when the reform

was going to last, another one million would be expelled by the capitalist

dynamics of agriculture ".47 Nevertheless, President Sarney decreed the

disappropriation of just 23% of the area promised. One of the officials in charge

of the PNRA (head of the INCRA) concluded that it was a total failure. Less than

50,000 families received their share under precarious conditions. With four

ministers in two years (all "leftist") the government of the "democracy" buried

the reforms by the decree-law of 23rd October 1987. The following year, the

Constituent Assembly simply approved the proceedings.

Since the creation of the Republic (1889), Brazil’s class struggle had agrarian

conflicts at its centre - "The Republic was not immune to the struggle for land,

with different features, due to the intrinsic changes in the society, strengthening

the local power of the colonels, intensifying the desire to take control of new

territories, subduing the people and increasing the social tensions. There were

fervent struggles in the 1stRepublic, with the colonels intensifying and improving

the armament of their jagunços for controlling the small producers, inhabitants

of their properties, and for questioning the territorial and political space of their

competitors".48

The agrarian struggles formed the historical backdrop of the general struggles

of the exploited. From the anti-slave quilombos (hinterland settlements of

fugitive slaves in colonial Brazil, who survived by farming and raiding) to the

anti-government revolts in the passage towards the 20th century (in Quebra-

Quilos, Canudos, Contestado) the presence of the State in social relations was

rejected, a presence destined to regulate, against the oppressed sectors, the

increasing mercantilisation of the economic relations, the valuation of land and

the unification of the internal market. It was the rebellion of classes connected

with pre-capitalist forms of production that did not manage to surpass the local

level, nor present their interests as national49

In the first half of the 20th century, the struggle for the possession of land

became the axis, subordinated to the conflict between rural landlords and wage

earners vis-à-vis the expropriation caused by the development of the latifundio.

There were violent conflicts, but those were localised and did not spread to the

national level - “The small landowners tried to organise cooperatives and

unions, fighting for agricultural prices and bank interests, trying to preserve the

family property. The posseiros had fought for the regularisation of their legal

position, for respect shown to their title to land, for not being removed to other

areas. The arrendatarios (tenant farmers) and aparceros (sharecroppers) fought

for the recognition of their rights by starting judicial processes and delaying

evacuations, and insisted on their right to permanent residence - basically, they

fought for their autonomy and freedom ".50

During the 1940s, the peasantry began to form trade unions; in 1946 a union in

Campos (Rio de Janeiro) was created, followed by others in Bahia,

Pernambuco and Sao Paulo. “Capital investments were concentrated in the

export agriculture (sugarcane, coffee, cacao) requiring a large number of

workers, mainly during the period of sugarcane harvesting. The accumulation of

this capital implied the substitution of the old relations of moradía (allowance

paid by the king to his servants) with wage-labour, in a process accentuated

during the 1950s, when the zones for sugarcane cultivation grew and the

resident manual labourers were expelled in large numbers from the large

properties. This proletarianisation initiated by the expropriation of

the foreiros (persons having equitable ownership over lands which they could

lease out) and inhabitants, contributed to the formation of class-based entities,

like the Ligas Campesinas (Peasant Leagues) in mid 1950s, and the rural trade

unions at the start of the following decade ".51

There were more than 2, 00,000 posseiros in 1940; 3, 56,000 in 1960; growing

to 9, 00,000 in 1980. In 1959, a fact sheet of the ULTAB (a trade union of rural

workers organised by the PCB) mentions 122 independent organisations having

35,000 rural workers, and 50 rural workers’ trade unions having 30,000

members.52 Nevertheless, it was "with the Ligas Campesinas, in the 1950s and

1960s, that the struggle attained national dimension".53 Breaking with the

ULTAB, they formulated proposals of mobilisation and armed self-defence, but

were unable to break (as well as their own labour movement) with the

nationalistic policy of the time, and were beaten by the 1964 coup. “The

strength of Ligas revealed a disappointing reality. Some popular leaders tried

only a small resistance of rural workers and foreiros of the North East, which

was quickly subdued by repression. Ligas, with the rural unionisation, was

decaying".54

The period of the “Populist Democracy" saw a leap in the agrarian struggles and

from 1955 to 1964, the farmers’ movement extended to the entire country, in

Maranhão, Goiás, Parana, Sao Paulo, Bahia, Pernambuco, Paraíba, with

unique characteristics in each state. The movement was damaged by the

disputes between parties and institutions, like the Catholic Church, the PCB,

Ligas Campesinas, the Movement of the Landless, as well as personalities,

such as Francisco Julião, Father Melo, Father Crespo, Gregório Bezerra, etc.

The dispute, initially political, degenerated towards the extermination of leaders

and workers, like Pedro Teixeira. In areas like western Maranhão, Bico de

Papagaio and eastern Pará and in the present Tocantins (previously the

northern part of the State of Goiás), workers were massively slaughtered.

Soon the Church turned its attention to the agrarian conflicts; "The Church was

very frightened that the Communists were preparing the guerrilla in the fields,

an impossibility since from 1958, PCB’s policy was to form an alliance with the

national bourgeoisie and other sectors, with the purpose of fighting imperialism

and promoting the concretisation of a democratic-bourgeois stage within the

Brazilian development. It was not until 1965 that the Church took a less

ambiguous position with relation to the problem of the latifundio’s ownership by

admitting that the expropriation, for accomplishing an agrarian reform, would not

constitute an attack to the property rights while the indemnification was justified,

either in money or titles ".55

The violent repression was different. Ligas was swept away, the CONTAG (a

trade union formed in 1963) was outlawed for 4 years (64-68), and the trade

union activities followed the Statute of the Land and the Rural Worker,

promulgated by the military. After one decade of retrogression, the conflicts

increased and in 1974 there were rural disputes in all the states, and

the posseiros amounted to 1.05 million in 1985, while the growth of

the grileiros (land grabbers, who acquired land deeds by unscrupulous

means) created a legally unsustainable situation: Tancredo Neves, already

elected as president, said "In southern Pará nobody held much land, it was

necessary to carry out the reform because nobody knew who owned the land".

The rural proletariat increased from 1, 24,341 people in 1970 to 1,511,774 in

1976 (17% of the rural workers)56 affecting the industrial states. A worker

migrating from the expanding latifundios of the North East was “survivor of a

high infant mortality, physically and intellectually under-developed, marginalised

in the periphery of the cities, living under precarious conditions without basic

sanitation, rising at 4 am, feeding scantily, drinking alcohol as a source of

energy, commuting in uncomfortable trucks, without regular work contract or

medical aid! – A bóia-fria is first of all a fort ".57 With the ongoing struggle of this

highly exploited sector, the agrarian question knocks on the doors of the city,

placing the worker-farmer alliance within reach; the strike

of Guariba (in Riberão Preto, State of Sao Paulo, "Brazilian California"), and the

encampment on the Annoni estate in Río Grande do Sul in 1984, were

milestones in that process.

Then the first national congresses of landless workers took place, giving birth to

the MST (Movimento dos Trabalhadores Rurais Sem Terra or Landless Rural

Workers Movement), in Curitiba and Brasilia, also increasing the peasant

participation in the Congresses of the CUT (Central Unica de Trabajadores, or,

Unique Workers’ Federation, born in 1983). "The MST touched a sore point and

broke the apparent unity regarding the agrarian reform. The Land Statute did

not solve the problem created by the modern latifundios, like in Riberão Preto; it

represented the policy of modernising the latifundio, then presented it like an

ideal to the rural enterprise".58 The agrarian question had changed its class

character.

The New Republic proved wrong all the predictions of democracy having a

tranquillising effect on the class conflicts and became the stage for their

intensification; in 1986, 768 clashes affected a populace of 5, 67,000 in an area

comprising more than 10 million hectares. In the same year 524 workers died in

clashes, compared to just over 50 in 1982, with the UDR (group

of latifundio owners) openly resorting to tactics of civil war. The government of

the “democracy” chose its option, having officially recognised the existence of

12 million landless farmers, and 170 million hectares occupied by

unproductive latifundios, of which 10 million in conflict situations affecting

almost 90,000 families, it disappropriated just 6, 20, 000 hectares, granting

possession of just over 1, 30,000 hectares to 5,000 families - an insignificant

figure compared to the magnitude of the problem.

According to Thomas Skidmore, the role of the Church (until the murder of

several foreign priests) in the agrarian question of evictions, especially in the

Amazon, Centre-West and the North East was due to the fact that "other

institutions of the civil society were either absent or they could not work

efficiently".59 This description does not explain the profound crisis of the

Catholic Church, that was divided vertically (National Conference of the Bishops

of Brazil, or, CNBB) and horizontally (Ecclesiastical Communities of Base, or,

CEB) on the issue of the Brazilian crisis, after giving all its support to the military

coup of 1964. Already in workers’ strikes of 1978-1980, the Catholic leftwing

played the role of a moderator and an intermediary between the movement and

the military power, while it increasingly found itself under crossfire from the

Vatican. This led to an expert’s prediction: “It would be surprising if they gained

more ground (within the Church)".60

The MST was born from a dual crisis; that of the agrarian work done by the

Church (CEB and The Pastoral Land Commission, or CPT) and of the

conciliatory trade unionism of the CONTAG during the major part of 1970s.

Theoretically, they were members of CONTAG and all of them were not rural

employees, i.e. wage earners but small

producers, aparceros and arrendatarios, even the owners

of minifundios however, something else happened and according to João P.

Stédile, main leader of the MST, “The MST has been existing for more than 15

years. During the initial period (1979-1983), when the struggle for land was

relaunched, land occupations and mobilisations took place in many regions, but

those were isolated events. After a process of mutual knowledge and

communication, a national movement was constituted, resulting in a national

conference in January 1984, in Cascavel (Paraná), with representatives from 16

states ".61

MST’s Basic Policy Document insisted on the importance of the Church: "It

played a role not only in providing support or as an ally but also in directing the

struggle. The CPT, its agents, priests and even bishops were at the helm for

quite some time, due to their awareness programmes, their intellectual

competence and ability to influence the masses, and their direct link to the

struggles". Two land occupations in 1979 spread the name of MST- “Due to the

Landless Farmers’ Movement (Movimiento de Agricultores Sin Tierra, or,

MASTER) of Brizola and the PTB, the local press commented - Return of the

landless! It worked. The press baptised us. The MST germinated on

7th September 1979 from those two occupations. Within 3 to 4 months, the

farmers settled down and it was a great victory ".62

It was not a local but a national movement, which disregarded the existing

conciliatory attitude of the trade unions; "the journey of MST began with the

struggles for occupying lands in Macali and Brilhante, in Ronda Alta (Río

Grande do Sul) in 1979, and ranches in Burro Branco and Campo Erê (Santa

Catarina) in 1980; the conflict in Parana in 1980 between 10,000 families and

the State as the lands were being flooded due to the construction of Itaipú; the

struggle of the posseiros of Fazenda Primavera in Andradina, Castilho and

Nova Independência in the state of Sao Paulo; the intense resistance to the

evacuations in Mato Grosso do Sul (Naviraí and Glória de Dourados) put up by

thousands ofarrendatarios. Other struggles occurred in Bahia, Rio de Janeiro

and Goiás".63 It was the struggle in Sao Paulo that brought national notoriety to

the MST; "MST discovered Pontal de Paranapanema, an enormous settlement

area, with space for 25,000 families, where, not the property but only the value

of the indemnification was disputed in courts (by that time the illegitimacy of the

occupation by the existing landowners was already proven) This discovery

brought the MST to Sao Paulo, gave it social status and clarity in the eyes of

the political elites and The MST was nationally born out of a national event ".64

After 13 years since it was formally established, the MST was organised in 21

states, where it was already present in encampments by 1,38,000 families on

barren lands with at least 3.7 wage earners per month on average (the Brazilian

average is of 3.82 minimum wage earners per family). An agreement with the

MST saw the birth of 1,564 establishments by 1996, occupying an area of

4,870,171 hectares, with 1, 45,712 families. According to Stédile, “The agrarian

reform will only be possible within the framework of the struggle against neo-

liberalism, imperialism and the dependence on the capital. With a new model of

national development; national, because it takes care of all the Brazilians;

popular, because it takes care of the basic necessities of the entire town ".

While supporting direct action, until becoming synonymous with the intransigent

radicalism in Brazil, the MST put up a resistance within the framework of the

Constitution of 1988 that legislated, as we have seen, in favour of the latifundio:

"We agree with the foundations of the constitution. Although many people say

that the Land Statute was more advanced, and it really was, if the government

undertakes a huge process of disappropriations, the foundations of the

constitution are to be respected. The improvements must be paid in money,

because it is presumed that they have been fruits of labour. It is the right

method, but a good inspection is necessary... The land is paid for in 15 years,

with titles of the national debt. There will be 15 shares, which is also right,

because the society determines the time limit for increasing the production and

recovering those values. We accept those criteria", said Stédile, main leader of

the MST.

The indexed titles of the national debt imply a gigantic operation of plundering

by the State in favour of the entire bourgeoisie (it is not a secret that

many latifundio owners are interested in a similar “expropriation”).

“Constitutionally” restraining the struggle for land indicates not only a “legal”

shrewdness but also the framework for the boundaries of the existing political

regime although, this had already proved its incapacity to bring about the

agrarian reform, as well as its hostility to the exploited. Sarney (1985-1990)

fixed a target to settle 1.4 million families, but managed with 90,000 only, in an

optimistic hypothesis, that is 6% of his target (insufficient). Collor (1990-1992)

promised 5, 00,000, but restrained the registration of new lands and the

disappropriations, only 23,000 families received new titles. Frank Itamar (1992-

1994) promised even less - 20,000 in 1993 and 60,000 in 1994, and sanctioned

12,600 in both years. Fernando Henrique Cardoso (FHC) promised 4,00,000

titles during his election campaign, which reduced to 2,60,000 after his being

elected and then going down to 42,912 in 1995, 62,044 in 1996 and 21,000 in

1997.65

Stédile criticises the lies concealed behind the faulty official figures. "Here the

entire Brazilian history adds up, since the time of Getúlio Vargas, the first official

coloniser until today. The numbers indicate colonisation projects, which have

nothing to do with settlements; there is a consensus in which 1,50,000 families

were settled in the last 15 years, all as a result of the struggle, in no case by

government initiative". Also the PT triggered off a reform in the backdrop of the

capitalist development, "articulated with a policy of territorial development and

agro-industrial complementation (that) gives an option for the political-economic

boosting of the interior, of the small cities looming large over the agrarian

economy - 3,300 municipalities with less than 25,000 inhabitants " (Brazil has

just over 5,000 municipalities).66

Under the influence of the Church and the PT, the MST was defined as “a non-

institutional movement ", which means that it did not present a general political

alternative. Due to this, the agrarian reform including the settlements won by the

direct action came to depend on the government’s approval, that is, the

liberation of rural credits of all type, including those of the agrarian reform, as

well as numerous complementary programmes (PROCERA, PRONERA, etc.).

During the economic crisis, the social expenses are systematically slashed and

the leftover is used to blackmail the agrarian movement. The slogan of the MST

is “Occupy, Resist, and Produce". Since it was at the last phase, credit was

essential.

Stédile defends that “The small producer cannot compete with the large

exporters, but he is not incompatible with them either". Then the MST proposed

that the small property is encouraged to produce food and integrated to small

and average agro-industries. But last September, the national coordination of

the MST denounced what the official policy expected to achieve: “The

government hardly spent 28% of the budget earmarked for the agrarian reform.

Now, obliged to guarantee the high profits of the banks, the government

withdraws 181 million on account of the reform, 14% of the entire budget. It

never considered curtailing the payment of interests, the shipment of dollars

abroad and the payment of internal and external debts, it always wants to curtail

social expenses".

As for the National Education Programme in the Agrarian Reform (PRONERA),

the budget guaranteed educational projects for adults and young people in

1,538 settlements, with 1,00,000 students, in collaboration with 39 universities.

90% of the resources were withdrawn due to the cuts in the last-mentioned

“package”. Only 3 million Reais would have been spent, managing to

alphabetise 7,000 workers, instead of 1, 00,000. But in the same “package”,

FHC authorised the renegotiation of the debt of the large ”producers”, with

extension of the debts for 20 years and reduction of the interest rates. It was

also decided that 100% of the grants taken by the banks for agriculture would

be used to buy public titles with correction of the exchange rates.

Under the "Social-Democratic" government, the capital promoted a real agrarian

anti-reform, accelerated by the economic crisis. In 1985, there were 23.4 million

people working in the field (according to the Brazilian Institute of Geography

and Statistics-IBGE), dropping to 16.6 million in 1996. During the same period,

the number of agricultural establishments dropped from 5.8 million to 4.98

million almost, a million less, of which 6, 00,000 were in the majority sector of

family-run agriculture (with less than 10 hectares). The INCRA also registered

300 million unproductive hectares, but the ITR of 1997, with a prediction of 1.2

million Reais, collected only 200 million (less than a Coca-Cola per

unproductive hectare!). Between 1985 and 1995, 5.24 million agricultural jobs

and 1.5 million in 1996 (under the FHC regime) were gone. Under FHC 4,

00,000 small properties were also abolished (of a total of 6, 00,000 in the entire

decade).

In 1997, Brazil imported agricultural products worth US$ 7.5 billion (previously it

used to produce 90% of the wheat consumed, now 66%); presently it cultivates

7.1 million hectares less than it did at the start of the 1990s. Under FHC, the

cultivated land area dropped from 38.5 to 35.7 million hectares (less than

7.2%). Between 1994 and 1997, the prices received by the agriculturists

increased 37.5%, whereas theinsumos increased 60.1% (the agricultural rent

fell 59%). The National Programme of Support to Family Farming (PRONAF)

released 2.5 billion, against a demand of 4 billion.

The agrarian concentration advanced like never before in the entire

contemporary history, taking advantage of the agricultural crisis and the drop in

the land price (by 40-50%, under the Real Plan). Linked to this is the advance of

the paramilitary groups of the owners of latifundios, now more integrated with

the police. Under FHC, more than 150 agrarian workers had already been

assassinated, with two massacres, in Corumbiara (11 deaths) and in Eldorado

dos Carajás (19 deaths); nobody was imprisoned, the same thing occurred with

the murder of two MST leaders in Pará (April 1998) - continuation of the

massacre of Eldorado, because they led 550 families who were uniting with

another 690, survivors of the massacre inhabiting the Palmares settlement. And

FHC, with his proposed 1, 00,000 settlers, proclaimed himself to be the

champion of agrarian reform.

It is no wonder then that the agrarian struggle has been more important than

ever under FHC. Already it became an organised national movement with the

MST originating in the South, managing to settle more than 50,000 families in

the North East. Its journeys, specially the one that ended with the occupation of

Brasilia on 17th April 1998 (on the first anniversary of the massacre of

Eldorado), with more than 1, 00,000 people, were transformed into a channel of

protest for the entire exploited population of the country.

Vis-à-vis the agrarian question, the Popular Front, organised around the PT,

could be seen as an attempt for bourgeois stabilisation, to the point of driving

away a portion of the pro-PT electorate. In the programme of the União do

Povo-Muda Brazil of 1989, the chapter significantly titled "Peace in the Field"

proposed to settle 1 million families and irrigate 1.5 million hectares in 4 years,

the anticipated cost being US$ 12-15,000 per settled family (by means of

indemnifications) without counting expenses on health, education and

infrastructure.

All this was at the back of the immediate objective necessities, of the

explosiveness of the agrarian situation and the claims of the MST: settlement of

4 million families, credits of US$18,000 per family, repayable in 20 years (and

not in 7), immediate disappropriation of all unproductive land with agricultural

potential, territorial collection from all the big debtors of the Development

Agency for the North East (SUDENE), creation of jobs in the North East for 2

million people controlled by communities and trade unions, wage increases and

family packages for all the families. The PT programme was not even clear

about the necessary means of reform; actually the PT privileged, during the

electoral campaign, by the relations with the moderate CONTAG (now affiliated

with the CUT); its Special National Convention rejected the motion brought by

the left for legitimising the lands already occupied.

The entire policy on "legal" agrarian reform has a false base, not only because

FHC provided inaccurate figures but also because the base of calculation is

false: “The Agricultural Census of 1985, of the IBGE, pointed out the existence

of 24.5 million unutilised productive hectares, data substantially different from

the records of INCRA".67 The use of the ITR as a means to restrain the

unproductive latifundios has been proved to be ridiculous, the small and

medium properties have always paid more tax than the large ones; in 1994, less

than 40 million Reais (US$ 32 million) were collected with that tax.

The rural workers form almost 40% of the economically active population in

different categories. 5 million family-run farms survive, producing most of the

internal market’s consumption. The agricultural sector produces 50 billion

dollars (12% of the GDP). The fall of 27% of the prices has harmed the small

farmers because, they produce for the internal market which deteriorated with

the MERCOSUR that eliminated import rates for cheaper products brought from

the three partners of Brazil. There are also 6 million wage earners in the fields -

temporary or permanent - always under threat of migration and abandonment of

their families.

A survey made by the Rio de Janeiro State University (UERJ) demonstrated

that more than half of the rural inhabitants live below poverty line (less than a

quarter of the minimum wage -25 dollars per capita). There are 18,756,494, 3.4

million families of small proprietors, tenant farmers,medieros (farmers who

cultivate rented land), wage-earners and the unpaid workers, 53% of the

inhabitants of the field: more than 70% of the rural population live in the states

of Ceará, Paraíba and Piauí.

On the contrary, the strategy of the MST faces an objective stalemate due to its

dependence on the State regarding rural credit (and its “aggressive”

consequence, the occupation of rural credit banks and the buildings of the

INCRA). This challenge is negligible in comparison to the overwhelming misery,

which fails to promote a “socialist co-operativism” in the settlements, defined as

"the cooperation born from the objective of self-help and participation in the

market (sphere of circulation), liberating itself from the carrier (the truck driver)

and the intermediary (the retailer)".68

Nor is the situation solved by stating that "our great differences revolve around

the economic, political and social objectives in the cooperatives, being a

question of internal principles" (forming core committees of the co-operative

members, democratic distribution of the surplus etc) or by explaining

"the agrovillas (peasant townships) as organisations in terms of space and

geography, that allow urbanisation and facilitate the social investments in

electricity, drinking water and near-by schools".69 The educational structure of

the MST comprises nearly 900 primary schools, 1,500 teachers, 300 instructors

for literacy and 35,000 children and adolescents.

Actually, in the ancient cooperative sectors, wage-labour relations with the

farmers were already developed "Our future is bound to the agro-industry",

insisted Jose Rainha, icon of the MST, in relation to COCAMP- a much

advanced cooperative (in Pontal do Paranapanema), that has received credits

for installing a factory for manufacturing fruit products, another for dairy

products and a third one for processing grains. It hoped to plant 2 million coffee

plants in 1999 transforming the Pontal into the state’s principal coffee-growing

region.

With the re-election of FHC in 1998, and the economic crisis, these

perspectives began to collapse. MST broke its truce with the government and

re-launched the invasions, a mill in Pernambuco, three estates in North-

Western Parana and three other in the Pontal do Paranapanema. A survey

showed that most of the settlements between 1994 and 1997 were a

consequence of invasions; out of 352 settlements in Sao Paulo, Pernambuco,

Goiás, Espíritu Santo, Paraná, Santa Catarina and Mato Grosso do Sul, 304

resulted from invasions and only 48 from the initiatives of the federal

government.70

The global crisis and the Brazilian economic catastrophe accentuated the class

struggle, taking the agrarian conflict to an explosive situation, with

repercussions on the labour movement. During the 1980s and the 1990s

Brazil’s peasant movements were the key to the radicalisation of the working-

class and the existence of class-based currents in the heart of the country

24 See: COGGIOLA, Osvaldo. Brazil: la cuestión agraria y la lucha del MST. En Defensa del Marxismo

no. 22, Buenos Aires, January 1999

25 DILLON SOARES, Glaucio Ary. A Questão Agrária na América Latina Rio de Janeiro, Zahar, 1976,

pp. 27-39.

26 MAURO, Frédéric. Nova História e Novo Mundo. Sao Paulo, Perspectiva, 1982.

27 VIOTTI DA COSTA, Emília. Da Monarquia à República. Sao Paulo, Difel, 1966.

28 VERGOPOULOS, Kostas. A Questão Agrária e o Capitalismo. Rio de Janeiro, Paz e Terra, 1977, p.

94.

29 LENIN Vladimir I. O Desenvolvimento do Capitalismo na Rússia. (The Development of Capitalism in

Russia). Sao Paulo, Nova Cultural, 1988.

30 SHANIN, Theodor. Naturaleza y Lógica de la Economía Campesina. Barcelona, Anagrama, 1976, p.

34.

31 DIEGUES JÚNIOR, Manuel. Establecimientos Rurales en América Latina. Buenos Aires, Eudeba,

1967, p. 87.

32 CUT (Central Única dos Trabalhadores or Unified Workers' Confederation, the chief union

federation in Brazil ). Cartilha de Política Agrícola. Sao Paulo, 1989, p. 91.

33 GRAZIANO DA SILVA, José. Questão Agrária. Sao Paulo, Brasiliense, 1994, p. 75.

34 GRAZIANO NETO, Francisco. Questão Agrária e Ecologia. Sao Paulo, Brasiliense, 1985, p. 46.

35 TOPALOV, Christian. Estruturas Agrárias Brasileiras. Rió de Janeiro, Francisco Alves, 1978, p. 63.

36 IBGE (Instituto Brasileiro de Geografia e Estatística, or, Brazilian Institute of Geography and

Statistics). Censos Agropecuários, 1950, 1960, 1970 and 1975.

37 PASSOS GUIMARÃES, Alberto. A estrutura produtiva da agricultura brasileira. Novos Rumos no 6/7,

Sao Paulo, 1988; and IBGE. Anuário Estatístico, 1980.

38 DELGADO, Guilherme C. Capital Financeiro e Agricultura no Brasil. Sao Paulo, Icone, 1985, p.

233.

39 HOMEM DE MELO, Fernando. O Problema Alimentar no Brasil. Rio de Janeiro, Paz e Terra, 1983,

p. 223.

40 GIANNETTI, Eduardo. Proálcool, Energia e Transporte. Sao Paulo, FIPE, 1981, p. 158.

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