Brazil's Landless Find Their Voice

...The network fighting for agrarian reform which the MST has helped create has succeeded in convincing the public that agrarian reform is not a short-term economic question but a long-term social and political problem...

...During the National Congress in July 1995 in Brasilia, the MST entirely revised its position regarding the rest of Brazilian society...

...This rhetorical promise aside, it is unclear if agrarian reform would have in fact become a political priority of the government had the killings at Corumbiara and Carajds not occurred...

...Since goal is not only to obtain land for land to pressure for agrarian reform on landless MST families are expected to involved in the movement even afte plots of land...

...It still uses the logic of action of a movement and the threat of mobilization as its main bargaining power...

...Author's interview, NeOri Rossetto, Sao Paulo, July 30, 1999...

...The MST, clearly the best organized of these groups, nevertheless had limited political capacity at the national level until very recently...

...The organization not only lacked strong ties to larger political institutions such as unions and political parties...

...Our whole organization is collective...

...Another measure approved was the Expedited Procedure Law, designed to accelerate expropriation and prevent the landowners' lawyers from stalling the land redistribution process to obtain higher compensation...

...tional Relations-reveals the extent to which the ructured the par- MST's concerns go well beyond agricultural producng-term survival tion...

...The rising profile of the MST and the corresponding increase in its political weight made the organization less preoccupied with being subordinated to other organizations...

...Perhaps the principal reason the Eldorado dos Carajds massacre in particular became so significant is that it was caught on film by television reporter Marisa Romio and cameraman Osvaldo Aratijo, who happened to be caught in traffic on the highway leading to Bel6m where the demonstration occurred...

...5. Francisco Leali, "Urn m@s de impunidade," Jornal do Brasil (Rio de Janeiro), May 20, 1996...

...Questions over how land reform will be implemented-how many hectares, in what regions, how quickly?-are legitimate, as are concerns over government initiatives, like the Land Bank, which seem to be designed to avoid expropriation...

...This, Rossetto explains, required adopting new forms of organization: First, the struggle had to be massive, that is, it had to incorporate many people...

...A month after the Carajis massacre, a massive public demonstration was organized around the motto "Justice Now," recalling the 1984 campaign directed against the military dictatorship, "Direct Elections Now...

...When we arrived in Brasilia we had so much food left that we were able to send it to the nearby encampments...

...6. "Se quiserem cobrar do governo federal a responsabilidade, me deem os instrumentos...

...Each of the organizational structures below the the movement's National Congress are replicated at the state and less families, but regional levels with the exception of the Human Rights a national scale, and the International Relations section, which only remain actively exist at the national level...

...it also had no contact with any international institution which could support its struggle...

...The most important achievement of this network-of which the MST is just one, albeit a crucial, actor-has been to put agrarian reform on the national agenda...

...2 5 A good illustration of this unity is the March 1999 mobilization that took place after the federal government announced the creation of the Land Bank, a new World Bank-funded program designed to provide loans to landless workers to purchase land plots...

...As a result, it began constructing "alliances with unions, "The agrarian such as the Unified reform we Workers' Federation (CUT) and the CONdream of will TAG, and with political only happen parties, primarily the Workers' Party (PT...

...And when a political party enters in some kind of social pact, the movement becomes subordinated to the logic of the party and is no longer able to struggle...

...She is currently writ- ing her doctoral dissertation on the Landless Movement in Brazil at St...

...This is exactly what happened with respect to agrarian reform in Brazil...

...All the others boycotted the event...

...from the organi- This does not imply that the MST's organizational g to MST leader structure is unchanging...

...I often wish that the MST would discuss some of their actions with their allies before implementing them," he said...

...wo factors were essential for the successful creation of a national organizational structure...

...They were formed in reaction to the usurpation of peasant lands by the large sugar plantations, which sought to expand their holdings in response to rising sugar prices on the world market...

...These meetings culminated in the January 1984 meeting at Cascdvel...

...The MST expressed its concern to other organizations such as CONTAG, the Federation of Agricultural Workers, the CUT and the CPT...

...Apoio ao MST preocupa PFL," Jornal do Brasil (Rio de Janeiro), June 20, 1996...

...The CPT played a fundamental role in developing contacts between local and regional leaders through a series of meetings between 1975 and 1984, giving a national dimension to land struggles...

...8. Margaret E. Keck and Kathryn Sikkink, Activists Beyond Borders: Advocacy Networks in International Politics (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1998), p. 8. 9. Keck and Sikkink, Activists Beyond Borders, p. 204...

...Historically, the Catholic Church n Brazil was a conservative instition that supported the status -in 1964, for example, it supportcoup d'6tat by the Brazilian mili- than at ah-nt tha d-,Atrtir-tn rf the Peasant Leagues...

...This intensificatio government actions and effo: niz.thnut a dlnht a rPcn-nnc 1 from the MST...

...The third element was the necessity of waging the struggle on the national level.16 The formation of the movement was triggered by land struggles which occurred in different southern states starting in 1978, notably in Rio Grande do Sul, where 1,400 families of posseiros-farmers without land deeds-were expelled from the Nonoai reservation by the Kaingang Indians...

...We need to carry out agrarian reform in Brazil as a means of fomenting social justice...

...By contrast, in 1995, six points referred to society as a whole but none referred specifically to rural workers...

...This first national meeting exclusively addressed the situation of landless workers, and is considered to be the founding meeting of the MST...

...This basic principle of assure support for future land occupa members who have already benefited zation's activities...

...Author's interview, Edson L. Vismona, Adjunct Secretary of Justice of the State of Sao Paulo, Sao Paulo, July 25, 1997...

...The MST is not officially present in the states of Acre, Amazonas, Roraima and Amapi mainly because the terrain in this area of the Amazon region is too hostile to allow for permanent settlements...

...It is the only movement in Brazil that has successfully built a national organizational structure, and is the first grassroots movement to have effected radical changes in the political priorities of the national government...

...I since the beginning of the movement, t constant preoccupation with assur involved in the struggle for land also 1 of political awareness...

...The Leagues were an effort to resist these changes, but they remained locked in the dynamics of regional grievances and conflict, and proved unable to attract the support of disaffected peasants in other regions of Brazil...

...But after that it was the people we met on our way who fed us...

...The story of the Eldorado dos Carajds massacre hit the media as the program was being developed, eroding confidence in the government's commitment to defend human rights...

...Eliana Lucena, "Inqu6rito civil dever, ser prorrogado," p. 2; Amnesty International, "Corumbiara and Eldorado dos CarajBs," p. 25...

...Author's interview, Judite Strozake, London, October 30, 1998...

...2 2 Shortly after the march, President Fernando Henrique Cardoso announced that agrarian reform would cease to be the exclusive concern of the Special Ministry and would become "an absolute priority of the government as a whole...

...In the eventuality that the party breaks apart, it ends up dividing the social movement too...

...7 In Activists Beyond Borders, Margaret Keck and rch played amental eveloping s among 'L r .n Kathryn Sikkink use the term "advocacy networks" to denote forms of organization characterized by "voluntary, reciprocal and horizontal patterns of communication and exchange...

...a fund The massacres thus came to acquire symbolic importance as reminders of the role in d ongoing impunity in Brazilian society, and highlighted the gap between govern- contact ment rhetoric and practice...

...This debate about figures seems difficult to resolve, but it is important to note that after the media impact of the two massacres, the MST remains a significant player on the national political scene...

...ee objectives of bined primary and secondary school, and literacy trainre Just Society" ing...

...2 3 With this growing political influence, the MST felt sufficiently strong to stop worrying about jeopardizing its autonomy...

...For example, the rural land tax for large and unproductive properties was increased substantially, from a maximum of 4.5% for properties of more than 15,000 hectares (37,065 acres) to 20% for properties over 5,000 hectares (12,355 acres...

...Author's interview, Luis Inmcio Lula da Silva, Sao Paulo, July 28, 1999...

...The comment of Jos6 Rainha, a national leader of the MST, on the official support that the MST was prepared to give to Luis Inicio Lula da Silva of the PT in the 1998 presidential elections is relevant in this respect: We want to support Lula-a candidate of the left-to help us in the process of agrarian reform...

...This is why we formed, in opposition to the old model, collective leaderships...

...Vol XXXIII, No 5 MARCH/APRIL 2000 0 0 33REPORT ON RURAL MOVEMENTS he priority placed on constructing strategic alliances since 1995 reveals even more clearly this constant re-evaluation on the part of the MST as a whole and is crucial in order to understand its continuing political influence...

...7. Candido Grzybowski, "Rural Workers' Movement and Democratization in Brazil," in Jonathan Fox, ed., The Challenge of Rural Democratization: Perspectives from Latin America and the Philippines (London: Cass, 1990), p. 34...

...Even though it encouraged individual members to participate in political parties and unions, the movement as a whole was extremely reluctant to build any official alliance with such organizations...

...The MST has sharply criticized the program, arguing that the loan conditions will render farmers unable to purchase land, and suggesting that the program's overall intent is to avoid the implementation of agrarian reform...

...Author's interview, MArio Schons, Brasilia, August 3, 1999...

...The massacre of ten landless workers by military police in Corumbiara, in the state of Rond6nia on Anne-Laure Cadji just completed an internship at the European Commission, where she worked in the Latin American Unit of the Foreign Relations Directorate General...

...Author's interview, Jose Grigori, Brasilia, August 6, 1999...

...Amnesty International, "Corumbiara and Eldorado dos Carajis," p. 25...

...Rodrigo Franta Taves, "Presidente determina prioridade para a reforma agriria envolvendo todo o Governo," 0 Globo (Rio de Janeiro), February 17, 1997...

...8 Major actors in advocacy networks may include national and international nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), social movements, the media, churches, id giving trade unions and government agencies...

...Eliana Lucena, "Inquirito civil deveri ser prorrogado," Jornal do Brasil (Rio de Janeiro), April 24, 1996, p.4...

...A comparison of the goals drawn up during the first National Meeting in 1984 in Cascivel and those established during the National Congress in 1995 in Brasflia illustrates this change of position...

...1 4 "There absolutely no doubt that the MST represents a stimulus for government action," says Secretary of State for Human Rights, Josd Grdgori...

...t f A i *lt- +i L Qcial Ministry for Landed Pr Policy, where the reform proc could move forward...

...Keck and Sikkink argue that activists in networks try not only to influence policy outcomes, but to transform the terms and nature of the debate...

...By contrast, the MST's thr "Land, Agrarian Reform and a Mor travel well across the country...

...cies...

...They rc the aspirations of landless rural worke of families whose lands were flooded of the Itaipu dam near the Paragu migrant workers laboring on the north In addition, the way the MST has st ticipation of its members makes the lo of the movement more likely...

...This complex organizational r receiving their structure-the fruit of 20 years of land struggle-has solidarity helps been consolidated, and a new generation of leaders tions from MST who work within this structure has emerged...

...These two tragic events, in effect, mark a turning point in the process of conflict and negotiation between the MST and the Brazilian government...

...For example, a 1996 survey conducted by the Vox Populi Institute revealed that over 50% of the population supported the MST...

...But the killings of Corumbiara and Eldorado dos Carajis changed that...

...Polit ical education" represents one of the f sector, along with assistance to new Young women learning to write at an adult education class in an MST settlement...

...2. Conflitos no Campo (Goiana: Comissao Pastoral da Terra, 1996...

...Author's interview, NeOri Rossetto, Sno Paulo, July 30, 1999...

...These two massacres--extreme cases of the arbitrary use of state violence in land struggles-were condemned by members of the MST, other civil society groups and state actors, independent of their position on the agrarian reform question.10 This common condemnation became the basis for the formation of a network involving all these actors, as well as the Catholic Church, and eventually actors at the international level...

...After a second meeting in January 1984 in CascAvel, Parand, in which posseiros from 12 states U, L IIl la- 0 U.llulI . l, a, rs' Movement" was chosen for this pient rural movement...

...In addition, the MST once held a largely isolationist stance vis-A-vis other organizations...

...1 8 Education is one of the eight sec MST's organizational structure...

...2 1 This support was also seen in more concrete ways...

...MST, Ginese e Desenvolvimento do MST, Cadernos de Formaq&o, No...

...4 The Carajis massacre was also a sobering reminder that, nine months after the Corumbiara killings, not a single military police officer had been punished for those deaths...

...2 4 Lula, in turn, said that while he did not agree with all their decisions, he felt solidarity with the MST...

...MST leader Gilmar Mauro explains this isolationism: Experience throughout Latin America suggests that social movements and peasant movements that become linked to political parties run high risks...

...There was, moreover, a growing sense of support for the MST within civil society that forced the government to sit up and take notice...

...all the sectors and even the national directorate are collective bodies...

...For example, the Peasant Leagues that organized in the mid-1950s in the northeastern state of Pernambuco remained isolated in that region, leading to their ultimate failure...

...The Human Rights Division of the Ministry of Justice was created in March 1997...

...August 9, 1995, and of 19 landless workers on April 17, 1996, also by military police, in Eldorado dos Carajds, in the state of ParA, were not the first such killings.' In fact, over the past 15 years, more than 1,600 Brazilians have been killed in land conflicts, primarily by hired gunmen and increasingly since the mid-1990s, by the military police...

...This evolution was a necessary condition for the MST to build later alliances with other actors involved in land struggle or in the implementation of agrarian reform...

...Author's interview, Gilmar Mauro, Pontal do Paranapanema, August 3, 1997...

...The Church hierarchy thus began to openly support the work which had already been undertaken by parish priests in the burgeoning Christian base communities, and in 1975 the Pastoral Land Commission (CPT) was created...

...actors...

...But sustained MST protest pressured the government to move the issue of agrarian reform from the jurisdiction f lt11 U4...

...The struggle led by the MST and later echoed by a series of other actors convinced Brazilians that agrarian reform was a complex problem that could not be approached simply on economic grounds and had to be understood as one aspect of a broader strategy aimed at solving many social and political problems in Brazil, such as rural violence and urban unemployment...

...32NACLA REPORT ON THE AMERICAS 32 NACLA REPORT ON THE AMERICASREPORT ON RURAL MOVEMENTS The three objectives set by the MST at the meeting in Cascdvel-"Land, Agrarian Reform and a More Just Society"-have remained the core of the movement's mission, and they have served to galvanize broader social aspirations than earlier rural movements...

...Perhaps the most significant was the role played by the Catholic Church...

...With respect to the alliance pressuring for agrarian reform, Lula noted: "What is important is to have a common objective to strive for, and we all agree on this objective, be it the Landless Workers' Movement, the PT or the CUT...

...The MST disputes this number, estimating that over the past 15 years only 300,000 families have been settled...

...But with the MST, the government is working at a lev of eight...

...So in this sense society supports us...

...One of the obstacles to the emergence giggles a of such networks, Keck and Sikkink argue, is disagreement over particular Onal issues by different political and social vision...

...The MST )ntinued to grow in the following years...

...1 3 For example, during the early years of the Cardoso government, the question of agrarian reform was deadlocked as long as the National Institute for Colonization and Agrarian Reform was under the Ministry of Agriculture, which was headed by a conservative landowner, Jos6 Eduardo de Andrade Vieira...

...Author's interview, Nenri Rossetto, Sao Paulo, July 23, 1997...

...it is a dynamic of constant struggle, occupations, conquests and oppositions.m But this fear became less prominent as the MST became more visible in the aftermath of the 1995 and 1996 massacres...

...When the Minister of Landed Property Policy, Radil Jungmann, launched the program, only three organizations out of 30 were present for the occasion...

...The mas- leaders z sacres occurred at a time when the government of Fernando Henrique Cardoso land str (1995- ) had committed itself to reversing the endemic violence within Brazil, a nat clear legacy of the 1964-1985 military dime regime...

...Alliance building notwithstanding, the MST has continued to organize land occupations...

...In a meeting in Chapec6, in the state of Santa Catarina, posseiros from five states in central and southern Brazil created a Provisional Regional Committee, the forerunner of the MST...

...4. FAbio L. S. Petrarolha, "Brazil: The Meek Want the Earth Now," The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists (November/December 1996), p. 20...

...We maintain that the agrarian reform we dream of will only happen with the struggle of rural workers...

...In any case, on April 18, 1996--one day after the Carajds killingsMinister of Agriculture Adrade Vieira resigned, and by the end of the month the Special Ministry for Agrarian Reform was created especially to address the problem of agrarian reform...

...Author's interview, Neuri Rossetto, Sao Paulo, July 30, 1999...

...Founded in 1984, the Landless Rural Workers' Movement (MST) is today the largest social movement in Brazil and perhaps the best organized grassroots organization in all of Latin America...

...The MST ably took advantage of the sudden prominence of the issue...

...5 The "Justice Now" campaign, like its predecessor, was widely covered by the media both The Chu inside and outside of Brazil...

...with the The movement also par- ticipated in a dialogue struggle of rural with government agenworkers...

...Antony's College, University of Oxford...

...15 The MST, suggests Nedri Rossetto, one of its national coordinators, has been particularly good at learning from previous experiences in rural organizing...

...Brazil's Landless Find Their Voice 1. See Amnesty International, "Corumbiara and Eldorado dos Carajts: Rural Violence, Police Brutality and Impunity," Amnesty International Index (January 1998...

...As Jolo Pedro St6dile, a national MST leader noted, the Cascivel meeting was crucial in linking disparate activists into a unified social movement, and it was there that the MST's first agenda was drawn up.17 The second important factor contributing to the formation of a national structure is the nature of the leadership and vision of the MST organizers themselves...

...it is impossible for us to occupy land in small numbers because the repression would come and that would be the end of it...

...rs, but also those This emphasis on education-as well as the other secafter the building tors within the MST's organizational structure, such as ayan border, or Communications, Training, Human Rights and Internaern plantations...

...Author's interview, Jose Rainha Jr Teodoro Sampaio (Pontal do Paranapanema, state of Sao Paulo), August 1, 1997...

...After the Second General Conference of the Latin American Episcopate in Medellin, Colombia in 1968, the National Bishops Conference of Brazil (CNBB) issued new, Liberation Theology-inspired directives favoring the "preferential option for the poor...

...And this, according Rossetto, is obtained through a process cation: The rural worker who receives the la1 participate in the struggle, and this obtained through political education...

...2 But these two massacres drew immediate media attention, provoking a dramatic rise in the profile of the MST and, correspondingly, in its political weight within Brazil...

...See "MST Goals".] In 1984, only one point of the MST agenda referred to society as a whole, while six referred specifically to rural workers...

...Second, we could not have a union style leadership...

...Then again, this is not always possible...

...On a scale of one to ten, without the MST, the government would work for agrarian reform at a level of 3.5...

...The MST's original members therefore saw the national expansion of the movement as a top priority...

...FHC diz que nao 6 'responsivel' por massacre," Folha de Sao Paulo (Sao Paulo), April 21, 1996, p. 11...

...The second transferred jurisdiction in cases against the military police for "intentional homicide" from military to civilian courts...

...This motto appears on all the products sold by the movement, ranging from compact discs to T-shirts to agricultural goods...

...But the agrarian reform implies a major social transformation that the government has to implement...

...The killings of Eldorado dos Carajds forced the government to recognize that the problems of human rights violations and agrarian reform were intrinsically linked and could not be resolved independently...

...The dynamic of a social movement is very different from that of a union movement or of a political party...

...The same year, the MST changed its motto from "Land to the tiller" to "Agrarian reform: Everyone's struggle...

...In response to the massacre, Cardoso pointed out that the military police and the judiciary are under the control of the states, not the federal government...

...Today there are some 1,100 schools in which over present not only 100,000 children are taught by about 3,000 teachers...

...the logic of a union, with a single president, or a movement with a single leader would not work...

...But it is important to understand that these questions can now be asked because the MST has succeeded in making agrarian reform an issue in Brazilian politics-something that was not at all a given just a few years ago...

...3 As one Brazilian scientist noted: "The videotaping of this massacre was the first time that the Brazilian public had seen for itself the violence that has frequently been visited on the Landless Movement...

...On the contrary, as the debate of political edu- on agrarian reform evolves, the MST constantly reevaluates its strategy and adapts its organizational structure accordingly...

...3. Amnesty International, "Corumbiara and Eldorado dos Carajas," p. 19...

...If they want the federal government to be responsible," he said, "then they also must give me the necessary tools...

...When we left Sio Paulo for Brasilia, we had food for two weeks," said MST activist Mario Schons...

...But have some kind by August 1997, one year after the killings in Eldorado dos Carajds, none of the 153 military police officers had been convicted, leading several MST leaders to the :tors within the conclusion that their organization needed a section ical and ideolog- exclusively dedicated to pressuring national and interour fronts of that national institutions to ensure respect for human rights mothers, com- and the rights of rural workers...

...Prior to these two tragic events, the MST and the other groups that organize rural settlements and land occupations, such as the Confederation of Agricultural Workers (CONTAG), the Federation of Agricultural Workers (FETA), and the Movement of Landless Farmers (MAST), appeared to be isolated in their struggle for land reform...

...According to government figures, between January 1 and December 20, 1999, 85,327 families benefited from the government's agrarian reform policies, bringing the total number of families settled since the beginning of the Cardoso government in 1995 to 372,866...

...In addition, the MST originated in the southern states of Rio Grande do Sul, Santa Catarina, Parana, Sao Paulo and Mato Grosso do Sul...

...The MST claims to represent between 250,000 and 300,000 families that have benefited from agrarian reform in the past 16 years, as well as 70,000 families living in some 500 encampments across Brazil still waiting for land.1 2 The movement, which is present in the Federal District and in 22 of Brazil's 26 states, has exercised pressure throughout the country, producing some significant achievements...

...2 6 During his first campaign for the presidency in 1994, President Cardoso said that his government would tackle the problem of agrarian reform...

...The Human Rights section, for nd continues to example, was created only after the national meeting in commitment is February 1998.19 Prior to that, the MST lacked a speFor this reason, cific structure to deal with this issue, and the main here has been a actor denouncing human rights violations was the Pasing that those toral Land Commission through its annual reports...

...Indeed, it was the widespread media attention focusing on two massacres in 1995 and 1996 that galvanized national and world attention to the struggle of the MST and the more than 300,000 families it claims to represent...

...The sense of urgency after the killings led to a number of other significant and unprecedented measures...

...6 After complex negotiations between Cardoso and the Congress, two important measures were introduced into the National Human Rights Program, giving him those "tools...

...9 Agrarian reform has always been an extremely contentious issue in Brazilian politics, and it is difficult to imagine that a network would have emerged around such a divisive issue...

...It has not achieved its goal in terms of the number of families settled and hectares of land redistributed, but it has won another important battle: It has placed agrarian reform squarely on the political agenda...

...The Peasant Leagues, for example, were powerful but primarily local in nature...

...First, federal courts were given jurisdiction over human rights crimes...

...But by the early 1970s, the Brazilian Church became an active agent in favor of social change...

...On September 7, 1995, following the recommendation of the World Conference on Human Rights held in Vienna in 1993, President Cardoso promised to draw up a National Human Rights Program, and urged all Brazilian citizens to join the human rights movement...

...30 (Sao Paulo: MST, 1998), p. 35...

...whether it is the health sector, the sector for communication or the educational sector...

...On February 17, 1997, three groups of landless workers left from the cities of Rondon6polis (in the western state of Mato Grosso), Sio Paulo (in the southern state of Sio Paulo), and Governador Valadares (in the eastern state of Minas Gerais) to march to Brasilia to pay tribute to the victims of Eldorado dos Carajds...

...Though it has been mobilizing rural workers around the issue of agrarian reform since its founding in 1984, only in recent years has it gained wide attention both within Brazil and abroad...