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1: A 1998 MST meeting in Santa Catarina |
One
of the most important grassroots social movements
in Latin America today is O Movimento Dos Trabalhadors
Rurais Sem Terra (The Movement of Rural Landless
Workers, or MST). Although the idea of land reform
passed out of popularity in most of Latin America
after the 1960s, in Brazil, the 75 thousand families
currently camped out in squatter settlements speak
vividly to the ongoing politics over access to land.
MST originated in southern Brazil in 1984 in the
wake of a repressive military regime. As the withdrawal
of the military threw open new spaces for civil society,
MST grew from an informal group of squatters to one
of the largest grassroots social movements in Brazil's
history. Grounded in a socialist interpretation of
property - land for those who work it - MST has helped
to establish hundreds of land reform settlements
throughout the country by mobilizing members to occupy
unproductive areas and pressuring the government
to negotiate for title to the property. MST militants
travel throughout the country, informing people of
their Constitutional right to land. The occupations
take place late at night and the squatters immediately
set up their temporary tents of black plastic and
wood because they may be there for anywhere from
six months to six years.
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| Figure
2: Members of an occupation gathered around the
MST flag |
MST
is the first grassroots movement in Brazil to be organized
on a national level. The movement now operates in 22
of Brazil's 26 states and a series of social networks
running in between settlements throughout the country
serve to maintain participation in the movement as
well as to distribute resources to the movement's members.
In the 15 years since it was officially formed, MST
has helped to settle over two million people and brought
the issue of land reform to the forefront of national
politics.
My
research on MST looks at regional variations within
the movement. I studied settlements in two towns: the
southern town of Campos Novos, Santa Catarina and the
northeastern town of Agua Preta, Pernambuco. In Campos
Novos, a majority of the settlers were small family
farmers before joining MST. Many were descendants of
Europeans who immigrated to Brazil in the 1800s and
had worked on the land for several generations. These
settlers had a long history of moving in search of
new land, both for production and re-production of
the family. In many ways. the settlement recreated
traditional communities as families and neighbors left
together for the same occupation in search of the means
to continue doing what their families had done for
generations.
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3: A temporary encampment, Agua Preta, Pernambuco
1999. |
In
the northeastern town of Agua Preta, Pernambuco, a
majority of the settlers had worked on the sugarcane
plantations before joining MST. The settlement was
highly differentiated as it included not only the common
rural workers, but also the elite "employees" and even
the former boss, the man who had rented the plantation
for 11 years. On the settlements in Agua Preta, only
a small group had actually joined MST in the search
for land, the rest had been living on the plantation
when the government appropriated the area for redistribution.
The dynamic on the settlement was much different than
in the South. Here, families were smaller, the work
centered around access to a weekly wage and communities
were highly differentiated.
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4: A settler and his son in Campos Novos, Santa
Catarina |
My
dissertation research asks three main questions: first,
who joins MST and why?; second, why and how do the
settlers participate in the movement once they have
achieved their initial goal of access to land?; third,
how is participation in MST re-shaping the settlers
themselves?
In
trying to address these questions, I argue that organization
of the largest grassroots social movement in Brazilian
history cannot be understood simply as a response to
authoritarian government policies or economic "neo-liberalism".
The decision to join MST is a reflection of transformations
occurring in the way the household, work and community
came together. The nature of these transformations
differed in the two regions where I worked.
Second,
I argue that MST has succeeded in maintaining incredibly
high levels of participation through its organized
structure of social networks that run throughout the
settlements nationwide. The social networks are formed
by the flow of people, information and resources, bringing
together political and economic messages such that
each legitimates the other. The way that the settlers
are able to and choose to - participate in MST, however,
turns on their access to family labor, historical notions
of land and capital, as well as community ties. Even
the way settlers view their rights as citizens of the
Brazilian nation has everything to do with how their
families and communities traditionally engaged with
both the state and the market.
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5: An expropriated plantation that is now a land
reform settlement |
Third,
and finally, I argue that on-going participation in
the Luta (struggle) is transforming the settlers1
traditional agrarian institutions. MST settlers from
both southern and northeastern Brazil are developing
new, surprisingly similar, forms of family organization,
work and community. The outlines of the new group are
defined in relation to a common enemy, the state. Government
policies and agencies provide both the "logic
of accumulation" and the focus of resistance.
MST is largely responsible for delineating the state
as a site of resistance, although the belief is both
a product of the government1s difficulties liberating
and distributing funds as well as a deliberate tactic
on the part of MST.
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| Figure
6: A view of the city from the top of Sugarloaf
Mountain |
The
majority of my dissertation research was conducted
between October 1998 and October 1999. The methods
I used to gather information for this paper included:
open-ended interviews, survey application, archival
analysis, meeting attendance and participant observation.
In
reading over the interviews that I collected during
my dissertation research, I realized that I needed
more anthropological information on the history of
the two areas in which I did my research. I also needed
to look at the most recent work being done on MST by
Brazilian scholars. MST is an important topic of academic
research and there were several new studies being published
that I knew would help me in writing up my dissertation
information. The Latin American Studies Tinker Travel
Grant was critical in allowing me to return to Brazil
to do more library work and collect materials to which
I would not have otherwise had access.
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| Figure
7: A picture of myself in Rio |
I
collected information from three main institutions
this summer, located in the city of Rio de Janeiro.
First, I worked at the Center for Graduate Studies
on Development and Agriculture (Centro de Pesquisa
Sobre Desenvolvimento e Agricultura, or CPDA),
which is affiliated with the Federal Rural University
of Rio de Janeiro. CPDA recently finished several studies
on the regional dimensions of agrarian reform in Brazil,
collected by Leonilde Servolo de Medeiros and Sergio
Leite under the title: A Formacao dos Assentamentos
Rurais no Brasil (1999). Second, I worked at the
Museo Nacional, the country1s leading anthropological
studies center, where I was able to find several ethnographic
studies undertaken in areas near the area where I did
my own research. Finally, I was also able to get materials
on MST presented by Brazilian scholars at the annual
meeting of the International Rural Sociology Association.
Wendy
Wolford is a PhD candidate in the Department of Geography.
