Landless Workers Movement Research Articles

Relações de saúde e trabalho em assentamento rural do MST na região de fronteira Brasil-Paraguai

Com o presente artigo, busca-se relatar e analisar as relações entre saúde e trabalho de pequenos produtores rurais do Movimento dos Trabalhadores Rurais Sem Terra (MST). Quanto à metodologia, adotou-se o aporte da investigação participativa e as bases da educação popular. O estudo realizado tornou possível uma compreensão de saúde e de trabalho mediante as narrativas dos trabalhadores e histórias relativas às lutas coletivas contra a exclusão e a violência no campo. Constataram-se importantes aspectos próprios a esse grupo populacional, como o sentido de conquista da propriedade da terra, os conflitos advindos da 'militância' e as diferenças de gênero e geração. Com base nos relatos, analisaram-se também os acidentes e os riscos relacionados à atividade de trabalho no assentamento rural, principalmente a exposição ao agrotóxico. Confirmaram-se, ainda, a solidariedade e a cooperação como valores importantes e como base de novas relações, um modo distinto de organização social coletiva do trabalho.

<b>O trabalho no campo e no contexto do MST</b><br>doi: 10.5007/2175-8042.2010v22n35p130

This paper analyses rural working in a bourgeois society, especially the type of working generated inside MST – Rural Landless Workers Movement. The ontological and historical meaning of the Marxist conception of work is our starting point followed by reflections on the Brazilian rural reality and its working and living conditions. Next, we point out the several relationships between city and rural areas as well as between rural working and capitalist industrial production. MST is thought to be the movement which expresses the contradictions of the bourgeois society and aims at raising human relationships and types of working of superior quality of those in vigor in our society.

Resources of origin, investments and expectations of rewards in the militancy of the Landless Rural Workers Movement (MST)

The problem studied consists of the relations between the interests and militancy and the differences in expectations of rewards in an agrarian reform settlement linked to the Landless Rural Workers Movement (MST). In this settlement, many ‘leaders’ gathered the ‘socialisation of production’. The situation arising from these circumstances produced the different reasons for engagement and different relations with the militancy. In the transition from the encampment to the settlement, it becomes important for the leaders to reinforce their positions both of ‘leadership’ and as mediators of policies and public resources, while it becomes difficult for those settled to maintain their previous investments in strong engagement. Consequently, these new conditions tend to increase the differences between the expectations of rewards from the militancy. These expectations can be pragmatic, such as viability as a farmer, or have a more symbolic character, which is associated with the struggle to create social organisation models.

Writing the History of the Landless Workers Movement of Brazil: Empowerment, Recognition and Agency

Writing the History of the Landless Workers Movement of Brazil: Empowerment, Recognition and Agency

A Educação das Crianças Pequenas nas Cirandas Infantis do MST

This article discusses kids’ riddles on permanent and itinerant MST (a movement of landless rural workers in Brazil) aiming at investigating this practice of education experienced by children whose parents are struggling for a place to live. Riddles are part of non-formal education held by cooperatives, training centers and the MST itself. Such practice aims at organizing children in landless communities, developing educational work, whose perspective is human emancipation. The Itinerant riddles happen in some activities of the MST, such as courses, marches, meetings, congresses and the permanent riddles are those operating in MST’s settlements, schools, training centers etc. The theoretical framework used in this research was Florestan Fernandes (2004), Gobbi (2004); Finco (2004), Meszaros (2005), as well as the materials produced by MST. The methodological procedures have been defined in order to understand the functioning of these riddles, their nature and development on their relations. The data was collected through documentary research, observation and a semi-structured interview. The survey results indicate that riddles are spaces that allow children to participate in the community since their childhood. Besides, they configure themselves by building the collective childhood in which children learn to share objects starting from simple things such as toys, pencils, snacks, up to sharing community life with other homeless children as the maroon, Indians and homeless. They struggle against social inequalities, thus multiply the collective victories and, fill the countryside and the city of joy, dreams, utopia, with the possibility of building an emancipator education, linked to a project of the working class, for all children in the countryside and the city. REVISTA MULTIPLAS LEITURAS Revista Multiplas Leituras, v. 3, n. 1, p. 103-118, jan. jun. 2010 105

Rural work and health conditions of families in the landless workers movement - MST and temporary rural workers: the case of Unaí, MG

famílias do MST e dos bóias-frias de Unaí-MG com enfoque nas relações de trabalho, produção, segurança alimentar, organização política, acesso aos serviços e políticas públicas. Foram coletados dados por meio de questionários aplicados a 202 famílias, e realizadas observação estruturada e discussões em grupo. Serão destacados também os resultados do processo de apresentação e discussão dos dados analisados para as comunidades pesquisadas. Os trabalhadores bóias-frias apresentaram um alto índice de insegurança alimentar (39,5%) e estavam mais expostos aos agrotóxicos se comparados aos assentados e acampados. A grande maioria das famílias de bóias frias gostaria de mudar de ocupação e entre o que havia de pior no trabalho estava a hora de acordar e o deslocamento. Mais da metade das famílias do assentamento conseguia viver apenas da produção do lote e entre as famílias acampadas 22,1% conseguiam retirar seu sustento do lote. As famílias do MST têm maior dificuldade de acesso ao SUS, porem o fato de ser Sem Terra, estar organizado, melhora as perspectivas de sua saúde em comparação com os bóias-frias. A modernização conservadora no campo brasileiro têm agravado as condições de vida e trabalho dos bóias-frias, enquanto que a Reforma Agrária tem possibilitado uma melhor condição de vida e de saúde para as famílias, quando comparadas nas áreas estudadas.

Agrofuel policies in Brazil: paradigmatic and territorial disputes

The expansion of agrofuel crops challenges us to rethink policies, territories, human agency, and the paradigms used to explain them. In Brazil, policies supporting the expansion of agrofuel crops and the intensification of agrofuel production are reorganising rural land use and undermining some forms of participation in the capitalist and family modes of production. To reflect on this new reality, we study peasant movement reactions, proposals, and territorial disputes with agribusiness. Using the Pontal do Paranapanema region of São Paulo state as a case in point, the paper analyses territorial disputes between expanding sugarcane plantations and agrarian reform settlements as well as biodiesel production projects developed by the Landless Workers Movement (MST) and the Western São Paulo Federation of Settlement and Family Farmer Associations (FAAFOP). It also analyses the agrofuel policies of other peasant organisations, including Via Campesina. The production of agrofuels has changed the processes of land acquisition and use by both agribusiness and the peasantry, provoking new insights into the nature of territorial conflicts and thereby stimulating the need to revise perspectives on the agrarian question in Brazil.

Movimentos sociais e produção de subjetividade: o MST em perspectiva

O presente artigo pretende apresentar uma discussão a respeito de como o Movimento dos Trabalhadores Rurais Sem Terra (MST) se configura enquanto um importante ator social no cenário das lutas políticas empreendidas pelos movimentos sociais na atualidade. Tal discussão ancora-se numa perspectiva crítica e que visa contribuir com o campo da Psicologia Social. Assim, propomos uma compreensão dos movimentos sociais a partir dos processos de subjetivação, por entendermos exatamente que as subjetividades são empreendidas nas relações de poder/saber que atravessam uma dada realidade histórico-social.

English, Globalization, and Identity Construction of Landless Workers

Access to power in globalized societies can be gained through the control over discourse practices made possible by the use of a powerful tool like the English language. This is true for Brazil's Landless Workers Movement, Movimento dos Trabalhadores Rurais Sem Terra (MST), which demands, among other things, agrarian reform in Brazil. This paper examines the identity conflicts stemming from MST's use of English in the articulation of local and global resistance against cultural, political, social, and hegemonic forces. Examining the identity conflicts in the MST is crucial because globalization has redefined its adversaries from local Brazilian large landowners to transnational agricultural companies. As a result, the movement was forced to forge alliances with social groups and movements worldwide. By using English as a tool for international communication, the landless may jeopardize their own identity since this language is usually related to their opponents. Such a contradiction implies an ongoing conflict between nationalism and globalization, the local and the global. The new technologies of communication have also played an important role in that process, and a brief discussion of that subject is included in the paper. Texts for analysis are from the movement's official website and electronic bulletins sent by the MST and the Friends of the MST, as well as texts from Revista Sem Terra , a bimonthly magazine, and Jornal Sem Terra , a monthly newspaper.

Do essencialismo ao não essencialismo? reflexões sobre a identidade cultural do MST

O trabalho apresenta um estudo envolvendo um movimento social, o MST (Movimento dos Trabalhadores Rurais Sem-Terra), e as noções de identidade cultural. A investigação desenvolve um breve exercício de contextualização do movimento através de sua história, seu relacionamento com o poder e sua estrutura nos dias atuais. Com relação aos marcos teórico-metodológicos, a pesquisa adota os pressupostos de Kathryn Woodward (2000), Stuart Hall (2002) e Zygmunt Bauman (2005) e os discursos dos integrantes do movimento retirados do estudo de recepção realizado por Cruz (2006). Como discussão central, pretende-se analisar os desafios do MST em tempos de globalização.

(Re)politizando o conceito de gênero: a participação política das mulheres no MST

Neste artigo procuramos examinar a complexa e contraditória construção do Setor de Gênero como parte da estrutura organizativa do Movimento dos Trabalhadores Rurais Sem Terra (MST). O pano de fundo são as tensões em torno da participação política das mulheres na luta pela terra, em que a ênfase inicial dada à categoria mulher vai sendo substituída pela de gênero. Mais do que simples alterações na nomenclatura, trata-se do desafio de compreender teoricamente e construir, na prática política, novas relações de gênero. Na contramão de um uso cada vez mais academicista, este processo acena para a (re)politização do conceito de gênero.

Memórias de lutas e lutas pela memória

This is a case study (Assentamento 16 de Marco, Pontao, RS, Brazil) which analyses how the reproduction process of a specific memory assumes strategic functions of social control. On one hand, it look for the ways the MST (Landless Workers Movement), articulating a set of initiatives, builds and spread a groups social memory, in order to build its socio-political identity, and consequently, assure that the settled farmers continue to belong to MST. On the other hand, the study points out the emergency, opposing the hegemonic memory, of a dissonant and politically subaltern memory. Finally the objective is to show how past reconstruction work is inserted into the net of present political battles, which moves throughout that social space.

Perfil de mulher camponesa no sudeste do Pará

Este paper procura traçar um perfil sociológico da mulher camponesa com base em histórias de vida, tentando construir os contornos de sua existência. A discussão colocada no texto empreende um discurso exploratório, com vistas a definir dois ângulos da mulher camponesa do sudeste do Pará o da prática política e o das práticas econômicas. A compreensão dessas práticas foram possíveis através da história de vida contada por uma mulher camponesa, com o objetivo de entender as relações travadas entre Sindicato dos Trabalhadores Rurais de Marabá e o Movimento dos Trabalhadores Rurais Sem Terra - MST.

The local in the global: rethinking social movements in the new millennium

In this article we discuss the failure of social movement theories to adequately understand and theorize locally based, grassroots social movements like the landless workers movement in Brazil, ‘livability movements’ in third-world cities, and living wage movements in the USA. Movements such as these come to the attention of most social movement analysts only when the activists who participate in them come together in the streets of Seattle or international forums like the World Social Forum. To date, it is the transnational character of these protests that have excited the most attention. Building on scholarship that looks at the link between participatory democracy and social movements, this article takes a different tack. We show how some social movements have shifted their repertoire of practices from large mass events aimed at making demands on the national state to local-level capacity building. It is the local struggles, especially the ways in which they have created and used institutions in civil society through extending and deepening democracy, that may be the most significant aspect of recent social movements, both for our theories and for our societies. Yet these aspects have received less attention, we believe, because they are less well understood by dominant social movement theories, which tend to focus on high-profile protest events. We look at the Brazilian Landless Workers Movement and the Justice for Janitors Campaign in Los Angeles to illustrate the important terrain of civil society as well as the role of community organizing.

Brazil's Experience with Agrarian Reform, 1995–2006: Challenges for Agrarian Geography

This paper analyses one of the challenges facing agrarian geographers of Brazil: explaining land-tenure systems in light of persistently high levels of land occupations by landless peasants, the implementation of agrarian reform projects by the Fernando Henrique Cardoso (1995–2002) and Luís Lula Inácio da Silva (2003-present) presidential administrations and the expansion of agribusiness. It examines the actions of families organized in the Landless Workers Movement (MST - Movimento dos Trabalhadores Rurais Sem-Terra) and territorialization / deterritorialization processes from 1995 to 2006. We discuss how large land-holding have long determined who holds political power in Brazil and how a “rural block” continues to thwart attempts to resolve Brazil's agrarian question. Consequently, the article concludes, conflictuality is a part of Brazilian rural life that is unlikely to go away.

Access to pre-natal care and cervical cancer prevention action among women from Brazilian Landless Workers Movement

This is a qualitative research that aimed to investigate Brazilian Landless Workers Movement women's access to pre-natal care and cervical cancer prevention. Interviews were done in 2005 with five women in the city of Cajamar, Brazil. The thematic analysis of content made it possible to evidence that access barriers such as territorial delimitation and geographical distance let women use false addresses as mechanisms to receive care. Pap smear tests were performed only during pregnancy. Health care provided for these women was fragmented and they received care solely because of their reproductive condition. Access to health services must be understood as continuous and complete assistance in all phases of a woman's life and they consist of a challenge to reach rural women. Improving access to information and education for these women corresponds to the possibility of exercising the universal right of access to health care based on the principle of equity.

Mulheres rurais: tecendo novas relações e reconhecendo direitos

A presença das mulheres rurais na produção agrícola familiar é um fato. Mesmo na invisibilidade, não se pode negar que elas estão ocupando terras, plantando, colhendo, e cultivando o desejo de ter uma terra livre e usufruí-la com seu trabalho. Presentes na casa, no quintal, na roça e na luta pela terra, as mulheres tiveram ainda de lutar pelo direito de serem reconhecidas como trabalhadoras. A emergência das mulheres rurais nos movimentos sociais proporcionou seu aparecimento como sujeito político, rompendo sua invisibilidade como trabalhadora. Nesse aprendizado e experimentação as mulheres rurais criaram seu próprio movimento, consolidado na década de 1980. Desde então realizam encontros nacionais, marchas e campanhas, criaram coletivos de mulheres e conquistaram direitos. Os Coletivos de Mulheres estão vinculados à Federação de Trabalhadores da Agricultura do Ceará (FETRAE - CE) ou ao Movimento dos Trabalhadores Rurais Sem Terra (MST) e constituem espaços importantes de ressignificação das atividades produtivas das mulheres.

Comparing Critical Junctures: The Democratic Inclusion of Social Movements in Norway and Latin America

Latin America is currently characterised by the rise of a number of strong social movements and the election of governments that have their support. This has given rise to hopes for the emergence of more inclusive political systems, and stable democracies. However, many of the new regimes either show limited ability to create significant change in policies or practices for ensuring social inclusion, or have produced new forms of fragmentation and social conflicts. What are the long-term prospects of democratic inclusion of the social movements? This article approaches this question through a comparison of three current social movements in Latin America—the Landless Workers Movement (MST) in Brazil, the coca growers (cocaleros) movement in Bolivia and the movement of the unemployed (piqueteros) in Argentina—with the experience of the Norwegian labour movement in the early 20th century. It argues that the inclusion of social movements depends on their own internal structure and strategies as well as the state's institutional capacity and the global politic-economic context.

Land Reform in the Time of Neoliberalism: A Many‐Splendored Thing

Abstract: Over the past 20 years, land reform – defined here as the redistribution of land from large to small properties – has emerged as an important political issue in the Global South. Actors with widely differing ideological perspectives have claimed land reform as central to their political, social and economic platforms. In this paper, I compare reforms championed under the neoliberal auspices of the World Bank (the so‐called Market Led Agrarian Reforms) with those supported by popular grassroots actors such as the Movement of Landless Workers (the MST) in Brazil. I argue that although these two approaches to land reform are often considered antithetical to one another, they share a common theoretical foundation. Both are rooted in a labor theory of property that attributes the fruits of one's labor to the laborer. Where the two differ is in their interpretation of the “original sin” through which land and labor came to be misaligned: neoliberal actors see the state as the key source of land‐related inefficiency while popular grassroots actors identify the market as the key source. I analyze case material from northeastern Brazil and suggest that the institutionalization of the labor theory of property (across civil society, state and market in the region) has generated insecurities for new land reform beneficiaries who must protect their property rights with visible evidence of their productivity.

The Movement of the Landless Rural Workers: Issues of Development in Brazil

Development and modernization are thought to go hand in hand. The World Bank and the International Monetary Fund compel nations to “modernize and develop” through free enterprise capitalism, increased economic growth and Gross Domestic Product, inclusion in global markets, privatization of national assets, and cuts in social spending. However, even when countries achieve some level of economic prosperity and development, the majority of their people lag behind, particularly in Latin America, Africa, and Asia. Drawing on Sen's social choice theory, this paper examines the alternative development model proposed by the Movement of the Brazilian Rural Landless Workers.