Transformation and ‘Human Values’ in the Landless Workers' Movement of Brazil

ABSTRACT

Social movements often seek transformation in wider society, but they are also themselves subject to the fluidity and ephemerality of the environments in which they operate. Academic literature has long held the view that social movements inevitably come to be beset by institutionalisation and a loss of relevance, and in Brazil, where socio-economic change has been so dynamic, the future of the Landless Workers’ Movement (Movimento dos Sem Terra (MST)) has been called into question. This article argues that the MST is responding to changes in its membership, and transformation more widely in Brazil, in a measured way, by drawing upon a familiar repertoire of cooperativisation to boost production. The article suggests that decline is not necessarily certain, but as a case study for movements more generally, current MST leadership decisions may be significant in understanding how social movements can best react to unpredictable transformations in wider society.

KEYWORDS:

• MST
• transformation
• social movements
• Brazil
• leadership

Notes

1. Of course, such movements have almost reinvented the very notion of protest and have done so by building from a legacy stretching back at least as far as 1968. They have reacted to transformation within society while also seeking to transform and have couched their practice within the prefigurative politics of twenty-first century activism.

2. Interview with Luizinho – 2 March 2009.

3. Interview with Thiago – 11 December 2008.

4. For an excellent discussion on landless identity see McNee's ‘A Diasporic, Post-traditional Peasantry: The Movimento Sem Terra (MST) and The Writing of Landless Identity’ (2005).

5. R$450 for a pallet of a thousand, a good market price.

6. Interview with Roberto – 9 October 2008.

7. The assentamento of N_ was originally a full cooperative. However, tensions began to surface and the assentamento split into two núcleos, one cooperativised and the other comprising individual plots. Roberto was a member of the former along with Davi. At a certain point Davi decided that he wished to exit the co-op and live individually. Roberto was angry at this decision and calling an assembly, moved that Davi be expelled from the assentamento and therefore, the movement. When this motion was not passed, Roberto continued to harass Davi and his family. To put an end to what the families of the whole assentamento considered as ill-treatment of Davi, they occupied Roberto's land to make their point.

8. INCRA devolved 95 hectares to the MST for the assentamento H_, knowing that 80 hectares could not be farmed, as they were protected Mata Atlântica – Atlantic rainforest.

9. Jurema was pregnant with twin boys, only one of whom survived the birth.

10. All workers in Brazil are supposed to have a Carteira de Trabalho e Previdência Social, an official personal document recording the employment status of its owner. This document provides benefits to the employee including a pension. Indeed rural workers aged over 60 can have access to a pension without ever having paid into the system. However, having this documentation is not something all sem terra have. I never saw a Carteira de Trabalho during my fieldwork and much literature reports a similar experience; for example, Marli Malinoski in Sul21 is reported as stating ‘Quem é sem terra não tem carteira assinada’ – Sem terra do not have employment papers (Natusch 2011).

11. According to research carried out by the State University of São Paulo, the number of families involved in land occupations by the MST fell from 65,552 in 2003 to 44,364 in 2006 (FSP 2007b; IPEA 2008 cited in Hall 2008).

12. http://www.mstbrazil.org/?q=node/579 (accessed 21 March 2010).

13. Interview with Tais – 20 April 2008.

14. The shift from a basic occupation of lands to how these lands were to be farmed in an agro-ecological way was certainly influenced by the wider environmental movement and the MST's transnational links to La Via Campesina.