Social Movements in Brazil in Urban and Rural Contexts: Potentials, Limits and “Paradoxes”

Abstract

Marcelo Lopes de Souza puts the social movements under the microscope. He compares urban and rural movements and asks why urban movements in Brazil are so much less significant than those in the countryside. The urban activism of the 1970s and 1980s, lost its importance in the 1990s. The so called “new social movements” that fought the military regime can therefore no longer be seen as influential social movements and the more recent activism of the second generation movements of the 1990s are yet in an embryonic stage. In contrast, in the rural areas, the level of organization of the landless peasant movement MST has grown considerably since the 1980s. Thus, they can exert strong political pressure and have the ability to articulate on a national as well as on an international level. The reasons for this development can be found in the relatively greater complexity of interests in the cities, in addition to the success of the PT in absorbing and channeling the interests of urban civil society towards the political activities of the party and the participative spaces in the local PT governments.