Brazil’s landless movement: sign of hope
by Cynthia Peters

Forty thousand Brazilians die every year of hunger and malnutrition-related diseases, and more than 23 million of Brazil’s 170 million people are malnourished. How has Latin America’s most resource-rich country ended up with such a large part of its population struggling to survive? Brazil’s recent decades of dictatorship and still powerful military, its high concentration of wealth and landownership, and its struggle to develop under the weight of immense debt and IMF-enforced neoliberal economic policies have contributed to a fractured and impoverished society. But the Landless Workers’ Movement (Movimento dos Trabalhadores Rurais Sem Terra, or MST) has been an important sign of hope.

The MST, with support from the Catholic Church, began its struggle in 1985, taking over an unused plantation in the south of the country. The occupiers gained title to the land two years later. Since then, the MST has helped 300,000 families settle on previously idle land, while close to 100,000 other families are living on land they have occupied, waiting for government recognition. In May 2000, 30,000 MST members took over federal buildings across the country in a successful bid to persuade President Fernando Henrique Cardoso to address the country’s extreme economic inequality. In response to pressure from the MST, Cardoso promised $1 billion in reforms. In addition to its successful resettlement program and considerable grassroots power, the MST boasts a sophisticated literacy program for adults and adolescents, as well as 1,000 primary schools, in which 2,000 teachers work with about 50,000 kids. According to Bill Hinchberger, writing for The Nation (March 2, 1998), "the MST represents Latin America’s most dynamic popular movement south of Chiapas."

As such, it is not popular among certain segments of Brazilian society. The police and military, as well as landlords’ private gunmen, still target activists. According to the Roman Catholic-run Pastoral Land Commission, over 1,100 people were killed in land disputes between 1985 and 1999. And only 47 cases have gone to trial, leading to just 18 convictions. In 2001, 16 MST activists were murdered, and few of the cases were properly investigated or brought to trial. "At least ten landowners are threatening me, saying that I will be next," José Brito, president of the Agricultural Workers Union of Rondon in the state of Para, has told the press. "Even though I have registered complaints to the police station, I have never been called to give a deposition. Whoever fights for life here will have his own life threatened."

In addition to violent repression, the MST faces other challenges. According to Global Exchange, "landowners and some elected officials are trying to repeal the clause of the Brazilian constitution that says land should be used for social purposes — and can be redistributed if it is not. That provision has formed the legal foundation of the MST’s occupations of unused lands." Furthermore, the World Bank’s $2 billion "land bank" program, which offers loans to small farmers to purchase land, is transparently designed to undermine the grassroots-based MST. The MST must also contend with "free trade" agreements that knock down trade barriers, allowing cheap food to be imported from abroad, and undercutting domestic markets. The struggle ahead remains enormous. Today, 3 percent of Brazil’s population still owns two-thirds of the country’s arable land, much of which lies idle. Meanwhile, millions of peasants struggle to survive by working in temporary agricultural jobs.

At an MST cooperative in Herval, in the southern state of Rio Grande do Sul, which I visited in February 2002, I saw productive farms, well-built homes with electricity and running water, schools, and cultural activities. If the 40,000 who die from hunger each year in Brazil are the victims of "class warfare," as the UN’s Ziegler argues, the MST is on the front line — fighting back, not with bullets, but with mass organizing and grassroots pressure to meet basic human needs.

— Excerpted from the introduction to an interview with Joao Pedro Stedile, MST National Board Member, by Cynthia Peters and Justin Podur entitled, "They Can Walk With Their Heads Up" in Dollars and Sense (http://www.dollarsandsense.org/).