The most recent phase of the land struggle came just before the 1964 coup. Associations of agricultural workers were set up in the central zone under the influence of the Brazilian Communist Party (PCB); in about 1954, the Peasant Leagues were created on the sugar plantations of Pernambuco; and in the south of the country many land occupations were led by the Movement of Landless Farmers, obtaining from the state governmentheaded at that time by Leonel Brizola - the expropriation of various large ranches.
Although the MST connects with this centuries-long tradition of agrarian struggle, its immediate origins lie in the changes promoted by the military government which came to power in 1964. Severe repression broke up all organisation in the countryside. The main leaders were imprisoned, murdered or forced into exile. In organisational terms there was a sharp break.
On the other hand, the economic model imposed led to the disappearance of hundreds of thousands of small-holdings growing coffee, cotton and subsistence crops. Both the old landowners and the new agribusinesses benefited from this massive expulsion of peasants from their land, especially in the southern and central states. For the peasants, the process of land concentration was an earthquake of similar magnitude to the conquest of the indigenous people centuries earlier. The net result is that half the land suitable for agriculture is in the hands of 1% of the landowners, 80% of the land lies unused. and 65% of the population suffers from varying levels of malnutrition. The rural exodus has swept 30 million people off the land in less than 20 years - it's the biggest migration in human history in such a short period of time. Those who have lost their land, together with those who never had any, number 12 million. This is the basis of the MST's support.
During that first period there were spontaneous and barely organised forms of resistance to the evictions from the land. The conflicts multiplied. Crops and peasant homesteads were burnt and there were hundreds of victims. As a result, the landless peasantry grew more radical.
The situation began to change around 1975, thanks to the work of the Catholic Church in support of the poor peasants with the creation of the Pastoral Commission for Land (CPT). (In Brazil, the church was one of the pillars of resistance to the dictatorship). It was during this period that many of Brazil's 80,000 church base communities were set up.
From 1978 on there were a series of mass occupations in Rio Grande do Sul, one of regions most affected by the explosive concentration of land ownership They were isolated actions, with no contact between the different occupations. In 1981 the CPT began to co-ordinate meetings between the different leaders, both at regional and state levels. This coordination grew stronger, and led in January 1984 to the first National Meeting of the Landless, in Parana state. A movement of movements
In a way, the MST is a response by the peasants to modernisation and neo-liberalism. The situation is similar to that in other parts of Latin America, from Peru to Chiapas; the opening up of markets, the extension of export-oriented monoculture,
and the resulting destabilisation of traditional relationships (through rural exodus and massive unemployment) has generated an explosive situation just as the opening up of democracy was allowing greater possibilities of organising and mobilising
The Landless Movement represents a coming together of different local struggles and different traditions - from the strong Christian presence to the contribution of Communist activists and members of the Workers Party (PT) - and a convergence of both rural and urban trade unionism. Some leaders insist the MST is the "articulation of new movements which were already developing
As far as social composition is concerned, it's also possible to detect a number of tendencies coming together. There are peasants who rent their land as sharecroppers, dividing the harvest in previously agreed proportions with the landowner; there are small tenant farmers, who agree a fixed cash price with the owner; and there are the "squatter-farmers" work land they have occupied - from the state or from individuals - and who have no legal title to the land (this situation is very common in the "agricultural frontier"). In addition to these situations, which combine typically capitalist forms with others belonging to pre-capitalist agrarian traditions, there are also the landless rural labourers and day-labourers, some of whom are smallholders who sell their labour on a seasonal basis, and poor peasants who own less than five hectares of land
Another group participating in the movement includes the children of farmers, who may have as much as fifty hectares of land, but for whom this is not enough to ensure their subsistence. All these categories together make up almost five million families of landless rural workers.
Once the movement was up and running, little by little urban groups began to join in, especially Christian activists who had been working in the CPT, an organisation which exerted a decisive influence over both the formation of the movement and its methods and style of work.
In its first congresses the MST set itself three main objectives: the struggle for land as a means to survive (the economic objective), agrarian reform (social and political, and the struggle for a more just society through radical political change. Joao Pedro Stedile, the MST's main leader, sees it as "a mass social move-
, which combines "three complementary characteristics: the trade union, the popular and the political", and which "doesn't fit into the traditional categories used to describe social movements" . On the other hand, he insists, nor is it "a peasant political party in disguise".!
Before getting as far as occupying an idle estate, the landless peasants begin to organise themselves to negotiate with the authorities. In fact in most cases an occupation only comes after a long process of strengthening the group leading the occupation, and after a clear refusal by the authorities to expropriate the plots demanded by the peasants. The day the occupation is to happen is usually kept secret. Large numbers of peasants and the rural unemployed begin to arrive, sometimes from quite distant municipalities. The occupation itself is a mixture of festive spirit and open challenge, blended according to the particular style of the movement's
Once the land has been occupied, the peasants improvise plastic shelters and if the subsequent expulsion is some days in coming, they begin to cultivate the land. The purpose of the occupation is to call the attention of society, to make visible a conflict which usually remains hidden, and at the same to demonstrate the existence of large quantities of idle land whilst there are plenty of hands ready to make it produce. Usually they do not demand the land they occupy but rather that the authorities find land elsewhere in the state on which to settle them. As far as methods of struggle are concerned, they use peaceful civil disobedience, which has led many legal experts to recognise the justice of
Brazil * these occupations. Recently even the Vatican has pointed out the need for agrarian reform. The Landless do not attack the landowners; they intimidate them through force of numbers, and by a show of agricultural implements. When attacked by the ranchers, the police or the army, they defend themselves. Very occasionally they do so with firearms, but they do not initiate such confrontations.
Often the evictions are violent, but there is always collective resistance. In the last 15 years more than a thousand of the Landless have died, most of them at the hands of landowners and their hired guns. This form of "peaceful" resistance has enabled them to demonstrate before public opinion the violence of the big landholdings and the State, and has allowed them to win broad support amongst people in the major cities. Over the years the MST has been able to show that land occupations are just as legitimate as the strikes organised by urban workers. A different kind of organisation
The occupation, which usually lasts only a few days, is the starting point of the struggle. Once evicted the Landless set up a permanent camp beside the highway, often on land assigned to them by the government or municipality, or by some supportive landowner. These camps are like complete townships under canvas, usually housing a population of between five and eight hundred people, but sometimes sheltering more than two thousand. On average the camps last for about four years, until all those taking part have been given land. Many leave in the early months - a sort of self-selection process which leaves only the most determined in
Supported by MST leaders and activists, the camp members develop an intensive programme of organisation and education. On the strength of this depends not only the immediate survival of the group, but also the success of their land settlement in the future.
As for public activities aimed at winning land and mobilising public opinion, the camp members arrange endless meetings with the authorities, marches that last up to two weeks and cover a thousand or more kilometres, as well as hunger strikes, fasts and sit-ins in town squares. Sometimes they occupy other lands or support occupations in neighbouring states and municipalities. Of all these activities, perhaps the marches are the most important, for at one and the same time they raise the morale of the camp members, spread their message and involve other sectors in their struggle, and also put to the test the strength of their own organisation.
The camp's role as school is the most important aspect of this whole process. The peasants who come to the movement tend to be heavily influenced by individualism; they have little or no schooling, are often illiterate, and the level of their political understanding and preparedness for collective life is either very low or
9
Adolfo Gilly, Helena Hirata, Carlos M. Vilas and the PRT (Argentina) fAO pages]
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* Brazil non-existent. The organisation [is based on] what are called "grass-roots cells", which include from ten to thirty families, almost always coming from the same municipality. It's worth mentioning here the considerable geographical heterogeneity of those who join the movement. Many of them have travelled thousands of kilometres to join a camp, leaving their whole life behind them.
In each grass-roots cell the camp tasks are organised: cooking, health and hygiene, sports, collecting firewood and so on. For each task one person is elected to take responsibility, and this person coordinates with others to form camp "service teams" who meet every day to plan their work. There is also a "general co-ordinating body" which agrees the teams' tasks and also organises the camp's external work as well as its links with other social movements and institutions.
The camp's sovereign body is the General Assembly in which all camp members take part. This meets periodically and elects the General Co-ordinating Body in which the representatives of the grass-roots cells may also take part. This is a relatively flexible body which may be more or less complicated depending on the size of the camp. The aim of the MST leaders and activists is to promote the broadest possible degree of democracy and participation in the decision-making process, as well as a collective leadership with a clear division of responsibilities. In other words they seek an organisation which is prepared both for struggle and for self-education and collective growth.
The general assembly debates and votes on a set of internal rules which are strictly enforced and, if necessary, penalties are applies which range from a reprimand to expulsion from the camp. Alcohol consumption is restricted and fights are forbidden. So is aggressive behaviour towards women and children, including within the family. The role of women in the camps, in the settlements and throughout the MST is decisive. One of the things which strikes the visitor is the number of women - especially young women - in positions of responsibility, including in the movement's leading bodies. Their growing importance is remarkable - they are the cement which binds the community together and generates the community spirit. On their shoulders rest the main tasks of daily subsistence - they play a decisive role in health and food provision, in education and animation - and the struggle itself. Developing a "people's market"
The settlements are different. On the one hand they one of the movement's main conquests - they show that land reform is possible and can be successful.
quality lands, exhausted by bad management and the over-use of chemical pesticides, all the settlements produce infinitely more than the same land produced in the hands of the ranch-owner. The settlers' efforts are enormous, for the land they get has no infrastructure and they have great difficulty obtaining supplies, credit and technical assistance. Some certainly give up, but the desertion rate is well below that regarded as acceptable by the FAO - it reaches just 15%.
The MST promotes co-operation between the settlers. Nonetheless, majority prefer to cultivate their own individual plots along with their family. Even in these cases, many join together to buy machinery and inputs, or to acquire means of transport and storage. It's the first step in the formation of co-operatives which permit the collective planning of production and the distribution of the benefits according to the amount of work contributed. Many of the settlements try to diversify production as far as possible, to avoid dependence on a single crop and to farm without using chemicals. The production co-operatives and associations have formed a confederation of settlers' co-ops (Concrab), as a way of assuring technical support, jointly negotiating resources and putting their product on the market under more favourable conditions.
By 1997, after five years devoted to improving the co-operaties' work, the MST magazine Sim Terra (Landless) reported the existence of 24 agricultural production co-ops, 18 co-ops supplying services, two credit co-ops, and eight Central Agrarian Reform Co-ops, at state level, as well as more than 400 local cooperative associations with 11,000 members. The MST's agricultural cooperative sector organises 30,000 families, and influences anther 70,000.
The movement is committed to differentiating its co-operatives, in terms of their democratic structure and participative practice, from the traditional ones. One of the many leaflets on this subject distributed by the MST says that such an alternative form of co-operation "implies the appropriation of management tools by the workers and the need to begin developing a people's market linking the countryside and the town".
It's true that many settlements lapse into individualism and localism and that mobilising the settlers is much more difficult than it was during the camp phase Nonetheless the majority of the settlements organise as communities, sharing their work, their leisure and their support for other landless peasants struggling for agrarian reform. To this end, when their economic situation allows, the settlements release some activists from their duties so that they can support peasants occupying new lands and supply food to the camps engaged in struggle.
Education is a very important area -the MST leaders call it "strategic". There is a clear awareness that education and training are a key to making the settlements viable, continuing the struggle for land reform, developing new forms of living and collaborating together, and "in order to exercise citizen rights and participate democratically in the political life of the country and in the struggle for a new man in a democratic and socialist society". 2 The MST talks of the need "to occupy also the under-utilised ranches of knowledge", and has published dozens of pamphlets and books to serve the educational needs of the camps and settlements.
INTERNATIONAL INSTITUTE FOR RESEARCH AND EDUCATION
For the peasants, the settlements achieved
- after years of struggle leading to the purchase of a large landholding by the state, or the handing-over of public lands - mean first and foremost leaving hunger behind them. Although they are usually poor
10 International Viewpoint #302
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Populism in Latin America
The aim is to manage to train teachers from amongst the landless themselves so that the community can assume the task of education as its own. There is an effort, at one and the same time, to reduce illiteracy and achieve minimal levels of schooling, teach the adults to read and write using the methods of Paulo Freire, acquire technical training that can eliminate dependency on university-educated specialists, and provide political education that will allow the maximum number of members to play
Lastly, the MST has as school to train leaders which operates in Santa Catarina state, through which hundreds of leaders pass every year. In this way the movement manages to give political and ideological coherence to its cadre, increase the autonomy and capacity for initiative of the local and regional leaderships, and limit the influence of the political parties. Somehow, and it's worth repeating this, the MST has developed an organisation which draws on different traditions, both in its structure and its approach. Amongst the rank and file it forms communities in which you can detect traces of both rural tradition and grass-roots Christianity.perhaps the strongest influence at this level - as well as syndicalism. Higher up the organisation, the influence of the organisational styles of left-wing parties 1s stronger, particularly the Leninist tradition, mixed with the Christian style emanating from the CPT (the Catholic Church's Pastoral Commission on Land A new world in the heart of the old one
After the MST's 1995 Congress, attended by more than 5,000 delegates, the
MST launched a big offensive across the country, which is still going on. In 1995 there were 92 occupations; in 1996 more than twice that number. But the most important thing is that the movement, up until then heavily concentrated in the south and centre of the country, managed to extend its occupations to the north and north-east, the bastions of the right and the most reactionary landowners. More recently it began to organise big occupations near to the cities in line with the strategy adopted by the Congress and the
MST's leadership.
The massacres in Para State, like that at Eldoroado de Carajas, where 19 members of the Landless Movement were murdered on 19 April 1996, are a consequence of the movement's unstoppable growth in this area. One fact which demonstrates the strength of the MST is the existence of 200 camps and 300 settlements in Para State. In other words in one of the big landowners' strongest bases they have managed to recover hundreds of thousands of hectares for the poor
On the other hand, the Landless Movement has been the only sector in Brazil capable of confronting the neoliberal policies of President Fernando Henrique
Cardoso, as was shown by the march to
Brasilia in 1997. During the election campaign land reform was one of the most widely debated issues, and the presidentto-be promised to "expropriate" 280.000 families. In fact so far only 15.000 have been given land to settle, although the government insists that 60,000 peasants have been settled. It is no accident that the MST stepped up its activity just when there appeared a government that tried to show a "progressive" face in order to demobilise the movement.
In fact the MST put itself at the head of the deep social discontent in the countryside and, given the vacillations (some even speak of betrayal) of the unions and the PT, it converted itself into the main opposition to Brazilian neoliberalism. This has two positive consequences for the MST: whilst popular support grew for land reform and the actions of the Landless, so too did the movement's autonomy from all political parties and institutions. As a result, the MST is beginning to link up with sections of the urban poor (shanty-town dwellers, unemployed, the homeless, etc.), which could lead to an alliance of the "less", , the excluded, those who do not count, either for the trade union bureaucracy or for the electoral left.
But beyond the particular situation of the rural workers' movement in Brazil today, the MST represents something new and different amongst the continent's social movements. It shares some of its characteristics with indigenous-peasant movements, like those in Ecuador and in
Chiapas. The influence of the MST goes beyond frontiers, so that for example, peasants of Paraguay see the Brazilian movement as a solid point of reference, as do other rural organisations across the all social movements, the
Landless Movement combines aspects which negate capitalist society with others which reproduce it. It is impossible for a movement to represent an absolute negation, a total inversion, of the society in which it is immersed. The traces are often to be found in the organisational structure (which fosters the emergence of layers of leaders with their own interests
Brazil * and separated from the rank and file), in the more or less vertical styles of leadership, in the infrequent and feeble participation of the members, in internal authoritarianism, in the organisational culture promoted by an organisation or its relationship institutions, and a whole list of etceteras.
The peculiarity of the MST is that it embodies a much deeper rupture with existing society than other movements. Or to put it another way, the new has more weight than the old. Thus:
As James Petras has pointed out, the MST belongs to a new generation of social movements on the continent which are characterised by the emergence of a new leadership not divorced from the daily reality of their rank and file, relatively free from bureaucracy, whose morality is based on staying close to the lifestyles of the bulk of the movement, and which are participative, internationalist, democratic and concerned with political and technical education.
They are focused on direct, extra-parliamentary action, are not trapped in networks of institutions, are autonomous form the parties and trade unions, but also from the intellectuals and the universities. Autonomy is one of their identifying
They take up the themes of the so-called new social movements - the women's question, ecology, and [indigenous] identity.
What they lack in resources they make
'mystique" fostering a new subjectivity which emphasises links of fraternity and solidarity over and above the functional ones typical of more traditional associations.* The human being, the new man and woman, are the
In the case of the MST, we are dealing with an integrated movement which addresses all aspects of life - political, social, cultural, economic, religious, etc.
No one aspect is separated from the others. This characteristic is very clear in the camps and in many of the settlements. The central role given to education is reminiscent of the early workers' movement; it's one of the few movements which educates its members according to its own methods, different from and opposed to those of the bourgeoisie. It's for this reason, and not just because of the strategic objectives set, which makes this a reproduction of the system - it goes far beyond partial demands and is preparing.
even if unintentionally, the foundations of a new society.
The MST is carrying out agrarian reform from below and creating a new society within the old one. So far all agrarian reforms have been decided by those in power, either by a revolutionary regime or by a progressive one. Both the camps and the settlements are spaces in which the dominant codes are inverted and a counter-power is set in motion. The aim is not only to appropriate the means of