Brazil

Abstract

This chapter analyses the class struggle over land and land reform over the course of what has been described as the neo-liberal era, which in Brazil can be dated from the political regimes established by Fernando Collor de Mello and Itamar Franco in the 1990s. It focuses on the dynamics of class and political struggle that took place during the regime of Fernando Henrique Cardoso and the Workers Party regime under the successive administrations of Lula da Silva and Dilma Rousseff. The chapter discusses the salient features of the socio-economic reality of the Brazilian countryside, which include agrarian reform settlements, the concentration of land ownership and the structure of production, the internationalization of agriculture, and food insecurity. The silent features also include violence and environmental degradation, the dynamics of land occupations, and the agro-strategies of capital at the beginning of the twenty-first century. The chapter concludes the recent and current dynamics of class struggle in the Brazilian countryside.