Landless Workers Movement Research Articles

Sobre cooperação e cooperativas em assentamentos rurais

O artigo trata do significado da cooperação e do cooperativismo no processo organizativo de assentamentos rurais no estado de São Paulo. Compreendendo cooperação e cooperativismo como processos sociais distintos, discuto os motivos do movimento de institucionalização de cooperativas na sua relação com o declínio das formas de cooperação tradicionalmente desenvolvidas no mundo rural brasileiro. Analiso o significado da cooperação e os problemas decorrentes da sua institucionalização no interior dos assentamentos rurais organizados pelo Movimento dos Trabalhadores Rurais Sem Terra (MST), procurando identificar os elementos que indicam mudanças e permanências em relação ao tradicional cooperativismo rural. Procuro refletir sobre os motivos da atual tendência existente entre os assentados para refutar a cooperativa como modelo organizacional, mas valorizar a cooperação como modo de organização da vida econômica e societária.

Alternative Forms of Working-Class Organization and the Mobilization of Informal-Sector Workers in Brazil in the Era of Neoliberalism

AbstractThis article examines recent changes in working-class collective actions. First it explains which were the main causes for the decline of traditional labor union militancy resulting from effects of economic stabilization, neoliberalization, and globalization on those key segments of labor movement that accounted for the backbone of union militancy as in the case of the automotive workers, bank workers, steelworkers, and civil servants of the Brazilian economy during the decade of the 1990s. Secondly, the article analyzes the emergence of alternative forms of worker contention among the urban informal sector and the rural workers through the landless workers movement, which also have been affected by the processes of neoliberalization and globalization, but unlike the workers in the formal sector, these continue to contend for worker entitlements and introduce new forms of worker organization different from the conventional union organizations upon which is based the Brazilian labor movement.

FLORÍSTICA E FITOSSOCIOLOGIA DE UMA ÁREA DE RESERVA LEGAL RECUPERADA POR MEIO DE SISTEMA AGROFLORESTAL NA REGIÃO DO PONTAL DO PARANAPANEMA, SÃO PAULO

Pontal do Paranapanema, extremo oeste do estado de São Paulo, é uma região conhecida em todo o Brasil devido aos conflitos pela posse de terra protagonizados pelo Movimento dos Trabalhadores Rurais Sem Terra (MST). É também a região que apresenta a maior área contínua de Floresta Estacional Semidecidual do estado, contida no Parque Estadual Morro do Diabo. Essa porção de floresta se encontra imersa numa matriz de grandes pastagens e assentamentos rurais, que, como qualquer propriedade rural, devem manter 20% de sua área com cobertura florestal, a chamada Reserva Legal, a qual deve ser recomposta, caso não exista. Assim, este trabalho teve por objetivo realizar um levantamento florístico e fitossociológico em uma área de 15 hectares de Reserva Legal recomposta por meio de um Sistema Agroflorestal, no assentamento Santa Zélia, município de Teodoro Sampaio. O levantamento foi feito por meio de parcelas e os dados analisados pelo software FITOPAC. Foram amostradas 62 espécies distribuídas em 29 famílias, num total de 724 indivíduos vivos por hectare. Os resultados mostram que a área possui vegetação representativa do bioma local, contendo mais espécies que o mínimo exigido pela legislação estadual vigente para reflorestamentos com até 20 hectares.

Entre a "violência" e a "espontaneidade" reflexões sobre os processos de mobilização para ocupações de terra no Rio de Janeiro

No segundo semestre de 2000, acompanhei a etapa final de um processo de mobilização para uma ocupação de terras no estado do Rio de Janeiro. Esse processo, organizado pelo MST/RJ, envolveu a realização de reuniões preparatórias, as chamadas reuniões de frente de massa. Por meio da descrição e da análise de algumas dessas reuniões, examino neste artigo como foi o processo de mobilização. Focalizando o ponto de vista dos organizadores, apresento as estratégias adotadas e discuto seus limites, possibilidades e contradições. De um ponto de vista mais amplo, o texto insere-se na discussão sobre a constituição dos movimentos sociais no Brasil. Nesse sentido, aponto para os limites de dois tipos de abordagens: aquelas que reivindicam um caráter espontâneo para a formação dos movimentos sociais, e aquelas que percebem esses processos como novas formas de se reproduzirem antigos modelos da relação patrão-empregados.

Agrarian Moral Economies and Neoliberalism in Brazil: Competing Worldviews and the State in the Struggle for Land

The 1990s was the decade of neoliberalism in Brazil. During the successive administrations of President Fernando Henrique Cardoso (1995–2003), public enterprises were privatized, import tariffs were slashed, regional free-trade markets were established, and fiscal discipline was prioritized in an attempt to control a massive public debt. As his first term progressed, however, Cardoso was forced to respond to the insistent popular demand for reform of the country's inequitable land-tenure structure. The issue became increasingly visible in the 1990s because of the strength of a grassroots social movement, the Movement of Landless Workers (MST). In response to the demands for agrarian reform, the government offered its support for an essentially neoliberal, market-based alternative to state-led distribution—an alternative favored by official development organizations throughout the Third World at this time. In this paper, I argue that the support for a market-led agrarian reform privileged the agrarian elite in Brazil and delegitimated the MST's struggle, not only because it reinforced the elite's claim to land but also because it legitimated the elite's particular interpretation of productivity and property rights. The claims put forward both by the agrarian elite and by the MST members in the southern state of Santa Catarina derive from what can usefully be considered ‘agrarian moral economies’.

Veja o MST! - Um frame revelado

Esta é uma análise de duas reportagens jornalísticas publicadas em 3/04/2002, referentes a um único episódio: a invasão, liderada pelo Movimento dos Trabalhadores Sem-Terra (MST), da Fazenda Córrego da Ponte, situada em Buritis, Minas Gerais, de propriedade da família do então presidente Fernando Henrique Cardoso, ocorrida em 23/03/2002. Tal análise revela, no texto da Revista Veja (p. 46 a 50), a construção, principalmente através de recursos lexicais, de um determinado modelo cognitivo idealizado - frame - (Fauconnier, 1997) - subjacente à macro-estrutura do texto, o que não ocorre em relação à reportagem da Revista Isto é (p. 31 a 34). A existência de tal frame, compartilhada culturalmente por escritores e leitores, leva, por parte destes, a interpretações maniqueístas do evento sendo reportado.

Interdisciplinaridade e solidariedade em experiencias cooperativas do MST

A research project on cooperative experiences made in settlements of the Movement of Landless Rural Workers (MST) in the municipality of Piratini, state of Rio Grande do Sul, and developed with the support of FAPERGS and CNPq and with the participation of researchers and students from three universities (UCPel, UFPel and UFRGS) made it possible to arrive at some conclusions about the relationship between interdisciplinarity and solidarity that characterizes the cooperative work pursued by the MST. 1) The settlers freely move through the fields of work, education and leisure (which the research focused on), ignoring borders between disciplines. 2) Interdisciplinarity emerges as the element capable of making the difference between the autonomous, solidary, self-managed cooperative work and the cooperative work that is heteronomous, subordinated, commanded by capital. 3) Thus, interdisciplinarity and solidarity in work, education and leisure (and one may assume that this also applies to other dimensions of life in small family-based farms) emerge as elements of one and the same substance that ground and presuppose each other. Key words: cooperative work, solidarity, interdisciplinarity, MST.

The landless rural movement and the settlements in the West of Paraná: agreements and disagreements over the struggle for land

This paper examines three case studies of rural settlements in the west of Parana, which were settled in different periods, and are representative of the changes in the Movement of Landless Rural Workers (MST) over the years, particularly as regards the organizational forms assumed by the rural settlements. These were based on the collective organization of production, which, when implemented, provoked conflicts revealing the inadequacies of such model. This paper also highlights the tensions between the leadership of the MST and its base, directly related to the existence of two projects in clear opposition: the ideological political project of the MST leadership and the project for organizing daily life and production by the social base of the movement.

This Land Is Ours Now: Spatial Imaginaries and the Struggle for Land in Brazil

In recent years, scholars of “contentious politics” have paid increasing attention to the dynamics of space and place in the construction of organized resistance. To date, however, the literature has tended to focus on the social construction of space rather than the equally important spatial constitution of the social. In this paper, I analyze how particular understandings of space, or what I call “spatial imaginaries”—cognitive frameworks, both collective and individual, constituted through the lived experiences, perceptions, and conceptions of space itself—influenced the formation of the largest grassroots social movement in Brazilian history, the Movement of Rural Landless Workers (the MST). I analyze the decision to join the MST among small family farmers in southern Brazil and rural plantation workers in northeastern Brazil. People from both groups decided to join the movement, but the farmers from southern Brazil used their spatial imaginaries to embrace the act of occupying land and to create new frontiers for colonization while the rural workers from northeastern Brazil overcame the spatial imaginaries produced through the plantation labor system and joined the movement because they had few other options available to them. Because such imaginaries stay with people long after they engage in the initial acts of mobilization, incorporating this sort of analysis introduces an important dynamic component into the analysis of movement formation.

Naming the System: Inequality and Work in the Global Economy (review)

Reviewed by: Naming the System: Inequality and Work in the Global Economy Stephanie Luce Naming the System: Inequality and Work in the Global Economy. By Michael D. Yates . New York: Monthly Review Press, 2003. 176 pp. $16.95 paper. Once again Michael Yates has produced a text that simplifies complex concepts for a general audience. Just as Why Unions Matter explains the labor movement clearly and concisely, his new book Naming the System deconstructs capitalism and its impact on workers around the globe. While many authors have tried to explain how the laws of supply and demand affect the macro and micro-economy, Yates offers a refreshingly direct and transparent look at the economy within a political context. Naming the System begins by explaining the ideological framework of the economics discipline. This is a logical place to start. Yet shockingly few economics texts begin, or even go there. Yates shows his readers how the supremacy of one particular theory of the economy—what he calls "the neoclassical/neoliberal dogma" has so thoroughly dominated the discourse that it can be difficult to even step outside of it and talk about the economy in different terms. But this is precisely what Yates does, simply and directly. He states that despite the importance of economic issues to our everyday lives, few people have a good understanding of how the economy functions. Even those who have taken college-level economics course are often befuddled about how the economy actually works. After an overview of the fundamentals of capitalism, Yates goes through some of its most severe failings: persistent inequality among nations and within countries, constant unemployment and underemployment, and no end to bad jobs, low pay, and overwork. These trends are fairly consistent in poor countries as well as rich ones. From there, Yates describes neoclassical theory and how it attempts to explain away the weaknesses mentioned above. He then provides a summary of the basic critiques of neoclassical thought, focusing mostly on Marxist challenges. A chapter entitled "Capitalism's Contradictions" discusses the shortcomings of some radical critiques, for example, why capitalism has not self-destructed or why the working class does not automatically become radicalized with each economic downturn. The book ends with a chapter on alternatives, called "Fighting for a Better World." The strength of Naming the System is not only in its description of the economy in a global context but also in its clear explanation of the limitations of current mainstream thought. One section that could be stronger is the final chapter, where Yates attempts to lay out some alternative visions to encourage readers to challenge capitalism. While some of the examples are encouraging, like Teamsters for a Democratic Union, [End Page 114] the anti-sweatshop movement, the Landless Workers Movement and Workers Party in Brazil, and the "Poors" of South Africa, not all of his examples—such as the FARC in Colombia and the Maoists of Nepal—live up to his call for alternatives with maximum democracy. And none of the examples really comes close to providing a vision of a "new society." Of course, Yates is limited in his examples by the on-the-ground reality of the movements. This book is quite useful for teaching about globalization, public policy, unions, labor markets, and the future of work. In each of these areas, it is crucial that students understand how the economy works and the limitations imposed by the pervasive free market fundamentalism dominating economic discourse. The book contains some photos and sidebars with stories, case studies and explorations of perplexing questions that make the book more reader friendly for undergraduates. Stephanie Luce University of Massachusetts-Amherst Copyright © 2004 the West Virginia University Press, for the United Association for Labor Studies

Exodus, or an imagined political community: the landless workers movement and internal migration in the work of Sebastião Salgado

The objective of this essay is to analyse the photographic production of Sebastiao Salgado of the Landless Workers Movement, aiming at understanding the relationships between the photographic medium and the levels of movement revealed by the images. It investigates how such images portray a “nation”, fragmented and heterogeneous, from the representation of a migrant community. Refusing to migrate to Brazil’s big cities, the Landless Movement accentuates its peripheral nature. Such aspect of resistance from this group is the focus of Salgado’s photographs. Nevertheless, as it is argued throughout the essay, there is a definite tension between “being represented” and “representing itself”: the Landless Movement, because of its political essence, reinforces the importance of photography in the art of “making history”.

Families, Fields, And Fighting For Land: The Spatial Dynamics Of Contention In Rural Brazil

This article analyzes the formation of the largest grassroots social movement in Brazilian history: the Movement of Rural Landless Workers (MST). In movement literature and academic discourse, MST's formation has been consistently attributed to three factors— agricultural restructuring, political transition, and religious organization. These three factors form what I call an "Official Genesis Story." I argue that although the Official Genesis Story fits together well at the macro level, it cannot explain who decided to join MST or why, because the story does not locate acts of resistance in either people or place. A comparison of MST members in two different regions of Brazil shows how the spatial constitution of production and reproduction informed individual decisions to join MST. By geographically situating the official story, we uncover the contentious actors behind the contentious actions.

Formação de professores na prática política do MST: a construção da consciência orgulhosa

Este artigo propõe-se a discutir a experiência de professores e professoras das escolas de assentamento organizadas pelo Movimento dos Trabalhadores Rurais Sem-Terra -- MST, no oeste catarinense. Seguindo uma metodologia qualitativa, o estudo possibilitou a apreensão de aspectos significativos do universo cultural dos sujeitos, destacando as relações construídas na vida familiar, no desempenho da profissão e na participação política no Movimento. A análise da ação desenvolvida pelos professores nos diversos espaços de atuação vai revelando como eles se tornam sujeitos de sua experiência. A adesão às propostas educativas do MST possibilita a manifestação de uma identidade que fortalece a experiência cotidiana de ser professor, favorecendo o desenvolvimento de uma consciência orgulhosa da prática docente. A experiência é realimentada na escola e também nas instâncias educativas propiciadas pelo Movimento, nos contatos com o grupo de docentes, nos estudos que desenvolvem, nas trocas com os alunos e seus familiares. Isso possibilita aos professores estabelecer prioridades, acrescentando elementos significativos aos conteúdos escolares. Evidencia-se aí a perspectiva de veiculação, na escola, de uma dimensão do saber enriquecido pela ação política gerada nas práticas coletivas. Esse envolvimento resulta em experiências diferenciadas que se refletem nas ações desenvolvidas na escola e no Movimento. Com isso, esses professores reelaboram o espaço da escola no meio rural, criando novos compromissos que transformam sua atividade docente, ampliando seu aprendizado e as relações de solidariedade presentes na cultura do campo.

The Socio-Religious Origins of Brazil's Landless Rural Workers Movement

The widespread protest against the impunity, five years after the event, of the military police responsible for the 1996 massacre of nineteen Brazilian landless peasants who were occupying a road in Eldorado dos Carajas has once again drawn the attention of international opinion to the Landless Rural Workers Movement (MST), which stubbornly pursues—despite the murders or massacres of its members by the capangas (agents of the big landowners) or the police—its work of organizing, consciousness-raising, and mobilization for the rights of the poorest of the poor: the Brazilian rural workers. What are the origins and motivations of this movement?This article can also be found at the Monthly Review website, where most recent articles are published in full.Click here to purchase a PDF version of this article at the Monthly Review website.

Are Latin American peasant movements still a force for change? Some new paradigms revisited

This article is a critique of structuralist and postmodern approaches to the study of agrarian reform and the viability, nature and significance of peasant and landless movements in Latin America. Contrary to the dominant structuralist view, we argue that peasant and landless workers’ movements in Latin America are not anachronistic but dynamic modern classes, which in many contexts play a major role in opposing the dominant neoliberal agenda. Against postmodern interpretations of such grassroots agrarian movements, we also argue that in terms of action and programme, peasant and landless workers’ movements have raised fundamental class issues, in some instances combining them with ethnic demands. Deploying a reconstituted class analysis, we examine four cases of peasant/landless workers movements currently challenging state power: the Rural Landless Workers Movement in Brazil, the Revolutionary Armed Forces in Colombia, the National Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities in Ecuador, and the Zapatista Army of National Liberation in Mexico. Our conclusion is that in the current context, peasant and landless workers’ movements in Latin America are engaged in a modern form of struggle, combining traditional forms of solidarity not only with the acceptance/adaptation of modern goals and techniques, but also with a strategic understanding of the levers of power in the national and international system.

Taking the Land into their Hands: The Landless Workers' Movement and the Brazilian State

Institution and constitution building are very much in evidence and continue to lie at the heart of contemporary international governance programmes. The paper explores the underlying limitations of legality and associated institutional frameworks in the light of one of the most significant and, apparently, successful transitions to democracy of recent times, that of Brazil. Against the background of struggles over land, the paper discusses the actions of two leading state institutions specifically charged with implementing the 1988 Constitution, and a social movement, the Landless Workers Movement, which uses mass direct action techniques to demand implementation. Although the study highlights the profound limitations of formal legal processes and institutions, and stresses their socially and politically embedded nature, it also affirms the historical and contemporary significance of the realm of legality in the construction and reproduction of social struggles.

Beyond the Politics of Protest: The Landless Rural Workers Movement of Brazil

ABSTRACT This paper examines the Landless Rural Workers Movement (MST) in Brazil within the context of development and globalization. The MST is pursuing the genuine democratization of Brazil's power structures, which have excluded the poor for centuries. Comprehensive land reform is the starting point in this process. The MST is implementing the stagnant National Plan of Agrarian Reform (PNRA) from the bottom up through the direct occupation of uncultivated private or public lands. It is using non-violent means to seek social justice and is funding its operations with little foreign aid. More significantly, this movement is linking micro-politics to macro-politics to advance the democratization of the polity and economy. Its political praxis reveals great potential for devising alternative, but concrete, counter-hegemonic discourses to neo-liberalism.

The political and social basis of regional variation in land occupations in Brazil

Land occupations led by Brazil's most dynamic social movement the Landless Workers Movement (MST) began as a regional phenomenon. The south‐east and the north‐east regions were initially the centres of land occupations. The successful occupations in these areas were influenced by the origins of the movement, their proximity to urban areas with sympathetic support networks, concentrations of landless workers and the availability of vast areas of uncultivated land. Initial land settlements led to successful occupations in adjoining areas. Conditions which led to successful organising were later systematised by the MST leaders into a national strategy. Subsequently this strategy directed social intervention in other regions and created the basis for the extension of land occupations in regions beyond their original areas of strength. The extension of successful land occupations to new areas has been based on the ‘transplantation’ of leaders and the recruitment of local cadres who have assimilated the lessons of earlier experience. The MST has been transformed from a regional to a national movement. In the process, the MST has moved from a sectoral ‘agrarian reform’ social movement to a political movement with a national political agenda.

Cultural Idioms and Political Ideologies in the Revolutionary Reconstruction of State Power: A Rejoinder to Sewell

It is a rare pleasure in intellectual life to have one's work confronted in a simultaneously appreciative and challenging fashion. I am indebted to William Sewell for offering an analytically sophisticated and historically grounded critique of the way States and Social Revolutions addresses the problem of ideology.' He rightly points out that I treated the issues too cursorily and relied upon a notion of ideologies as deliberate blueprints for change that leaves untouched many of the ways in which ideas may affect the course of revolutions. Sewell offers instead "a much more robust conception of ideology . . . that treats ideology as anonymous, collective, and constitutive of social order."2 According to Sewell, this way of understanding ideology is consonant with the overall structural analysis of States and Social Revolutions, and it can guide us toward wise questions and answers about the role of ideological transformations in the French Revolution and beyond. If States and Social Revolutions "provoked" Sewell to write the preceding article, his able discussion has in turn encouraged me to think through more carefully how the analysis of ideologies should-and should not-be incorporated into future historical and comparative work on revolutions. Perhaps surprisingly, given my reputation for "structural determinism," I shall suggest that we need a less "anonymous" approach than Sewell advocates. I certainly agree with Sewell that culture is "transpersonal," but I want to register profound reservations about the use of anthropological conceptions of cultural systems in analyzing the contributions made by cultural idioms and ideological activities to revolutionary transformations.