Edible Ideology? Survival Strategies in Brazilian Land-Reform Settlements

Abstract

On 17 April 1997, 30,000 people marched through the streets of Brasilia. The march demonstrated unprecedented support for one of the largest grassroots social movement in the country's history: the Movimento dos Trabalhadores Rurais sem Terra (MST, or Rural Landless Workers' Movement). Student groups, trade unions, and politicians wrestled for the right to welcome the landless workers into Brasilia. National and international media reported the details on what was once dismissed as a radical peasants' group but is now considered the sole successful opposition to the Brazilian government. In a recent national public-opinion poll, 85 percent of respondents supported MST and 88 percent agreed that the government should implement land reform (Beto 1997, 1). What are members of MST fighting for, and why is it so attractive? In an era of industrialization, globalization, and hypermodernization, MST members want a livelihood on their own small plots of land. They want to return to soil that they - or their parents - once worked. In a country with the second-highest monopolization of landownership in the world, this is not a simple matter (UNDP 1993, 29).(1) And in a global economy, with transnational food corporations dominating much agricultural production and marketing, the goal may be impossible. Between 1960 and 1980 more than 28 million people - approximately 20 percent of Brazil's population - migrated from the countryside to the cities (Leite 1993, 29). These people left in search of an urban El Dorado or because, as small family farmers, they found it increasingly difficult to make a living in the countryside.(2) Will it be different today? Can members of MST compete with the mechanized and modernized agricultural producers of the 1990s? The purpose of my current field research is to answer this question by analyzing survival strategies in MST settlements in southern Brazil. More specifically, I want to know how MST as an organization shapes production decisions and whether these decisions have increased or reduced income. Although an extensive literature on land-reform settlements in Brazil has accumulated over the past ten years (see, for an excellent overview, Medeiros, Barbosa, and others 1994), no one has analyzed, on a general level, the economic performance of an organization that is usually conceptualized as political or social. Understanding MST'S economic contribution to the settlements is a necessary prelude to understanding the possibilities for Brazilian agrarian reform. The need for this research was suggested by Sergio Leite in 1992 (p. 280). RESEARCH FRAMEWORK: LAND REFORM AND MST The popularity of MST in Brazil is relatively recent, but demands for land reform are not. The history of the countryside has been characterized by changing interpretations of the social significance of land. Maria Isaura Pereira de Queiroz counted nineteen social movements between 1817 and 1958 that developed from dissatisfaction with the land-tenure system (Queiroz 1968, 91-92, as quoted in Velho 1979,138). Each was suppressed. In 1964 widespread peasant agitation for agrarian reform was partly responsible for inciting a right-wing military coup, which installed a dictatorship that lasted for twenty-one years.(3) The military dictatorship ended in 1985. That fall, 400 peasant agitators formed a new social movement: MST. The movement's goals included the redistribution of land, state assistance for small farmers, and the creation of a socialist society. Twelve years later, with MST's goals essentially the same, its membership was estimated at more than 400,000. MST's methods, if unorthodox, are extremely effective, judging from the numbers of members and the level of popular support. Members known as militants travel the country, primarily among Brazil's urban poor and Catholic communities. The militants inform people of their constitutional right to use land considered unproductive, citing a legally determined ratio of crops or livestock per hectare. …