Land and Democracy: Reconsidering the Agrarian Question
Tavares, Ricardo
Instead of isolating the question of land redistribution as many had in the past, those working in support of the rural poor are seeking to situate the agrarian-reform issue within the broader...
...So the ability of the national state, of the central state, to impose solutions, to try to impose a direction, is extremely limited...
...One sign of this approach was the choice of banker Andrade Vieira for minister of agriculture, supply and agrarian reform...
...See Solon L. Barraclough, "The Legacy of Latin Ameri- can Land Reform," NACLA Report on the Americas, Vol...
...Another fundamental actor in the democratic transition was CONTAG...
...Agrarian reform draws the line between the right and left in Brazil...
...In 1992 alone, 16,442 people toiled as slave labor in the states of Bahia, Minas Gerais, Rio de Janeiro, Pari, Mato Grosso, A large landowner overseeing his workers Mato Grosso do Sul and Rio Grande do Sul...
...Francisco Graziano Neto, "Recolocando a Questao Agiria," p. 251...
...Vieira favors replacing an agrarian-reform plan with a lease NACLA REPORT ON THE AMERICAS 28REPORT ON BRAZIL system...
...1 2 Silva Dias believes that to ensure that agrarian reform is technically in order, it should introduce the modern technological set-up in the new properties, and it should involve intense training and education of the settled workers...
...Yet the vote for Lula in rural areas was once again very low...
...In addition, concentration of land ownership in Brazil is so great that any party that contemplates confronting social problems has to address the issue...
...Lula's program, however, emphasized the land question, giving short shrift to agricultural policies and rural development...
...Only Lula, running again as the Workers Party candidate, visited settlements of landless rural workers on agrarian-reform projects as part of the campaign activities...
...Most fundamental is undertaking an agrarian reform with subsidized credit, technical assistance, facilities for getting output to market, and a guaranteed minimum price, as is done in any decent and democratic country in the world...
...The answer lies in the particular character of Brazilian politics...
...Indeed, it is time that we move from words to action...
...In his view, the only true mass movement in the countryside is made up of rural wage workers, who are demanding better living conditions and wages, not land...
...Lula, in turn, defended the paradigm of European agriculture: "If we had an agrarian-reform policy made to order, there would be no occupations or land invasions...
...66 and 80...
...56-57...
...The Land Statute established a legal framework for later government subsidizing of the overhaul of traditional latifmindios, which became more capital-intensive as they developed into agroindustrial complexes...
...The Church chose agrarian reform as a key issue in its pastoral work nationwide, setting up the Pastoral Land Commission (CPT) in 1975...
...second, they are victims of the PT which, with its radi- A farm in Rio Grande do Sul, one of B calism, blocked the adoption of a modern and just agrarian reform in the Constituent Assembly...
...The MST multiplied the number of its occupations of large estates to pressure the government to carry out the reform...
...If we take the European countries as an example, we note that there, small and medium rural properties are the mainstay of production...
...3. In this regard see Alan Biorn H. Maybury-Lewis, "The Politics of the Possible: The Growth and Political Development of the Brazilian Rural Workers' Trade Union Movement, 1964-1985," Ph.D...
...Cardoso took the opportunity to attack the PT: "Agrarian reform is an important point in addressing the priorities of employment and agriculture...
...The main result of this logic was to facilitate the strategy of alliances of the large landowners who sought to block the reform...
...According to concerned with Francisco Graziano Neto, agronomist and personal adviser the productivity of to Cardoso, demand for land in Brazil is Brazilian agriculture, much less than what than with the PNRA wanted to redistribute and the finding work or land peasant movements demanded...
...1994 also ended with one of Brazil's leading intellectual and political supporters of agrarian reform questioning whether it makes sense to use the term "agrarian reform" in the 1990s...
...Translated from the Portuguese by Charles H. Roberts...
...Voi XXVIII, No 6 MAY/JUNE 1995 27 VOL XXVIII, No 6 MAY/JUNE 1995 27REPORT ON BRAZIL 1) It is false that Brazil needs a wide- Cardoso's advisors ranging agrarian are more reform...
...His economic program is clear, and is the basis of the center-right alliance that supported him in the campaign and is the basis of his administration...
...7 The MST openly supported Lula, as did the CUT and most of the national leaders of CONTAG (except its president, Francisco Urbano, who is a member of Fernando Henrique Cardoso's Brazilian Social Democratic Party...
...The maintenance of the democratic regime appears to be the only way of challenging the private power of the large landowners and of pressuring the state to redirect its resources...
...The two actions seem to suggest that agrarian reform-in this country with the hemisphere's most uneven distribution of land-is off the political agenda for the foreseeable future...
...Sharecroppers and tenant farmers, according to Graziano Neto, have no intrinsic right to the land: "There's no reason to think that a tenant farmer growing rice in Rio Grande do Sul should receive a piece of land from the authorities...
...Instead of isolating the question of land redistribution as many had in the past, those working in support of the rural poor are seeking to situate the agrarian-reform issue within the broader struggle against poverty and hunger...
...redistribution as many had in the past, pro-agrarian reform groups today are seeking to situate the agrarian-reform issue within the broader movement to consolidate and further the democratic regime...
...The left was also in part responsible for the plan's failure...
...In a typical framing of the issue, economist Geraldo Muller writes: "There is no point distributing land and creating new rural landowners...
...They felt threatened by the landless rural workers in many parts of the country, making them receptive to the anti-agrarian reform demagogy of the landowners...
...The were totally Rural Democratic Union (UDR), createxcluded from ed in December, 1984 by cattle ranchthe 1985 ers and landowners, agrarian-reform became the central force of the antiplan, PNRA campaign...
...From there, it is possible to determine who is in the countryside and wants to continue there...
...The former president of the Brazilian Association for Agrarian Reform (ABRA), Jos6 Gomes da Silva, was appointed president of the National Institute for Colonization and Agrarian Reform (INCRA...
...3 Defending an agrarian reform negotiated with the democratic transition government which took power in 1985, the confederation focused its efforts on mobilizing rural wage NACI4A REPORT ON THE AMERICAS 24REPORT ON BRAZIL workers on sugarcane plantations, especially in the Northeast...
...5, No...
...7. "Lula Prega Cidadania com Reforma Agriria," Jornal dos Trabal- hadores Rurais Sem Terra, Year XIll, No...
...President Jodo Goulart, who assumed power in 1961, sought to carry out agrarian reform as part of his broad-based program of "grassroots reforms" (reformas de base...
...The "Real Plan," implemented on July 1, 1994, made economic stabilization and control of inflation the almost exclusive focus of the presidential campaign, limiting opportunities to debate other issues...
...This alliance was in their own interest since rural landowners and other business interests in the state of Sdo Paulo own more than half of all land in the country, having invested heavily in agricultural frontier areas over the last 30 years...
...And this is the great challenge in Brazil as the century draws to a close...
...Today, the situation seems to have been inverted: "without democracy, there is no land...
...See Reforma Agriria e Estatuto da Terra (Rio de Janeiro: Grafica Auriverde, 1987), pp...
...It takes 20 days between making the decision and having the corn 500 kilometers inland from port...
...that all rural workers have as their main concern the struggle for land is to interpret Brazilian reality in a skewed fashion, twisting the facts so as to bring them into line with the old theories of the European peasantry at the time of the transition from feudalism...
...This influence stems from the fact that rural states in the North-mainly the Northeast-elect proportionally more members of the National Congress than the industrial and more populous states of the South and Southeast, perverting the principle of "one person, one vote...
...The June 13, 1994 issue of Jornal do Brasil covered the candidates' views on agrarian reform...
...The military overthrew Goulart in 1964, claiming the need to "re-establish order" and put a halt to the "Communist threat...
...A long-standing opponent of agrarian reform, Vieira was given the ministry in order to satisfy the Partido Trabalhista Brasileiro (PTB), one of the parties in the Congress that backs Cardoso...
...3) It is not politically viable to implement a massive agrarian reform centralized in the federal government...
...What is important is to seek consensus and results...
...The period from the election of Fernando Hen- rique Cardoso as president of Brazil on October 3, 1994, to his inauguration two months later spawned surprising changes in the agrarian-reform debate in Brazil...
...In May, 1985, Sarney addressed the IV Congress of CONTAG to announce the "proposal" for the First National Agrarian Reform Plan (PNRA), with the goal of expropriating 43 million hectares of land to eradicate rural poverty in 20 years...
...The reality, however, is more complex...
...stop the agrarian reform...
...Guilherme Leite da Silva Dias, "Ensaios e Debates," Reforma Agrdria, Journal of the Brazilian Agrarian Reform Association, May-August, 1994...
...Nonetheless, in the late 1950s and early 1960s peasants struggled against traditional forms of political domination by claiming the right to remain on the rural properties where they lived, and legal title to the land...
...The result is this: we went back to a situation prior to the Land Statute enacted by President Castelo Branco, which would be considered radical in the current situation...
...Small producers, many living close to the poverty line, were totally excluded from the benefits of the reform, despite rhetoric to the contrary...
...It drafted the most radical agrarian-reform legislation in the country's history, but then failed to implement it...
...Part of the money was used to purchase weapons, while another share went to purchase advertising in the mass media, mainly television and radio...
...Once the main neoliberal economic reforms that require constitutional amendments are concluded, President Cardoso will have to turn to his socialreform strategy...
...The fundamental challenge, however, was to win the political support of the National Congress, which had never endorsed an agrarian-reform program in Brazilian history...
...Tancredo Neves sought to transform the alliance that had come together to support populist Getilio Vargas from 1930 to 1954...
...Taxation, expropriation, legalization and colonization, among others, are also important land-policy actions, depending on where they are to be used...
...dissertation, Columbia University, 1991...
...See Jacob Gorender, "Genese e Desenvolvimento do Capitalismo no Campo Brasileiro," in A Questao Agrdria Hoje, pp...
...What is fundamental for increasing, diversifying, and improving the quality of the agrarian surplus is not bringing more people or land into the productive process, but having a financial arrangement that makes it possible to intensify exploitation of labor and land, and incorporating technical advances...
...The agrarian question has deep roots in Brazilian history, dating back to the Portuguese colonizers, who gave immense land tracts (capitanias hereditdrias) to a small group of settlers (donatdrios) to establish plantations based on slave labor...
...16 The rural social movements have chosen this year to launch a national campaign for "democratization of land" and generation of rural employment...
...This will be my administration's number-one objective...
...Cardoso's goals were much more modest: "To adopt a realistic and responsible agrarian policy with the settlement of 40,000 families in the first year...
...n 1985 agrarian reform became the key issue in national politics, achieving even more prominence than the challenge of controlling inflation...
...23REPORT ON BRAZIL The military dictatorship drafted the most radical agrarian-reform legislation in Brazil's history, but then failed to implement it...
...The MST began a new form of struggle for land based on setting up acampamentos, or makeshift encampments, on roads alongside large estates, and occupying lands considered unproductive, mainly in the three states of southern Brazil (Rio Grande do Sul, Santa Catarina and Parani...
...Coming from an anti-state strategy during the military regime, the social movements linked to the PT, the CUT and the MST defined themselves together as the opposition to the Sarney administration...
...3 Silva Dias adds: "In the context of this path of democratization that we are experiencing, power is highly diluted in the Brazilian federation...
...Fernando Henrique Cardoso, Maos a Obra, Brasil--Proposta de Governo, Brasilia, 1994, p. 103...
...Even if the issue was not talked about much in the campaign, agrarian reform was de rigeur in the candidates' programs...
...The expression 'agrarian reform' gives rise to ideological confrontation," said Herbert "Betinho" de Souza, coordinator of the Citizens' Action against Hunger and Misery...
...It is simply impossible," writes Graziano Neto, "to work with the Brazilian agrarian question in an aggregate manner...
...They associate this movement with the more general goal of fighting poverty and hunger in a country rife with social inequalities...
...The social program, however, has not been spelled out so far...
...In some regions of the country, with support from official banks such as the Banco do Brasil, large landowners have begun leasing lands to small rural producers in order to make their lands "productive...
...By 1968, however, when a group of unionized rural wage workers from the Northeast assumed leadership of the confederation, CONTAG came to be tolerated by the military, which wanted to maintain relative independence from the large landowners in rural-policy matters...
...In his first year of government, the President's absolute priority is to pass neoliberal economic reforms...
...As a consequence, agrarian reform was prominently featured in the political program of the democratic transition, when the opposition to and dissidence within the military regime came together to elect Tancredo Neves, the candidate of the reformist alliance between the Party of the Brazilian Democratic Movement (PMBD) and the Liberal Front Party (PFL), in the 1985 indirect presidential elections...
...The two groups played a decisive role in building a rural political base for the PT...
...The problem with lease policies is the opposite of the flaw in the PNRA: it tends to benefit mostly small producers interested in obtaining larger areas for planting, while it excludes landless farmers...
...Exacerbating the problem, the PNRA sought to benefit only the sem terra...
...n the 1989 campaign for the first direct presidential elections since 1961, agrarian reform was an important political issue, though not the central one...
...By then, it was too late...
...134, p. 5. 8. Workers Party, 13 Propostas do Governo Lula para o Campo, Sho Paulo, 1994, p. 3. 9. Wilson Cano, "Ensaios e Debates," Reforma Agraria, Journal of the Brazilian Agrarian Reform Association, May-August, 1994...
...In 1985, less than 0.9% of landowners occupied 44% of all arable land, while the poorest 90%, in terms of land ownership, occupied only 21% of all land...
...4. See Elisa Reis, "State Penetration and Citizenship in the Brazilian Countryside," IUPERJ, Serie Estudos, No...
...The rural landowners were losing the traditional mechanisms of social control which had operated up until that time...
...With the "political opening"-the "slow, gradual and steady" political easing of tensions begun under General Ernesto Geisel (1974-1979)-opportunities appeared for waging open struggles for social rights in the countryside...
...XXVIII, No...
...There is no social justice...
...While the faltering Brazilian economy during the Sarney years contributed to the landowners' success in burying the PNRA, the plan also lacked a broad base of political support...
...An endless number of options will appear," he writes, "the cheapest being to feed the city through food imports...
...Nonetheless, Cardoso has not offered any substantive ideas about the agrarian reform he may seek to carry out...
...It had opposed radicalization of the Peasant Leagues prior to the coup, devoting its energies to forming rural wage-workers unions...
...4 f the PSDB is so critical of the agrarian reform, why did the party include in its program the goal of settling 280,000 families in agrarian-reform projects over four years...
...The slogan of the rural social movements during the democratic transition was "without land, there is no democracy...
...3 (Nov/Dec 1994), p. 21...
...President Sarney did not stake a great deal of his political capital in the PNRA, since he never really saw the program as his own, but as a creation of Tancredo Neves...
...During the ensuing 26-year dictatorship, peasant movements were severely repressed...
...Francisco Graziano Neto, "Recolocando a Questao AgrBria," in A Questao Agrdria Hoje (Porto Alegre: Editora da Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul, 1994), p. 245...
...A Ministry of Agrarian Reform (MIRAD) was formed, and Nelson Ribeiro, a lawyer with ties to the Church and the PMDB, was named agriculture minister...
...Cardoso will have to make advances on this front if he is going to have the popular support he will need to reform the Constitution to permit his re-election to a second four-year term...
...6 The first problem worth mentioning resides in the very conception of agrarian reform in the PNRA: it focused exclusively on land ownership, dissociating land policy from agricultural policy (credit, infrastructure, market access, technical assistance, and a broader view of rural development...
...Once elected, Collor shut down the MIRAD created under Sarney, transferring its functions to the Ministry of Agriculture...
...They have learned that reducing all rural conflict in Brazil to the contradiction between the sem terra and the large estates will only lead to failure...
...The workers are victims, first, of the unjust concentration of landed property...
...The then-president of the UDR, Ronaldo Caiado, ran for president, but garnered an insignificant number of votes...
...What unites these PSDB intellectuals is their concern for increasing the productivity of Brazilian agriculture, not for finding work or land for the country's rural poor...
...The PNRA's audacious program met, howevof Landless Rural Workers in the southern state of Paranj in 1985...
...The diversity of relations of production requires varied forms of intervention that respect the predominant characteristics of agriculture as it is organized in the different regions...
...Land and Democracy 1. Aziz Filho, "Terra passa a ser alvo da campanha de Betinho," Folha de Sjo Paulo, December 25, 1994...
...First, the Rural Democratic Union (UDR), the landowners group which had become the leading opponent of agrarian reform, decided to close its doors, announcing that its work was done...
...4 By con- A land occupation by the Movement trast, Tancredo Neves' objective was to promote an austere economic policy so as to tame the industrial sector and urban trade unions, while also undertaking a bold agrarian-reform plan aimed at eradicating rural poverty...
...Instead of isolating the question of land VOL XXVIII, No 6 MAY/JUNE 1995 Ricardo Tavares is a Brazilian political scientist and a consultant to non-governmental organizations...
...Formed in 1963, just before the April 1964 military coup, CONTAG had a reformist, not radical spirit...
...This distortion in the Brazilian political system, which has been in place since 1930, allowed the military to rely on the landed oligarchy as one of its main bases of support...
...The Campaign against Hunger decided that henceforth it would use the concept "democratization of the land...
...The triumphant candidate, Fernando Collor de Mello, pledged to settle 500,000 families in agrarian-reform projects, a promise he did not fulfill...
...This expropriation of land did not take place, largely because of the clout of large landowners in the Brazilian political system...
...The National Constituent Assembly (1987-1988), which gathered to draft a new Constitution, provided a rare opportunity to the rural oligarchy to derail the agrarian-reform process...
...7 (September, 1992...
...It is necessary to make a survey of the unproductive lands in each municipality...
...The UDR's media campaign denounced the seizure of private property by the federal government, and tried to improve the image of the large rural landowners by calling them "rural producers" instead of latifundidrios . The landowners filed suits in the courts to obstruct the government's first efforts to expropriate large holdings...
...In agricultural frontier areas, priests and bishops sided with the posseiros (squatters who work the land but have no legal title) against the grileiros (colonists with fraudulent title) and large landowners, in a struggle which often became bloody...
...All these organizations helped build up public opinion in support of agrarian reform...
...The MST was particularly distrustful of Vice-President Jos6 Sarney, who was a traditional politician associated with the civilian base of support of the military regime, and a member of the Northeast rural oligarchy...
...He died one month after taking office, and VicePresident Sarney assumed the presidency...
...Luis Indcio "Lula" da Silva, of the Workers Party, made agrarian reform one of the key points in his proposed reform package...
...5 Neves did not live long enough to carry out this project...
...On the other hand, countless mistakes were made in the plan's design and political direction...
...The alliances needed to carry out social reforms may not be the same as those required to carry out the economic reforms...
...In the first half of the 1980s, the Movement of Landless Rural Workers (Movimento dos Trabalhadores Rurais Sem Terra, MST) and the National Department for Rural Workers of the Unified Workers Central (DNTR-CUT) were both formed...
...Guilherme Leite da Silva Dias, professor at the University of Sdo Paulo (USP) and PSDB adviser, considers urban supply the key issue...
...26NACLA REPORT ON THE AMERICAS 26 NACILA REPORT ON THE AMERICASREPORT ON BRAZIL The agrarian-reform issue was not prominent in the 1994 election campaign...
...2 Tenant farmers (moradores) were expelled from these properties...
...Lula set the goal of settling 800,000 families in plots of about 30 hectares each in the span of four years, the same number of families settled by Lizaro C.rdenas in Mexico from 1934 to 1940.8 To achieve this, the PT planned to expropriate 24 million hectares of land, at a likely cost of $8 billion, excluding the price of land...
...60,000 the second year...
...The CONTAG unionists navigated in turbulent waters, exploring "the politics of the possible...
...While Brazil's large landowners appear to be at ease, with no "threats" in sight, the social movements, the Catholic Church, and non-governmental organizations (NGOs)-the key sectors working in support of the rural poor-have not given up the struggle...
...In fact, the intellectuals of the PSDB, including some of President Cardoso's close advisers, have three main criticisms of agrarian reform: 'razil's more modernized states...
...2. The Land Statute (Law 4504/64) provided the first conceptual definition of the latifOndio in a legal document, creating a legal distinction between a latif6ndio, or traditional large landed estate, and a rural enterprise...
...Some analysts argue that the structure of agricultural production is less concentrated than the size of rural landholdings suggest, since most of the large properties produce nothing...
...Nevertheless, as broad sectors of the Brazilian public come together in the struggle to democratize access to the many fruits of this economically robust nation, part of that struggle must be directed to the democratization of access to land...
...2) It is difficult to make an agrarian reform viable in the framework of international competition for technology, capital and modern agricultural markets...
...In spite of the fact that the PNRA did not expropriate the 43 million hectares originally proposed, it did succeed in expropriating some areas, and in many micro-regions of the Brazilian interior, important opportunities for social change were created...
...See also Ricardo Tavares, "CONTAG, da ditadura a transicao-mem6ria social e constru(ao politica do 'campesinato,"' Masters dissertation, IUPERJ, 1992...
...80,000 the third year...
...To carry out agrarian reform in Brazil, backing must necessarily come from the key offices of the executive branch: the office of the president, the federal government's agrarian-reform agencies, the ministries of agriculture and justice, and the state-owned Banco do Brasil...
...And we will have development...
...The key element of this legislation was the 1964 Land Statute, an ambiguous law which sought to modernize agriculture, with land reform as one of its instruments...
...The presence of "authoritarian enclaves" in Brazilian territory, however, is a significant obstacle to the consolidation and expansion of democracy...
...In the first year of his administration, Sarney kept intact the alliances that had come together to support Neves...
...He will not risk undertaking any social reforms that may upset his conservative allies in the National Congress, who are key to the success of his economic agenda...
...Reflecting the power of the large landowners, the new Constitution, adopted in 1988, contains a ban on the expropriation of "productive lands...
...The Brazilian judiciary also became an obstacle, bringing PNRA reforms to a standstill in several states...
...To for the country's think," he writes, rural poor...
...Rather, they have decided to rethink their strategy...
...The rural oligarchies, the social base for many of Brazil's past authoritarian regimes, still violate human rights with impunity...
...While CONTAG decided to participate in the coalition that elected Tancredo Neves, the CUT, MST and PT denounced the indirect election as little more than a pact among elites...
...Only when Sarney completely withdrew his support for the PNRA, at the end of his term in office, did the PT make a clear show of support for the plan...
...Instead of being expropriated "for the social interest," they say, this land can be leased to small producers seeking larger production areas...
...Millions became rural wage workers, and millions more migrated to the industrial cities, transforming part of rural poverty into urban poverty...
...The PT refused to enter into an agreement with the other parties...
...The government provides credit to the small producers...
...Posseiros--squatters who work the land but have no legal title-in the state of Rio de Janeiro...
...Thousands of groups including rural unions, opposition trade unions, movements of the landless, associations of small rural producers, and NGOs organized across the country...
...In his view, in the context of Brazil's growing insertion into the world economy, food imports may continue to be the cheapest solution...
...The UDR organized making them "auctions" of cows receptive to the and horses nationwide to raise money demagogy of for the campaign to large landowners...
...Over the past 15 years, Brazil's social movements have won some political battles for agrarian reform, but have lost the head-on war against the large landholdings...
...The ministries of agriculture and justice, which are extremely important for carrying out agrarian reform, included representatives of the left wing of the PMDB...
...Nonetheless, the military had to respond to the social pressures in rural areas...
...9 The PT's program sought to do a better job of balancing the land question and agricultural policy than it had in 1989...
...and 100,000 families the fourth year...
...At the same time, the Land Statute defined rules for the expropriation of large idle rural properties and others not efficiently exploited...
...2 (April, 1994...
...In his inaugural speech of January 1, 1995, President Fernando Henrique Cardoso said: "We once again have freedom...
...1 5 Agrarian reform, however, is far from being a really important policy matter for Cardoso...
...Assassinations of peasant and religious leaders increased...
...Geraldo Muller, "Sao Paulo-o nocleo do padrao agrgrio moderno," in A Questao Agrdria Hoje, pp...
...Up to the late 1950s, rural workers faced obstacles to organizing in the form of legal constraints and landowner violence...
...5. Francisco Dornelles, federal deputy for the PFL from Rio de Janeiro, relative of Tancredo Neves and Minister of the Treasury for the first six months of the transition government, interview in Jornal do Brasil, in 1985...
...The CUT and MST adopted a strategy of confrontation with the state, as they pressured for social reforms by taking mass actions in the countryside...
...Everyone is figuring out how to import...
...235-236...
...In Brazil today, in large parts of the interior, the limited presence of the state has enabled rural oligarchies, both old and new, to exercise private discretionary control over labor relations...
...Over the course of the military regime, three important actors in the Brazilian rural scene developed national policies to support the demands of peasants and rural workers: the Catholic Church, the National Confederation of Agricultural Workers (CONTAG), and the social movements associated with the Workers' Party (PT...
...The industrial and financial groups of Sdo Paulo, the center of Brazilian capitalism, threw their support behind the UDR's anti-agrarian reform campaign...
...Vargas allied with the industrial sectors and urban workers to promote import-substitution industrialization, and gave the rural oligarchies the right to savagely exploit the peasantry...
...See Jonathan Fox, "Latin America's Emerging Local Politics," Journal of Democracy, Vol...
...6. I fully endorse the words of Solon L. Barraclough in his broad assessment of agrarian reforms in Latin America: "Like all quests for greater social justice, struggles for land reform have brought disappointments and tragic perversions as well as limited suc- cesses...
...At first, it suffered harassment by the military regime...
...0 PSDB advisers never gave details during the campaign about how these goals would be achieved...
...The PNRA failed on that count as well...
...VOL XXVIII, No 6 MAY/JUNE 1995 25 z g v 6 ; VOL XXVIII, NO 6 MAY/JUNE 1995 25REPORT ON BRAZIL er, with the violent opposition of large Small producers landowners...
...Having forged alliances with the conservative parties in order to win the election, Cardoso did not want to serve up evidence on a silver platter that would support the PT's accusations that he had moved sharply to the right...
...Today, this leasing arrangement is the best-articulated project of the sectors opposed to agrarian reform...
Vol. 28 • May 1995 • No. 6
