The Spaces of Social Movements: O Movimento dos Trabalhadores Rurais Sem Terra from a Socio-spatial Perspective

Abstract

This paper considers the social movement O Movimento dos Trabalharores Rurais Sem Terra (The Movement of Landless Rural Workers, often referred to as the MST). Based on empirical data collected in Ceará, Brazil during 2005, it explores the social and spatial practices that shape MST communities. Using Henri Lefebvre's theory of spatial production, a framework is developed for conceptualising Brazilian agrarian reform within the context of spatial appropriation and the tactics of counter-hegemonic ideology. Through an examination of emergent MST communities, the paper considers the production and constant rearticulation of space. This spatial analytic, it is suggested, offers new insight into the attributes that frequently distinguish individual MST communities.

Acknowledgements

A long list of wonderful people helped to make this work possible. The author would like to thank (in alphabetical order) Sarah de Leeuw, Feijãozinha and Din De La Ossa, Audrey Doremus, Sallie Marston, Vanessa Massaro, Elizabeth Oglesby and the participants of her 595A class, Ian Shaw, Cynthia Sorrensen and W. Scott Whitlock for their help and invaluable insight. This research was made possible by a grant from the Tinker Foundation in the Centre for Latin American Studies at the University of Arizona. The author is also greatly indebted to John Paul Jones III and several anonymous reviewers for their comments and critiques on this paper. Most of all, the author wishes to thank those in Ceará who enabled the opportunity to complete this research: Professor Francisco Amaro at UFC, Professor Bill Calhoun with the School for International Training, and MST organisers José Ricardo, Flávio Gomes and, especially, Creunice Bezerra and her family for opening their doors to the author. Finally, the author would like to thank Oélito, Ceissa and Melissa Brandão in Fortaleza, along with the MST community of Boa Vista, for their unending hospitality and friendship. All errors remain, of course, the author's alone.

Notes

The term “participant” comes from Wendy Wolford (2005b), who suggests that the term “membership” implies a kind of permanency that inaccurately describes people's intermittent participation with the MST. Some withdraw from the movement when they believe it is no longer in their best interests.

There are many reasons for the movement's highly decentralised nature (Stedile, 2002; Wolford and Wright, 2003) and, as I was told during my research by MST militantes, it allows the MST to be dynamic and operate more effectively at the local level.

The federal branch officially in charge of land reform and redistribution is INCRA, O Instituto Nacional de Colonização e Reforma Agrária (The National Institute of Colonisation and Agrarian Reform).

The size of the land plot may vary considerably, but most occupations take place on parcels of several hundred to several thousand hectares.

Buarque also writes that out of those 1379 killings, “Only 75 cases went to trial; there were 5 convictions of those who ordered the killings and 64 convictions of those who carried out the killings” (Buarque, 2005, p. 1).

In Donald Nicholson-Smith's translation of The Production of Space, Lefebvre is tapping into two meanings with this word: secretion—i.e. the idea “that every society … produces a space, its own space” (1974/1991, p. 31); and secret—i.e. the idea that space can obscure social relations through two illusions, those of “transparency” (intelligibility) and “opacity, or ‘realistic illusion’” (1974/1991, p. 27).

Lefebvre frequently uses this word to remind the reader that space is both produced and commodified. For him, the production of space is similar to the production of any other commodity in Marx's conceptual model (Marx, 1976/1990).

Reasons for this are plentiful: many of Lefebvre's writings, perhaps best exemplified in his works Writing on Cities (1996) and The Urban Revolution (2003), focus exclusively upon urban settings. The Production of Space is no exception, using the modern city as its frequent site of analysis. Furthermore, as part of Lefebvre's modernist notions, many of his works implicitly indicate that urban space will eventually subsume rural space.

The original name of the settlement and the names of settlement residents have been changed to protect the interests of those who live there. According to Fabio, a Boa Vista resident and MST militante, Boa Vista was officially established in 1995 following a two-year occupation by MST participants who lived in that area. The land had formerly belonged to an army general who owned more than 10 000 hectares and, following the formal legal negotiations, 4050 hectares went to the occupiers.

Indeed, this coincidence was not lost on me and I can only speculate as to whether or not MST officials authorised my research in Boa Vista for exactly this reason.

Although I got different answers from those I asked, it seemed that the electrical lines had been installed around 1999.

All direct quotes, unless noted otherwise, come directly from the author's fieldwork.

Bogo equates MST participants to “explorers”, writing that they are trying to find and build something which has never been done before (Bogo, 2000, p. 15).

My use of the word ‘assemblage’ in this case draws upon the language of Deleuze and Guattari (1987), signifying space as a heterogeneous collection of multiplicities rather than an object colonised by only one or two elements.

Liberation theology had taken root in Latin American ecclesiastical circles during the 1960s as many within the Church began to address the relationship between religion and social justice, and more radical church parishioners questioned the generally prescribed division between religion and politics (Boff and Boff, 1986).

From what I could ascertain, issues were not necessarily specific to problems women faced, but rather topics that concerned the entire settlement.

I denote ‘production work’ to distinguish it from other forms of labour, such as domestic work. To be sure, while the expenditure of labour time in the fields may have declined at weekends, labour time in the home most certainly did not.

The MST draws heavily upon the teachings of Paulo Freire, who stressed pedagogical techniques aimed at critical thinking and creative problem-solving. Freire's goal was to train students to think independently in order to develop a “critical conscience” (for example, questioning cultural forms at all times) (Bogo, 2000, p. 62).

Indeed, MST participants regularly engage in musical and poetic expressions during their rallies, meetings and events. As I witnessed during my fieldwork when settlement-dwellers in Boa Vista composed and performed their own quadrilha (similar to an American square dance, often performed as part of the Festa Juninha celebrations that honour Saint John during the Brazilian winter months), songs often reflect the MST's continued efforts for land reform and alternative modes of agrarian production.

While I was unable to make a personal visit to more than one settlement, the residents of Boa Vista and others whom I spoke with in Fortaleza (who were from other settlements) frequently commented that individual settlements were very different from one another. The work of Wolford (2004a, 2003) further supports this claim.