Movimento dos Trabalhadores Rurais Sem Terra (MST)

Agrarian Reform and Human Development

Splitting the land: capitanias and sesmarias

Second attempt:From 1533 to 1535, the Portuguese crown distributed the entire area through private capitania grants, and sesmaria subgrants.

This established the massive land concentrations that made large-scale agriculture possible.

“Whereas the sesmarias in Portugal had created a class of small copyholders or peasants, in Brazil, where land was seemingly endlessly available, the sesmarias were often enormous and in the long run resulted in a system of great holdings. The regulations that only as much land could be given as could be used were ignored, and by the late seventeenth century some families in Brazil held sesmarias that were larger than whole provinces in Portugal” (Lockwood and Schwartz, 186)

Sugar: the invention of the factory

Massive production: By the end of the 16th century, giant engenho sugar mill production had begun. Slave labor predominated.24-hour work, inside a highly-mechanized system, financed on an entrepreneurial basis by Dutch and English capital: these might be considered the first factories. Brazil became one of the most dynamic sites in the world economy. The capital sent back to Europe helped to build Manchester and Birmingham.

Because the labor process depended on extensive hierarchy and centralization, it also depended on the maintenance of extensive inequalities. Theses have enduring effect. By 2005, Brazil is the 11th most unequal country in the world (CIA, 2005).

“The search for workers became the main theme of sixteenth-century Brazil” (L&S, 190)

”The central social institution of colonial Brazil was the engenho, that complex of land, coerced labor, technical skills, and capital that produced Brazil's primary export commodity, sugar” (L&S, 204)

Brazil’s usefulness: as a center for controlling displaced laborers.

The industrial turn

Planned industrialization:A succession of 20th-century governments engineered the growth of urban industry. This drive characterized most of the 20th century.

Land reform averted: the coup of 1964Land tension:Rural/ urban migration in the early 1960s helped to fuel a land reform movement, the Ligas Camponesas, led by Francisco Juliao. President Joao Goulart sided with the Ligas– and was deposed by a military coup.

For 24 years, the military government largely pushed industrialization.

Agriculture, and democracy, return

Renewed agricultural focus:With the global move away from government-led industrial growth in the 1980s, Brazil’s leaders refocused on agricultural growth. This economic shift was accompanied by a return to democracy– and by the emergence of the MST landless movement in 1984.

When the new constitution was inaugurated in 1988, it included Article 186: land deemed unproductive can be expropriated by the government and redistributed to people in need.

Brazil is currently the world’s largest producer of chicken, fruit, and sugarcane, and the world’s second-largest soy producer.

The question returns: what does wealth mean? Is Brazil a wealthy country because it has natural resources? Or is what we call wealth the effect of a system of inequalities?

Percent of Total Farms Percent of Land Area

Farms Under 10 Hectares (24.7 Acres) 30.4% 2.7%*

Farms Under 100 Hectares(247 Acres) 89.1% 20%

Farms Over 1,000 Hectares(2,471 Acres) 1.6% 46%

Source: 1996 Brazilian census

Land Concentration in Brazil

Wealth Inequality

5,000 families (less than .01% of the population) control 40% of Brazil’s national wealth

10% of the population controls 75% of the national wealth

90% of the Brazilian people own less than 25% of the wealth

Source: Professor Márcio Pochmann, Institute of Economics, State University of

Campinas

Need for Agrarian Reform

4.6 million landless families living in conditions of extreme poverty and distress

55,000 rural properties (300,000 acres) classified as unproductive

Migration to the City

Urbanization

Brazil had an urban index of 15% in 1940, 36% in 1950 and 82% in 2006 – 4th most urbanized country in the world

157 million out of a total population of 188 million lived in urban areas in 2006

64% of Brazil’s poor live in urban areas, over 18 million people

Almost 7 million urban dwellers lack a water supply and over 20 million lack sanitation coverage

Source: 2000 Brazilian census

MST

Encampments and Settlements

OCCUPYRESIST

PRODUCE

OCCUPY

Brazilian Constitution

The Brazilian constitution requires land serve a social function. [Article 5, Section XXIII.] As such, the constitution requires the Brazilian government "expropriate for the purpose of agrarian reform, rural property that is not performing its social function." [Article 184.]

According to Article 186 of the constitution, the social function is performed when rural property simultaneously meets the following requirements:

Rational and adequate use. Adequate use of available natural resources and preservation

of the environment. Compliance with the provisions which regulate labor relations. Exploitation which favors the well-being of the owners and

workers.

Beginning An Occupation

Beginning An Occupation

Cutting the Wire

2006 Occupation

Encampment Viewed From Hill

Encampment “Street”

Encampment Community Center

Families in Community Center

Her Home

Flower Garden

In Front of Fields They Can’t Farm

Land Occupations By Family

MST Results

Between 1985 and 2009, MST won land rights for more than 370,000 families organized in over 2,500 agrarian reform settlements on 7.5 million hectares of land

As of 2009, 150,000 MST families occupy unproductive land in 900 encampments awaiting approval to begin farming and developing a settlement

RESIST

Resistance

Burial of Victims of Carajás Massacre

1998 Occupation

The Price of Resistance

From 1985 – 1999: 1,158 MST and other rural activists

assassinated 820 additional assassination

attempts 2,412 documented death threats Only 56 prosecutions and 10

convictions for these crimes

Mistica

PRODUCE

Settlement Community Center

Settlement Community Kitchen

Settlement Home

Assentamento Campos Novos - Santa Catarina

Production

Production

MST PRODUCTION

Since 1985*, the MST has created:

• 400 production, commercialization, and services associations

•79 Agricultural production Cooperatives, both Collective and Semi-Collective with 2,299 associated families

• 50 Trade Services Cooperatives with 11,174 direct members

• 3 Credit Cooperatives (Popular Bank) with 5,400 associates

• 140 small and medium agro-industrial food processors of fruits and vegetables, dairy, cereals, meats, and confectionery

• “Green Embrace” Project for forest preservation through consortium plantations

• Environmental Education Campaign for beautifying the settlements by planting trees, flowers, forests and establishing gardens

• Production of BioNatur Agroecological (organic) Seeds

• Several orchards for reforestation in Agrarian Reform areas

• Production of organic maize seeds

• Training of settlers in alternative technologies for agroecological production

(*MST Data from 2003)

Ché Guevara Settlement

Settlement Teens

Settlement Farm Building

MST EDUCATION

• Training of educators at middle and higher levels.

• Basic education of 50,000 youth and adults in literacy projects

• 2,000 public schools in settlements and encampments throughout the country

• 200,000 landless children and adolescents attending school, 95% in special curriculum designed for rural youth

•Training of more that 3,900 educators in secondary and higher education

• Partnership with more that 13 public universities for bachelor’s and master’s course in education, history, agronomy and more

•Establishment of more than 250 pre-school centers for children 0 to 6 years of age

Development of “itinerant schools” that accompany encampments, currently more than 45 in 7 states with 350 teachers and 4,000 students

Training at Cooperative

Settlement School

 Escola Nacional Florestan Fernandes

Escola Nacional Fernando Flores

Dining Hall

Escola Nacional Fernando FloresLibrary

MST Store – São Paulo

Health Sector

The MST has achieved:• Training of community health educators;• HIV/AIDS prevention program in partnership with the Ministry of Health;• Land and Health Program, with groves for medicinal plant production, with the Ministry of Health;• Completion of medical training in Cuba for 28 youth from settlements with 100 medical students currently in Cuba and Venezuela; and• Diagnostics reaching 9,000 settled families regarding quality of life and housing, in partnership with UNB/ Ministry of Health.

Communications Sector

• Sem Terra Journal– The MST's newspaper is one of the longest uninterrupted published journals in a popular movement and was established 27 years ago

• Radio - MST works with 158 community and university radio stations, and medium range radio transmitters

• Website– On the Internet, since 1996, the MST is present on its website, which receives an average of 5,000 daily visits: www.mst.org.br

• Sem Terra Magazine – A bimonthly magazine, which covers issues related to economy, politics, culture, and social movements nationally and internationally

5th National CongressBrasilia June 2007

Reforma Agrária: Por Justiça Social e Soberana Popular

 

Congress SiteEntering for a Session

Classroom – Paulo Freire Itinerant School

The “Marriage” of Brazil’s Agro-Elite and Multi-

National Corporations

The MST must be confronted “to show that the rural producers do not peacefully accept land invasions and political provocations … Attitudes such as these, of legally questionable [land] expropriations, send a bad message to investors chasing them away and provoking ‘Brazil risk.’ For every invasion of land that occurs in the region there will be a similar action by the Society. We are not going to permit the rural producers … to be insulted by ideological movements of any kind.”

Alessandro Meneghel, President of the Rural Society of the Western Region.

Ocupação da Cargill – 3/7/07

Ocupação da Cargill 3/7/07

Ocupação da Cargill 3/7/07