Landless Workers Movement

Landless Workers Movement (MST), Portuguese Movimento dos Trabalhadores Rurais Sem Terra, Brazilian social movement seeking agrarian reform through land expropriation. The Landless Workers Movement (Movimento dos Trabalhadores Rurais Sem Terra; MST) is one of the largest and most-influential social movements in Latin America. Thousands of Brazilian families live in its land-occupation settlements in an effort to redistribute land to rural workers for small-scale farming. Ideologically, the movement is influenced by Marxism and liberation theology and thus emphasizes equality, the transformation of capitalist society, sustainable agriculture, cooperativism, and protection of the environment. MST was officially founded in 1984 at Cascavel in the southern Brazilian state of Paraná, although its roots go back to the peasant uprisings and the organizational activities of progressive wings of the Roman Catholic Church before and during the military dictatorship of the 1960s. As of 2014, the movement has led more than 2,500 land occupations with about 370,000 families and has won nearly 18.75 million acres (7.5 million hectares) of land as a result of their direct action.

Brazil is characterized by extreme inequality, with nearly 2 percent of landowners controlling approximately half of all agricultural land. The rural poor, whose numbers increased during the 20th century owing to agricultural mechanization, among other factors, often rely on unpredictable day labour on the large estates or move to urban areas, frequently ending up in the favelas (shantytowns). MST aims to bring a radical transformation of land distribution with the support of Article 184 of the Brazilian Constitution of 1988, which states that unused farmland should be expropriated and used for redistribution. MST pressures the government into fulfilling that constitutional obligation, since government-led initiatives have been slow and ineffectual. The movement organizes marches, demonstrations, and awareness-raising campaigns to bring the issue of agrarian reform to public attention, but its principal form of direct action is land occupation.

An MST land occupation involves a group of landless people (usually numbering 500–3,000) entering a large estate and occupying a piece of unused land. Given that it can take years for the rights to the land to be granted via the government land-reform organization INCRA (Instituto Nacional de Colonização e Reforma Agrária), temporary camps known as acampamentos are formed. The acampamentos are highly organized, with the families taking on responsibility for various areas, such as health, education, and food. MST considers the process of learning to live and work cooperatively fundamental to the development of and allegiance to the political struggle. If the rights to the land are won, an assentamento (settlement) is formed, and each family gains a plot of land of a minimum of 25 acres (10 hectares). MST originally hoped that all communities would farm the land collectively, though financial problems and resistance from some residents led to a change of policy in the mid-1990s. Those receiving an assentamento may now choose between collective, family, or individual farming, as long as some collaboration is maintained.

MST is also particularly active in education. Concern with the number of idle children in the first acampamentos and assentamentos led to the creation of rudimentary schools, staffed by the few community members who had completed basic schooling. Adult education classes were also developed to address the high levels of illiteracy among the landless workers. With time, those educational activities were given impetus by the realization that agrarian reform involved more than just the acquisition of land. Technical competency was necessary to make the agricultural production and administration of cooperatives viable. As of 2014, MST had more than 1,500 primary schools in its communities. Those schools are funded and formally administered by municipal or state governments but follow the distinctive educational philosophy of the movement. Based largely on the ideas of Paulo Freire, the MST’s schools aim to develop knowledge and skills appropriate to the rural life and instill commitment to the struggle for land reform and social justice in general.

MST is not favourably portrayed by the mainstream press in Brazil and is strongly opposed by the landowners through their political organ, the Democratic Ruralist Union (União Democrática Ruralista; UDR). Although the movement is legal, MST is often depicted as undemocratic and revolutionary. Additionally, violence against the landless workers has become commonplace, with the most-infamous incident being the Eldorado dos Carajás massacre in 1996, in which 19 landless workers were shot dead.

Other criticism has emerged from sections of society and academia that are sympathetic to the aims of the movement but question its methods. Some have drawn attention to the apparent ideological split between the leadership—characterized as Marxist revolutionaries—and the mass of the landless—predominantly conservative, traditional, and religious. MST’s educational work has at times been accused of having indoctrinatory elements, teaching a single interpretation of history and society and encouraging an unquestioning allegiance to the movement. Criticism has also been directed at the authoritarian nature of the organization. To reflect its belief in liberation theology and reduce the risk of leadership that is vulnerable to corruption or assassination, MST is organized into nonhierarchical collective units that make decisions through discussion and consensus. However, despite those representative structures and the MST’s experiments of participatory democracy in the camps, some commentators argue that real control of the organization is held by a small group, some of whom are unelected.