Landless Rural Workers Research Articles

Organizing In Brazil: The Landless Rural Workers’ Movement and the Aids Movement

This paper examines the relationship between social movements and the state in Brazil. Comparing the experiences of the AIDS Movement with the Landless Rural Workers’ Movement, I explain how the political opportunity structures available to a movement vary by issue. Political opportunity structures are products of politi-coeconomic conditions, and also of dominant ideologies. Such structures interact with movement claims in determining the space for civil society to effect change.

Educação popular, saúde e segurança alimentar em áreas do Movimento dos Trabalhadores Rurais Sem Terra

Este artigo analisa o desenvolvimento de uma ação educativa em segurança alimentar e nutricional envolvendo o Movimento dos Trabalhadores Rurais Sem Terra, na região Metropolitana de Belo Horizonte, Minas Gerais. A partir do registro da experiência, enfatizou-se a metodologia da ação, os saberes mobilizados e as mudanças nas práticas de saúde, segurança alimentar e produção agropecuária dos sujeitos envolvidos. As reflexões apontam para alguns elementos da metodologia que contribuíram para o desenvolvimento da referida ação educativa, para a construção de uma concepção ampliada sobre o processo saúde-doença a partir da inter-relação entre saúde, produção, alimentação e práticas populares de cuidado, além dos desafios e potencialidades ao fortalecimento da segurança alimentar e nutricional nas áreas de Reforma Agrária que integraram a experiência.

Solidarity Economy and Agricultural Cooperatives: The Experience of the Brazilian Landless Rural Workers Movement

Based on field research in southern Brazil, this paper examines successful experiences of encampment, and especially of two agricultural cooperatives of the Landless Rural Workers Movement (MST) as part of the solidarity economy. These co-ops exemplified collective searches for better living conditions to respond to people's needs and hopes, beside and beyond the market economy. The paper thus explores (1) community dynamics and movement-building among MST participants as they interact with one another and are shaped by daily practices in their collective struggle for land access and justice; (2) how they foster alternative imaginaries (vision, hope, projects), forms of production, and social reproduction that nurture greater autonomy, solidarity, cooperation, and democratic participation; and (3) how various forms of cooperation allow MST participants to appropriate, defy and transform dominant norms and practices in their everyday lives. The latter process is crucial for researchers and activists interested in social change since these forces are contributing to opening up spaces that allow the emergence of new norms and values, intertwined with new practices and ways of being in the making, despite existing obstacles and challenges.

Diálogo entre universidade e movimentos sociais: busca de compromisso e transformação social

Este artigo propõe uma discussão sobre a entrada de cursos superiores pelo Programa Nacional de Educação na Reforma Agrária (PRONERA) em universidades públicas do Estado de São Paulo, e traz para isso, o curso de Pedagogia da Terra da Universidade Federal de São Carlos (UFSCar), o primeiro curso desta natureza no estado. O curso de Pedagogia da Terra da UFSCar é composto e acompanhado por 4 movimentos e organizações sociais diferentes: Movimento dos Trabalhadores Rurais Sem Terra (MST), Organização das Mulheres Assentadas e Quilombolas do Estado de São Paulo (OMAQUESP), Federação da Agricultura Familiar do Estado de São Paulo (FAF) e Federação dos Empregados Rurais e Assalariados do Estado de São Paulo (FERAESP). A educação do campo e em especial o curso de Pedagogia da Terra, trouxe para os sujeitos do campo a possibilidade de acesso ao ensino superior o que lhes proporcionou uma forma de gerenciar suas próprias vidas, sendo sujeitos tanto do processo de proposição do modelo de educação que querem, como também participando ativamente na construção de novos conhecimentos. Sujeitos que aprendendo e ensinando vão buscando novas possibilidades de sobrevivência e de conquista de uma vida de qualidade

O Museu do MST e a emergência de uma nova museologia

The article deals with the emergence in Brazil of a new type of museum: the Museum of the Landless Rural Workers Movement (MST). We discuss this sense as well as the social and political need and eplain that this type of museums may have a major significance for the country. We show that this new design museum, also emerged from the new museology. Keywords: MST Museum; memory of struggle; museology; agrarian reform; social development.

Re-peasantization, Resistance and Subordination: The Struggle for Land and Agrarian Reform in Brazil

The process of re-peasantization in Brazil occurs primarily through the peasant struggle for land and agrarian reform. Adopting a geographic method and using territorialization as a central axis of study, this article analyzes the history of peasant formation, particularly focusing on the formation of the Landless Rural Workers’ Movement (MST), the peasant movement that has most contributed to the process of recreating the peasantry through land occupations. The process of re-peasantization occurring over the last 30 years is supported by data showing that more than a million families have been settled through agrarian reform. However, these fractional territorial gains have not eliminated the subordination of peasants by capitalized land rent. Using data from the most recent Agricultural Census, we highlight the situation of dependence to which Brazilian peasants are submitted. The hegemony of agribusiness has provoked a reflux in the peasant struggle for land and agrarian reform, which currently finds itself stagnant. The greatest challenge for peasant movements is the creation of a development model for their territories which would enable them to recuperate the process of re-peasantization.

Diagnóstico socioeconômico da produção leiteira em três assentamentos de reforma agrária no semiárido do Estado de Sergipe

The aimed this research was a socioeconomic survey of dairy farms, from November 2007 to January 2008, in agrarian reform settlements Paulo Freire, Cachoeirinha e Cajueiro, located respectively in municipalities Porto da Folha, Gararu e Poço Redondo in the semiarid of Sergipe State. Data were obtained through questionnaires to producers, containing questions that dealt from the social to the economic factor. Was observed a high rate of illiteracy among producers (varying from 28.5 to 49%), which prejudice the production system due to their incapacity to understand and apply new technologies. The herd was characterized by crossbred animals derived from crosses between Holstein and Gir or Guzera and small production daily (5.4 to 6.5 liters/cow), with reduction in profitability and commitment of family lace. It was perceived unfavorable relationship between the amount received per liter of milk - varying from R$ 0.52 to R$ 0.54, between the settlements - and the average cost of producing a liter of milk, varying from R$ 1.19 to R$ 1.44. Moreover, the difficulty of access to technology and technical assistance are problems found in 23.8, 90 and 84.8%, respectively, in the settlements Paulo Freire, Cachoeirinha and Cajueiro. Therefore, is necessary the fomentation of research and development of alternatives to improve the productivity and sustainability of producers with these breeding conditions and the Movement of Landless Rural Workers (MST) invests mainly technical assistance and education to the settlers to that be promoted an acceleration and improvement in its development.

Aqui ninguém domina ninguém: sentidos do trabalho e produção de saúde para trabalhadores de assentamento do Movimento dos Trabalhadores Rurais Sem Terra

This paper discusses the partial results of qualitative research on lifestyles and meanings attributed to health and work among settlers from the Landless Rural Workers' Movement (MST) and identifies strategies developed by workers to maintain and/or promote health. The study was conducted in a rural settlement affiliated with the MST in Campos dos Goytacazes, Rio de Janeiro State, Brazil. The ergological approach was the main theoretical and methodological reference for understanding work from the perspective of "human activity". The study techniques included document analysis, participant observation, semi-structured interviews, and focus groups, and the data were submitted to thematic content analysis. The landless rural workers attributed the meanings of freedom and satisfaction to their work, associated with self-management and autonomy, which they reported as key elements for health. Although rural work was considered tiring, the work and way of life in the settlement provided this community with possibilities for ensuring their health and resisting the hegemonic agribusiness model.

A estrutura organizacional do MST: lógica política e lógica prática

Nosso objetivo é compreender as relações entre a base do Movimento dos Trabalhadores Rurais Sem Terra (MST) e suas lideranças, tomando como elemento de mediação a estrutura organizacional formalmente adotada em 2003. Para tanto, três chaves analíticas são utilizadas: Clastres, que explora a ideia de estrutura separada do corpo social; Leach, que opõe um modelo abstrato de organização às situações práticas observadas e interpretadas a partir da materialidade do comportamento dos assentados e acampados; o Neo-institucionalismo, que trata as instituições enquanto regras e normas que regulamentam a vida social. As análises foram baseadas em observações realizadas no XII Encontro Estadual do MST na Paraíba e nos assentamentos rurais José Antonio Eufrosino e Osiel Pereira, localizados no município de Campina Grande. Recusando as abordagens que tentam medir o grau de adoção dos modelos organizacionais formais pelos grupos sociais, tentamos revelar as incongruências produtoras das dinâmicas de reestruturação da organização do MST.

Epidemiological aspects of schistosomiasis in workers of the Movement of Landless Rural Workers

Schistosomiasis is endemic in 74 countries and is considered a serious public health problem in some locations. A transverse study was performed of 13 landless settlements in southern Sergipe from February to December 2009. The study included 822 settlers, of whom 601 underwent stool testing. The prevalence of schistosomiasis in landless workers was 4.3%. The population has a low education level, and basic sanitation services are not available to all residents. The prevalence of schistosomiasis was low in the population and among different settlements, possibly because of different forms of water use by the settlers.

Reinventing the Lefts in Latin America

The Venezuelan popular educator and activist Joel Linares tells us, in Pablo Navarrete’s 2009 film Inside the Revolution, that “one morning in Guarenas, behind the mountains [on the outskirts of Caracas], at 5 a.m. on February 27, 1989, a woman tried to get on the bus. When she refused to pay the new bus fare, the driver pushed her. When the driver pushed her, that was the beginning of everything. . . . The other passengers . . . got up from their seats and attacked the bus with sticks and then turned it upside down and burned it.” The popular uprising known as the Caracazo that emerged from this event turned isolated acts of resistance into mass rebellion and challenged “normal” politics. Those who had been silenced by the elite pact of developmentalism and its descent into neoliberalism began to speak as political subjects. The Caracazo marked the beginning of a new era of popular struggle in Venezuela and, arguably, across Latin America. As Mendieta (2008: xii) argues, the ideological prophets and political architects of neoliberalism sought to create an age of “the abolition of politics.” This “antipolitics” was primarily an effort to disarticulate, delegitimize, and criminalize popular-class political horizons and imaginaries, projects, subjectivities, moral economies,1 and ways of life. The embodied and visceral rupture of the Caracazo signaled the emergence of cracks in neoliberal elites’ ability to speak for Latin America’s popular classes. The fault lines in this project of antipolitics deepened in the following decade and eventually resulted in the election to power of various governments falling under the broad rubric of the “pink tide,” including those of Luiz Ignacio (Lula) da Silva of the Workers’ Party in Brazil, Hugo Chavez in Venezuela, and Evo Morales in Bolivia, and the development of social-movement and community struggles—the recovered-factories movement in Argentina, the Movimento Sem Terra (Landless Rural Workers’ Movement—MST) in Brazil, the water movements in Uruguay, the indigenous movements in Ecuador and Bolivia, the urban land committees in Venezuela, 489665LAPXXX10.1177/0094582X13489665LATIN AMERICAN PERSPECTIVESMotta 2013

Mística, myself and I: Beyond cultural politics in Brazil’s Landless Workers’ Movement

How do grassroots social movements respond to shifting perceptions within their bases on key issues? This article centres its analysis on the Movimento dos Trabalhadores Rurais Sem Terra (MST – Landless Rural Workers’ Movement) and instances of the movement’s cultural activity, in particular, mística. It is recognised that the MST’s cultural activity reflects a deep engagement with cultural politics, and further, that the movement’s culture sector contributes directly to the delineation and formation of the ‘landless’ identity. However, from an ethnographic perspective and privileging the experiences of the members of the movement, this article goes beyond cultural politics to suggest that shifting notions of individualism, in the context of the movement’s cultural activity, are having an impact on MST artistic expression and members’ daily lives. The article argues that from within the bases of the movement, there has been a shift from what can be termed a receptive individualism, where members internalise cultural activity, to an expressive individualism, where members actively seek to shape the movement’s cultural programmes. Members speak of a lack of visceral energy that the culture sector’s activities used to possess, which provides the impetus for the article’s concluding remarks on how social movements respond to transformation more widely.

A proposta pedagógica do MST e as escolas de campo

Without education, land reform is not complete. Was thinking this way that the Movement of Landless Rural Workers proposed and succeeded in institutionalizing a proposal for education in the field, appropriate to the reality of the field. The teaching of the MST preaches that besides the land farmers need a transformation of education, an education does not equal, but different from that practiced in the city and own field outside the world under the direct influence of the movement social. In this paper, the intention is to analyze the pedagogical MST, enhancing their power, their actions and their limitations.

Socialist Values and Cooperation in Brazil’s Landless Rural Workers’ Movement

When the Movimento de Trabalhadores Rurais Sem Terra do Brasil (Movement of Landless Rural Workers’ of Brazil—MST) occupies land and forms autonomous agricultural communities, it aspires to achieve the supremacy of labor over capital and to embody socialist values. However, a policy of organizing production cooperatives on its settlements in the early 1990s was unsuccessful, principally because of a failure fully to respect traditional forms of work and sociability. However, the MST learned from its early mistakes and has since developed elaborate forms of informal and formal cooperation on land that is essentially the common property of a democratic settlement association. It is therefore living up to its socialist objectives and manifesting a real alternative to capitalist work and property relations. Cuando el Movimento de Trabalhadores Rurais Sem Terra do Brasil (MST) ocupa tierra y forma comunidades agrícolas autónomas, aspira a lograr la supremacía del trabajo sobre capital y encarnar valores socialistas. No obstante, una política para organizar cooperativas de producción en sus asentamientos a principios de los 1990 no prosperó, mayormente por la falta de respeto pleno a las formas tradicionales de trabajo y sociabilidad. El MST aprendió de sus errores iniciales y desde entonces ha desarrollado intricadas formas de cooperación informal y formal en tierra que es esencialmente la propiedad común de una asociación de asentamiento democrática. Por lo tanto está haciendo honra a sus objetivos socialistas y demostrando una alternativa concreta a las relaciones capitalistas de trabajo y propiedad.

AGRARIAN REFORM, FOOD SOVEREIGNTY AND THE MST: SOCIO-ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACTS OF AGROFUELS PRODUCTION IN THE PONTAL DO PARANAPANEMA REGION OF SÃO PAULO STATE, BRAZIL ( Reforma agrária, soberania alimentar e o MST: impactos socioambientais da produção de...)

In Brazil, the expansion of sugarcane for ethanol production has fundamentally altered the rural landscape and represents a significant change in the trajectory of the country’s rural development and agrarian reform policies. Current policies are highly skewed in favour of agrofuel industries and are denying landless rural workers and peasant families, like those of Brazil’s Landless Workers Movement (MST), access to land. In addition to the heavy social costs, the agrofuel industry threatens the environment by polluting the air, water and land. This paper elucidates the socio-environmental impacts of the burgeoning sugarcane-ethanol industry in the Pontal do Paranapanema, a region in the extreme west of the São Paulo state with a long history of land-related conflicts. While corporations reap astronomical profits from the agrofuel industry, the costs of agrofuel expansion in the Pontal do Paranapanema and in Brazil have been disproportionally borne by the environment and the most impoverished and marginalized members of society.

Um sem-terra ideal para um movimento nacional: representações políticas do MST nas páginas do Jornal dos Trabalhadores Rurais Sem Terra

Este artigo analisa as representações de sem-terra contidas nas páginas do Jornal dos Trabalhadores Rurais Sem Terra num período de formação da Nova República e de articulação nacional do Movimento dos Trabalhadores Rurais Sem Terra (MST). O tabloide, organizado por entidades de apoio e direção do MST, tornou-se instrumento de difusão de propostas e perspectivas da mobilização, idealizando o trabalhador rural sem-terra como protagonista da luta pela reforma agrária. Tais representações foram tecidas por intelectuais, jornalistas, militantes de entidades de apoio e lideranças sem-terra que, nas tensões de elaboração e apropriação do informativo, delimitaram um espaço de atuação política em que, atrás dos aparentes propósitos da reforma agrária, encontrava-se a luta pela comunicação.

Legitimidade dosatos de desobediência civil do Movimento dos Trabalhadores Rurais sem Terra sob o enfoque da teoria de Hannah Arendt

Legitimidade dosatos de desobediência civil do Movimento dos Trabalhadores Rurais sem Terra sob o enfoque da teoria de Hannah Arendt

This Land is Ours Now: Social Mobilization and the Meanings of Land in Brazil, Wendy Wolford, Durham, NC.: Duke University Press, 2010

AbstractIn this review, I highlight the valuable contributions of Wendy Wolford’s latest book, which rest on her extensive understanding of the diversity of the Brazilian countryside and her acute ability to weave together the impact that land-tenure patterns, labour regimes and regional cultures have had upon settlers of the Landless Rural Workers’ Movement. It also assesses the central claim of the book which suggests that the MST is often unable to retain its membership because the leadership reproduces an understanding of peasant agriculture that is specific to the South of Brazil. The review argues that Wolford’s main argument falls foul of four shortcomings related to her methodology, her understanding of the MST’s ideology, her choice of not including the process of encampment and the MST’s commitment to radical social change in her analysis, and finally her problematic interpretation of the relationship between the grassroots membership and the leadership of the movement.

Landless: Meanings and Transformations of a Collective Action Category in Brazil

This article identifies the historical process through which the social category of the ‘landless’ was produced in Brazil, as well as the subsequent growth of a social movement claiming this category, between 1960 and 1980. The article analyzes two moments in which the landless appear, the first being the governorship of Leonel Brizola in the southern state of Rio Grande do Sul in the 1960s; and the second, the occupations that occurred in the same state between 1978 and 1980, culminating in the birth of the MST (Landless Rural Workers’ Movement). These cases demonstrate that collective action involving the landless shaped government responses and, furthermore, that the mobilization of the category has presupposed the mobilization of the state.

Globalizing the social movements? Labour and the World Social Forum

As trade unions have come to confront new challenges, many have turned to alliances with NGOs and community groups. On a global scale, most prominent alternative to 'traditional' institutions comes in form of World Social Forum. This paper will examine origins of World Social Forum providing a short history of its foundations. It then proceeds to critically analyse forum, its foundations, organizing principles and achievements.The first World Social Forum (WSF) was held in Porto Allegre as a response to World Economic Forum. According to one of founders of WSF, Fransisco Chico Whitaker, development of WSF can be seen in context of emerging protests against World Trade Organization, IMF and World Bank in 1998 and 1999 . Following this, Whitaker suggests that fellow Brazillian, Oded Grajew, suggested idea of a social forum similar to World Economic Forum which had taken place in Davos for roughly 20 years3. This led to consultation with director of newspaper Le Monde Diplomatique and president of Association for Taxation of financial Transactions for Aid of Citizens (ATTAC) in France, Bernard Cassen. Cassen provided encouragement, and promised promotion through his newspaper4. After consultations between Whitaker, Grajew and other interested organizations in Brazil, it was decided that first WSF would be held in Porto Allegre, Brazil in 2001.As a proposal, WSF can be considered Franco-Brazilian in origin (mostly Brazilian) with initial network of organizations consisting of Brazilian Association of Non-Governmental Organizations [Brazil]; ATTAC [France]; Brazilian Justice & Peace Commission [Brazil]; Brazilian Business Association for Citizenship [Brazil]; Central Trade Union Federation [Brazil]; Brazilian Institute for Social and Economic Studies [Brazil]; Centre for Global Justice [Brazil] and Landless Rural Workers Movement [Brazil]5. These organizations sent a delegation to Geneva where a major anti-globalization demonstration was taking place against United Nations' Copenhagen Summit, and set up first Committee, to organize forum.Since 2001, WSF has run in successive years in a variety of locations including Brazil, India, Mali, Venezuela, Pakistan and Kenya. The organizations with delegates on International Council have expanded to include various trade union confederations, non-government organizations, peasant organizations from around world with many more organizations taking part in forum each year.From perspective of trade union internationals, it appears that participation in WSF has been largely instrumental in nature, in particular in relation to promotion of Decent Work agenda. Evidence of this is in formation of Decent Work Alliance, a subgroup within WSF. According to ITUC, the Decent Work Alliance, led by ITUC, ETUC, Solidar, Global Progressive Forum and Social Alert, will also be organizing events during WSF on following themes: a new financial architecture to ensure decent work; a global welfare state; and decent work, decent life campaign6. Such participation has led commentators such as Peter Waterman to conclude that ...the newly-merged International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC) is coming in forcefully, under banner of 'Decent Work'7. Other national trade union confederations have forged links with forum in terms of seeing common aims and goals. An example of this is Australian Council of Trade Union's 2003 congress which in relation to its campaign against financial deregulation resolved to participate in new organizing frameworks including WSF8.While WSF may be an impressive event from an organizational and logistical perspective, ability of WSF to represent labour on a global scale is a separate question. Its effectiveness in terms of how its participating organizations are achieving its stated aims of opposing neoliberalism and. …