Understanding rural resistance: contemporary mobilization in the Brazilian countryside [Journal of Peasant Studies] (original) (raw)
Related papers
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 paper 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...
This contribution explores the strategies used by popular movements seeking to advance social reforms, and the challenges once they succeed. It analyzes how a strategic alliance between the Brazilian Landless Workers Movement (MST) and the National Confederation of Agricultural Workers (CONTAG) transformed the Ministry of Education's official approach to rural schooling. This success illustrates the critical role of international allies, political openings, framing, coalitions and state-society alliances in national policy reforms. The paper also shows that once movements succeed in advancing social reforms, bureaucratic tendencies such as internal hierarchy, rapid expansion and 'best practices'in addition to the constant threat of cooptationcan prevent their implementation.
The Landless Rural Workers Movement and Democracy in Brazil
Latin American Research Review, 2010
This article takes issue with infl uential views in Brazil that depict the Movement of Landless Rural Workers (MST), the largest popular movement in this country, as a threat to democracy. Contrary to these assessments, it argues that a sober review of the MST's actual practice shows that it is far from an antistate or antidemocratic organization. Quite to the contrary, the MST demands that the state play an active part in reducing the nation's stark social inequities through the institution of an inclusive model of development. The MST's contentious edge has contributed to Brazil's ongoing democratization process by (1) highlighting the role of public activism in building political capabilities among the poor and catalyzing downward redistribution policies; (2) facilitating the extension of basic citizenship rights, broadening the scope of the public agenda, and strengthening civil society through the inclusion of groups representing the most vulnerable strata of the population; and (3) fostering a sense of hope and utopia through the affi rmation of ideals imbued in Brazil's long-term, complex, and open-ended democratization process.
Agrarian Social Movements and the Making of Agrodiesel Moral Territories in Northeast Brazil
Phd Dissertation, 2013
In response to widespread concerns about the socio-ecological impacts of agrofuel production and development, particularly for food security, efforts have been made internationally to implement more sustainable forms of producing agrofuels. Brazil’s National Program for the Production and Use of Agrodiesel (PNPB), launched in 2004, is one such attempt. Promoted as a socially and environmentally responsible program, the PNPB was made possible through unprecedented alliances between the ‘postneoliberal’ Brazilian state, the agribusiness sector, and social movements such as the Rural Trade Union’s Movement (MSTTR) and the Landless Rural Workers’ Movement (MST). In this research, I critically analyze the unexpected engagement of social movements in the making of agrodiesel territories in semi-arid Bahia, Northeastern Brazil by examining the territorial and moral processes and practices that underlie the production of castor bean (mamona) for agrodiesel. The methodology adopted comprised participant observation, informal and semi-structured interviews (n=74) with leaders and members of the MST and the MSTTR in the territories of the Chapada Diamantina and Irecê, in central Bahia. Interviews were also conducted with representatives of family farming cooperatives, government institutions, and agrodiesel companies (Petrobras) in the two study areas and in Salvador, capital of Bahia. Research methods also included the 1 2 collection and critical discourse analysis of archival and other secondary data sources from public and private institutions. Drawing mainly from cultural geography and political ecology literatures, I argue that social movement leaders enable the making of agrodiesel territories mainly through their role as ‘agrodiesel gatekeepers’ – as legal interveners, managers, and caregivers. Family farmers tend to enable agrodiesel territorial expansion and to disrupt agrodiesel territorial management by not complying with moral prescriptions of loyalty. I see farmers’ disloyalty towards their cooperatives as an everyday form of resistance against agrodiesel oppressive and exploitative practices. I suggest that the making of agrodiesel territories (re)produces gendered and racialized ‘(im)moral’ peasants and serves to better contain peasants’ movements. By critically analyzing how agrodiesel practices reproduce, homogenize and differentiate certain subjects, natures, and territories, I hope that this research contributes to politicize the moral geographies of agrodiesel development in semi- arid Bahia.
Brazil's Experience with Agrarian Reform, 1995–2006: Challenges for Agrarian Geography
Human Geography
This paper analyses one of the challenges facing agrarian geographers of Brazil: explaining land-tenure systems in light of persistently high levels of land occupations by landless peasants, the implementation of agrarian reform projects by the Fernando Henrique Cardoso (1995–2002) and Luís Lula Inácio da Silva (2003-present) presidential administrations and the expansion of agribusiness. It examines the actions of families organized in the Landless Workers Movement (MST - Movimento dos Trabalhadores Rurais Sem-Terra) and territorialization / deterritorialization processes from 1995 to 2006. We discuss how large land-holding have long determined who holds political power in Brazil and how a “rural block” continues to thwart attempts to resolve Brazil's agrarian question. Consequently, the article concludes, conflictuality is a part of Brazilian rural life that is unlikely to go away.
Relevance of the agrarian question: the landless in Brazil
In the different Latin American countries, the peasant movement was rejuvenated against the backdrop of the "lost decade"; particularly, the struggle of Brazil's "landless" became an international icon. Contrary to "post-modern" and "global" theoreticians, the renewed relevance of Latin America's agrarian question bore witness to the historical failure of capitalism to solve the elementary problems of the constitution of the nation in the backward countries, and moreover, to integrate them harmoniously in a supposedly "global capitalism". The agrarian question in Brazil not only reiterated the unsolved problems of the colonial and imperial past, but it was also reformulated under the conditions of the imperialistic era of capital and its global crisis.24