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.

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