Landless Workers' Movement

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The Brazilian Movimento dos Trabalhadores Rurais Sem Terra (MST), commonly known in English as the Landless Workers' Movement, is the largest social movement in Latin America with more than a 1.5 million members. The MST was inspired in its inception in the mid-1980s by liberation theology. It is an ideologically eclectic rural movement striving to achieve land reform in Brazil. In May of 2005, more than twelve thousand MST activists marched hundreds of miles over two weeks to Brasília, Brazil's capital, to bring national attention to the government's slow pace of land reform.

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1 Constitutional Authority
2 Organizational structure
3 Education
4 Sustainable Agriculture
5 2005 March for Agrarian Reform
6 Ideology
7 Vandalism
8 External links
9 References

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Constitutional Authority

Brazil has one of the largest wealth gaps throughout Latin America and the world. Approximately half of all the country's farmland is owned by 1% of the population. [1]

The Brazilian constitution challenges notions of private property rights by assigning to all land a social function. [Article 5, Section XXIII.] The constitution requires the Brazilian government "to 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 propery simultaneously meets the following requirements: (1) rational and adequate use; (2) adequate use of available natural resources and preservation of the environment; (3) compliance with the provisions which regulate labor relations; and (4) exploitation which favors the well-being of the owners and workers."

The MST identifies unproductive rural land that it does not believe is meeting its social function and occupies it. Upon occupation, a legal process commences to expropriate the land and grant title to the landless workers, while the owners do likewise to regain posession of it. The MST is represented in these activities by public interest legal counsel, including such organizations as Terra de Direitos, a non-profit legal practice co-founded by Darci Frigo, the 2001 Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Human Rights Award Laureate. Sometimes the courts require the families to leave. Other times, courts refuse the landowners' request and allow the families to stay and engage in subsistence farming until the federal agency responsible for agrarian reform, INCRA, is able to determine if the occupied property is, indeed, unproductive.

For example, in August of 1999, Chief Judge Rui Portanova overruled the decision of a trial court granting a landowner's petition to evict the MST off his property. The Court reasoned:

Before applying a law, the judge must consider the social aspects of the case: the law's repercussions, its legitimacy and the clash of intersts in tension. The [MST] are landless workers [that] want to plant a product that feeds and enriches Brazil in this world so globalized and hungry. But Brazil turns its back. The executive deflects money to the banks. The Legislature . . . wants to make laws to forgive the debts of the large farmers. The press accuses the MST of violence. The landless, in spite of all this, have hope . . . that they can plant and harvest with their hands. For this they pray and sing. The Federal Constitution and Article 5 . . . offers interpretive space in favor of the MST. The pressure of the MST is legitimate. [I]n the terms of paragraph 23 of Article 5 of the Federal Constitution [that land shall attend it social function], I suspended [the eviction.] (Decision #70000092288, Rui Portanova, State Court of Rio Grande do Sul, Porto Alegre)

The expropriation process can take years and is sometimes accompanied by violence as landowners hire gunmen to intimidate, and not infrequently kill, members of the MST.

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Organizational structure

While certain individuals within the MST are key spokesmen, such as the radical Marxist economist João Pedro Stédile, authority is spread among a vast number of decision makers in thousands of temporary and permanent settlements throughout dozens of Brazilian states.

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Education

The MST formed its education sector in Rio Grande do Sul in 1986, a year after the first national convention. [Fernandes, Barnard Mancano. The Formation of the MST in Brazil. Editora Vozes, Petropolis 2000, 78.] By 2001, about 150,000 children were enrolled in 1,200 primary and secondary schools in its settlements and camps. The schools employ 3,800 teachers, many of them MST-trained. The movement has trained 1,200 educators who run courses for 25,000 young people and adults. It trains primary-school teachers in most states, and has set up partnerships with international agencies, such as UNESCO and UNICEF, as well with the Catholic Church. It reached agreement with seven institutions of higher education in different regions to provide degree courses in education for MST teachers. [Jan Rocha and Sue Branford. Cutting the Wire: The story of the landless movement in Brasil. 2002, Latin American Bureau.]

Oscar Niemeyer, one of the most internationally renowned Brazilian architects, will be designing the Auditorium Building that will be part of the complex of the MST's National Florestan Fernandes School outside Sao Paulo. [2]

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Sustainable Agriculture

The movement is also developing a model of sustainable agriculture on the lands the families farm. These efforts are gaining increasing importance as movement families gain access to an increasing amount of Brazil's unproductive land. For example, the Chico Mendes Center for Agroecology, founded May 15, 2004 in Ponta Grossa, Paraná, Brazil on land formerly used by Monsanto to grow genetically modified crops, intends to produce organic, native seed to distribute through MST.

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2005 March for Agrarian Reform

After a two week march into Brasilia from the city of Goiania, several leaders of the MST met with President Lula da Silva on May 18, 2005. The leaders presented President Lula with a list of 16 demands of which included economic reform, greater public spending, and public housing. Afterwards during interviews with Reuters, many of the leaders said that they still regarded President Lula as an ally but demanded that he accelerate his promised land reforms.

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Ideology

The MST is an ideologically eclectic rural movement of hundreds of thousands of landless peasants (and some who live in small cities) striving to achieve land reform in Brazil. The MST has been inspired since its inception by liberation theology, Marxism, the Cuban Revolution, and a variety of other leftist ideologies.

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Vandalism

In addition to occupying derelict farms and public buildings, the MST has also invaded and vandalized productive properties owned by large corporations. On March 8, 2005, the MST invaded a nursery and a research center in Barra do Ribeiro, 56 km from Porto Alegre, both owned by Aracruz Celulose. The MST members held the local guards captive while they proceeded to rip the plants from the ground. MST's president, João Pedro Stédile was reported to have said that not only the traditional landowner, but "international capital", was now the enemy. [3]

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