The Landless Workers' Movement (, MST) is a social movement in Brazil aimed at land reform. Inspired by Marxism, it is the largest such movement in Latin America, with an estimated informal membership of 1.5 millionHerbert Girardet, ed. Surviving the century: facing climate chaos and other global challenges. London, Earthscan, 2007, , page 185 across 23 of Brazil's 26 states.
MST defines its goals as access to the land for poor workers through land reform in Brazil, and activism around social issues that make land ownership more difficult to achieve, such as unequal income distribution, racism, sexism, and media monopolies."Nossos objetivos". MST page, . Retrieved 1 September 2012 MST strives to achieve a self-sustainable way of life for the rural poor.
The MST differs from previous land reform movements in its single-issue focus; land reform for them is a self-justifying cause. The organization maintains that it is legally justified in occupying unproductive land, pointing to the most recent Constitution of Brazil (1988), which contains a passage saying that land must fulfill a social function (Article 5, XXIII). The MST also notes, based on 1996 census statistics, that a mere 3% of the population owns two-thirds of all arable land in Brazil.About the MST on mstbrazil.org. Accessed 9 September 2006.
In 1991, MST received the Right Livelihood Award "for winning land for landless families, and helping them to farm it sustainably."
Land reform before the 1988 Constitution
Land reform has a long history in Brazil, and the concept predates the MST. In the mid-20th century, Brazilian leftists reached a consensus that the democratization and widespread actual exercise of political rights would require land reform.Michael Moran, Geraint Parry, eds., Democracy and Democratization. London: Routledge, 1994, , page 191; Arthur MacEwan, Neo-liberalism Or Democracy?: Economic Strategy, Markets, and Alternatives for the 21st Century. London: Zed Books, 1999, , page 148 Brazilian political elites actively opposed land reform initiatives, which they felt threatened their social and political status.Michael Lipton, Land Reform in Developing Countries: Property Rights and Property Wrongs London: Routledge, 2009, , p. 275; Rodolfo Stavenhagen, Between Underdevelopment and Revolution: A Latin American Perspective. New Delhi: Abhinav, 1981, p. 10; Carlos H. Waisman, Raanan Rein, eds., Spanish and Latin American Transitions to Democracy. Brighton: Sussex Academic Press, 2006, , pp. 156/157 Political leaders of the rural poor then attempted to achieve land reform from below, through grassroots action. MST broke new ground by tackling land reform itself, by "breaking...dependent relations with parties, governments, and other institutions,"Bernardo Mançano Fernandes, "The MST and Agrarian Reform in Brazil". Socialism and Democracy online, 51, Vol. 23, No.3, available at and framing the issue in purely political terms, rather than social, ethical, or religious ones.
The first statute to regulate land ownership in Brazil after its independence, Law 601 or Lei de Terras (Landed Property Act), took effect 18 September 1850. A colonial administration, based on Portuguese feudal law, had previously considered property ownership to stem from royal grants (sesmarias), and were passed through primogeniture (morgadio). In the independent Brazilian state, the default means of acquiring land was through purchase, from either the state or a previous private owner. This law strongly limited squatter's rights, and favoured the historic concentration of land ownership, which became a hallmark of modern Brazilian social history. The Lei de Terras left in place the colonial practice of favoring of large landholdings created by mammoth land grants to well-placed people, which were usually worked by enslaved people.Robert M. Levine, John Crocitti, eds., The Brazil Reader: History, Culture, Politics. Duke University Press, 1999, , p. 264
Continuing the policy favored economies of scale, given the limited number of landowners, but simultaneously made it difficult for small planters and peasants to obtain the land needed to practice subsistence agriculture and small-scale farming.Wendy Wolford, This Land Is Ours Now: Social Mobilization and the Meanings of Land in Brazil. Duke University Press, 2010, , pages 38 sqq.
The consolidation of land ownership into just a few hands had ties to the advent of capitalism in Brazil, and opposition and insurrection in the 19th and early 20th century (for example, the Canudos War in the 1890s, and the Contestado War in the 1910s) idealized older forms of property, and revitalized ideologiesCandace Slater, Trail of Miracles: Stories from a Pilgrimage in Northeast Brazil. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986, , p. 45 centered on a fabled millenarian return to an earlier, pre-bourgeois social order. Advocated by groups led by rogue messianic religious leaders outside the established Catholic hierarchy, these ideologies seemed heretical and revolutionary.Michael L. Conniff, Frank D. MacCann, eds., Modern Brazil: Elites and Masses in Historical Perspective. The University of Nebraska Press, 1991, , page 133 Some leftist historians, following the tracks of the groundbreaking 1963 work by journalist (Cangaceiros e Fanáticos), tend to conflate early 20th-century banditry in northeastern Brazil (cangaço) with messianism as a kind of social banditry, a protest against such social inequalities as the uneven distribution of land assets.Sarah R. Sarzynski, History, Identity and the Struggle for Land in Northeastern Brazil, 1955—1985. ProQuest, 2008: page 284Candace Slater, Stories on a String: The Brazilian Literatura de Cordel. University of California Press, 1982, , page 210, footnote 10 This theory developed independently in English-speaking academia around Eric Hobsbawn's 1959 work Primitive Rebels. It was criticized for its unspecific definition of "social movement," but also praised for melding political and religious movements, previously separately examined.Peter Burke, História e teoria social. São Paulo: UNESP, 2002, , page 125 This blend was later the basis for the MST's emergence.
Both messianism and cangaço disappeared in the late 1930s, but in the 1940s and '50s, additional peasant resistance broke out to evictions and land grabbing by powerful ranchers: Teófilo Otoni, Minas Gerais, in 1948 Porecatu, Paraná, in 1951 Southwest Paraná, in 1957 Trombas and Goiás, 1952–1958Anthony L. Hall, Developing Amazonia: deforestation and social conflict in Brazil's Carajás Programme. Manchester University Press: 1991, , pages 188/189 These local affairs, however, were repressed or settled locally, and did not give rise to an ideology. Policy makers and scholars across the political spectrum believed that it was an objective economic necessity to permit the end of Brazilian rural society through mechanized agrobusiness and forced urbanization. The left, in particular, felt that the technologically backward, feudal latifundia impeded both economic modernization and democratization.José Carlos Reis, As identidades do Brasil: de Varnhagen a FHC. Rio de Janeiro: FGV, 2007, , V.1, page 164
During the 1960s, various groups attempted land reform through the legal system, beginning with the peasant leagues (Ligas Camponesas) in northeastern Brazil,Sam Moyo & Paris Yeros, eds., Reclaiming the land: the resurgence of rural movements in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. London, Zed Books, , page 342 which opposed the evictions of tenant farmers land, and the transformation of plantations into cattle ranches.Ronald H. Chilcote, ed. – Protest and resistance in Angola and Brazil: comparative studies. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1972, , page 191 These groups questioned the existing distribution of land ownership through a rational appeal to the social function of property.
Despite the efforts of these groups, land ownership continued to concentrate, and Brazil to this day has had a highly dynamic and robust agricultural business sector at the price of extensive dislocation of the rural poor.James F. Petras, Henry Veltmeyer, Cardoso's Brazil: a land for sale. Lanham, Rowman & Littlefield, 2003, , page 17 MST questioned the scope of the benefits from the alleged efficiency of the change, given that since 1850, Brazilian land development had been concerned with the interests of a single class—the rural bourgeoisie.Luiz Bezerra Neto, Sem-terra aprende e ensina: estudo sobre as práticas educativas do Movimento dos Trabalhadores Rurais. Campinas, SP: Autores Associados, 1999, , page 30 While the MST frames its policies in socio-economic terms, it still points to Canudos and its alleged millenarismRobert M. Levine, Vale of tears: revisiting the Canudos massacre in northeastern Brazil, 1893–1897. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995, , page 65 to legitimize its existence,Angela Maria de Castro Gomes et al., A República no Brasil. Rio de Janeiro: Nova Fronteira, 2002, , page 118 and to develop a powerful mystique of its own.Ruth Reitan, Global Activism. Abingdon: Routledge, 2007, , page 154
A great deal of the early organizing in the MST came from Catholic communities.Edward L. Cleary, How Latin America Saved the Soul of the Catholic Church. Mahwah, NJ, Paulist Press, 2009, , page 32; Angus Lindsay Wright & Wendy Wolford, To inherit the earth: the landless movement and the struggle for a new Brazil. Oakland, Food First Books, 2003, , page 74 Much of MST ideology and practice come from a social doctrine of the Catholic Church: that private property should serve a social function.Petras & Veltmeyer, Cardoso's Brazil, 18 This principle developed during the 19th century,Sándor Agócs, The troubled origins of the Italian Catholic labor movement, 1878–1914. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1988, , page 25; Scott Mainwaring, The Catholic Church and politics in Brazil, 1916–1985. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1986, page 55 and became Catholic doctrine with Pope Leo XIII's Rerum novarum encyclical,Charles C. Geisler & Gail Daneker, eds. Property and values: alternatives to public and private ownership. Washington DC: Island Press, 2000, , page 31 promulgated on the eve of the 1964 military coup (golpe militar). This doctrine was evoked by President João Goulart at a rally in Rio de Janeiro, at which he offered a blueprint for political and social reforms, and proposed expropriation of estates larger than 600 hectares in areas near federal facilities, such as roads, railroads, reservoirs, and sanitation works; these ideas triggered a strong conservative backlash, and led to Goulart's loss of power.Marieta de Moraes Ferreira, ed., João Goulart: entre a memória e a história, Rio de Janeiro: FGV, 2006, , page 74 Nevertheless, the Brazilian Catholic hierarchy formally acknowledged the principle in 1980.the National Conference of Brazilian Bishops (CNBB) issued a document – Church and Land Problems – recognizing and pleading for public acknowledgement of communal rights to the land.José de Souza Martins, Reforma agrária: o impossível diálogo. São Paulo: EDUSP, 2004, , page 104