Everyday forms of political expression

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Acknowledgements

I wish to thank the valuable comments of the anonymous reviewer.

Notes

¹Agrarian capitalism here is defined as agriculture based on a combination of wage labour (where a class of wage labourers sell their labour power to a class of private entrepreneurs who own the means of production), nonwage labour practices (e.g., family labour), use of large extensions of land for production, technology to extract value from land and labour (e.g., mechanisation, improved seed varieties), and dependence on international markets to sell the commodities produced.

²This is not to say that elitist and racist attitudes are not present in the movement. See Gustafson (2006) for an analysis of the violence and discrimination associated with regionalism in Santa Cruz.

³Four interviews stood out as clearly articulating the technical aspects of production with support for autonomy: Rosales' interview (ORS), two with members of the Chamber of Agriculture of Santa Cruz (CAO), and one with a member of a large-scale rice production association (ASPAR). I chose Rosales' for this paper since both CAO and ASPAR are frequently seen as serving the interests of agrarian elites.

⁴Diverse groups support autonomy in Santa Cruz, ranging from neighbourhood organisations to agrarian associations to the chamber of exports. Opposition is also strong, particularly among those that see it as an elitist reaction against Morales' project of social democracy. Seeing that it is led by agri-business leaders and urban elites, many small-scale producers are unsure of what autonomy offers them.

⁵Mauricio Roca is the President of the Chamber of Agriculture in Santa Cruz (Cámara Agropecuaria del Oriente, CAO), a private institution that represents the interests of medium- and large-scale commercial agriculture in Santa Cruz.

⁶A few weeks earlier, in an effort to curtail takeover, agrarian capitalists persuaded Santa Cruz's Prefect, Rubén Costas, to transfer all aspects of local seed complex to departmental sovereignty to strengthen ORS' local identity.

⁷The agrarian sector in Santa Cruz is diverse, internally conflictive, and historically plagued by unequal relations of production (c.f. Gill 1987) – claims to a united political voice should be viewed with suspicion. While Rosales' views are not representative of all agriculturalists, they offer insights into how material aspects of production are grounding his support for autonomy.

⁸With a population of over three million, smallholders of this sort outnumber indigenous and traditional communities by a ratio of six to one (Campos and Nepstad 2006).

⁹This interview is one of approximately thirty semi-structured interviews conducted with smallholders living in different agrarian reform settlements (whose names have been changed in this article) during the summers of 2007 and 2008. I conducted these interviews as part of a pilot study for a larger project examining social mobilisation for land rights in the context of agribusiness expansion and road development in the region. Representatives from the Santarém Rural Workers Union, the CPT, and the Forum of the Social Movements of the BR-163 introduced me to people negotiating these issues from several settlements, which I visited and where I interviewed settlers.

¹⁰A ‘project’ indicates an agricultural planting project that is funded through PRONAF (Programa Nacional de Fortalecimento da Agricultura Familiar), a program to provide settlers with small loans to begin subsistence or small scale commodity production.

¹¹Cf. Auyero (2000), from whom the terms ‘problem-solving network’ and ‘poor people's politics’ are taken.

¹²For good examples, see, e.g., Donham (1999), Fegan (1993), Horton (1998), Starn (1998), and Kerkvliet (2000).

¹³A ‘rebel returnee’ is a former member of the CPP-NPA who has officially ‘returned to the folds of the law’, as the government terms it, and has pledged allegiance to the Philippine Republic.

¹⁴Research in the period 1992–96 was funded by the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW).

¹⁵Parts have been adapted from Rutten (2000). See also Rutten (2008) for more extensive background information. On the insurgency nationwide, see Abinales (1996), Jones (1989), and Weekley (2001).

¹⁶For a discussion of other local activists in the area that followed a similar pattern, though in less extreme forms, see Rutten (2001).

¹⁷See Putzel (1995) for an extensive discussion of similar frictions between rural activists and underground party leaders in the CPP-NPA.

¹⁸Cf. Scott (1979).

¹⁹‘RPM-P'stands for Rebolusyonaryong Partido ng Manggagawang-Pilipino (Revolutionary Workers’ Party-Philippines), ‘DALO’ for Democratic Alliance of Labor Organizations, ‘RPA’ for Revolutionary Proletarian Army.

²⁰This interview was part of PhD research (Sadomba 2008).

²¹This is a medium of Nehanda spirit, a national female spirit which led the war of resistance when the British invaded the country in 1890. The medium of Nehanda in the 1890s was Charwe, who was living at Gomba during colonial invasion. Charwe was captured in 1897 and hanged in 1898 in Salisbury (Harare).

²²Since its inception, the MMTR has successfully fought for maternity leave for rural women, run a documentation campaign to secure birth certificates and identity cards for women who were invisible in the eyes of the government, and fought for women's health services and sustainable agriculture. In all of these efforts, the MMTR has maintained complicated relationships with the other social movements in combative Rio Grande do Sul, as well as with institutions such as local governments and the church. Women activists have entered these arenas, recognising their force and influence as evidence of the MMTR's success, but they have also seen other movements and institutions withdraw their support for women's goals or seek to control the MMTR itself.

²³Women in the pharmacy are identified using pseudonyms.

²⁴For an in-depth account of the Cremin land struggle, see Walker (2008). Walker served on South Africa's post-apartheid Commission on Restitution of Land Rights from 1995–2000 as Regional Land Claims Commissioner for the province of KwaZulu-Natal and in this capacity presided over the finalisation of the Cremin claim. This interview was conducted after she had left the Commission.

²⁵When Cremin was expropriated, large numbers of households who were tenants of the landowners also lost land rights. They were relocated separately from the landowners and were not party to the subsequent land claim, even though attempts were made to inform them of their options. The Cremin leadership favoured their acquiring a separate farm.

²⁶Colloquialism, meaning to be in trouble.

²⁷‘Numbers’ refers to the numbers that apartheid government officials painted on people's houses as part of a pre-removals census.

²⁸Ezakheni is where the Cremin people were relocated.

²⁹At this meeting the son of the deceased farmer who had bought Cremin from the apartheid state in 1988 signed an agreement that he was prepared to sell the farm for restitution. From there the claim had to be referred to the Land Claims Court for final approval.

³⁰She is referring to a number of legal technicalities that were raised during the hearing, which threatened to delay the ratification of the claim.