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THE POLITICAL ORGANISATION OF BRAZIL’S LANDLESS WORKERS’ MOVEMENT
(MST)  
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April 16, 2024
TriContinental
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_ In the four decades since its founding, the MST has achieved
significant milestones: 450,000 families have gained legal tenure of
their land, another 65,000 are organized in squatters encampments,
fighting for legal recognition of land. _

, MST

 

The artwork in this dossier was created for the ‘Forty Years of the
MST
[[link removed]]’
call for art organised by the Landless Workers’ Movement (MST),
Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research, ALBA Movements, and the
International Peoples’ Assembly.

We are immensely grateful to the more than 150 artists whose
contribution and solidarity in this process further enrich and
beautify the struggle of the working class, especially the peasant
struggle, in addition to offering reflections on the challenges that
lie ahead.

Artwork by Judy Duarte

Introduction

In September 1982, thirty rural workers and twenty-two clergy members
took part in a meeting in Goiânia, in Brazil’s Central-West region,
convened by the Pastoral Land Commission (CPT, a branch of the
Catholic Church inspired by liberation theology). This small group of
workers would go on to lead the first peasant protests to take place
after eighteen years of repression at the hands of the
business-military dictatorship that governed Brazil for twenty-one
years (1964–1985).

The mood was hopeful. The dictatorship was languishing due to its
economic failures and the resumption of mass struggles in Brazil,
primarily led by a labour movement that would go on to produce new
leaders and give rise to the foundation of the Workers’ Party (PT)
in 1980 and the _Unified Workers’ Central of Brazil _(CUT) in
1983, a powerful trade union federation without parallel in the
country’s history. Similar dynamics were underway throughout Latin
America and the Caribbean as the liberation struggles in Nicaragua and
El Salvador brought other US-aligned military dictatorships to their
knees, sending waves of inspiration across the continent just as the
Cuban Revolution had done years before.

Peasant protests, still a disparate force spread across Brazil’s
vast landscape, faced political repression as well as the forced
modernisation of agriculture through mechanisation, the intensive use
of pesticides, and subsidies for large rural properties, triggering a
rural exodus. Despite this, the peasants began to occupy large estates
in several states from 1979 onwards, in many instances with the
support and participation of the CPT. Participants of the Goiânia
meeting discussed what might come from these actions and issued a
statement underscoring the need for a national, autonomous peasant
movement that would fight for agrarian reform. The meeting bore fruit
two years later, in 1984, when Brazil’s Landless Workers’ Movement
(MST) was founded at a meeting in Cascavel, Paraná attended by
ninety-two peasant leaders.

By 1996, the MST was operating in every region in Brazil and had won
land for thousands of families, with its agrarian reform settlements
receiving support and solidarity from a number of Brazilian and
international left-wing organisations and individuals. However, the
MST was not yet seen as a relevant political actor in the country, as
it was unknown to most of Brazil’s urban population. This would soon
change. That year, thousands of peasants marched on Belém, the
capital of the Amazonian state Pará, to demand a public hearing with
the governor. At the head of the march was nineteen-year-old Oziel
Alves, who was tasked with keeping morale high among his comrades with
slogans and words of encouragement.

In Eldorado do Carajás (in southern Pará), the peasants were
surrounded by police and gunmen who had been hired by powerful
companies in the region. The police identified Oziel as a leader,
separated him from the group, and – at gunpoint – ordered him to
kneel and repeat the words he had said into his microphone minutes
earlier. Without missing a beat, Oziel yelled his last words: ‘long
live the MST!’.

Oziel was one of nineteen activists killed in what became known as the
Eldorado dos Carajás Massacre.

The days following the massacre were recorded by the internationally
renowned photographer Sebastião Salgado. These photographs,
accompanied by the music of singer-songwriter Chico Buarque de
Hollanda and the prose of Portuguese writer José Saramago, travelled
across the globe in an exhibition entitled _Terra_ (‘Land’).

However, it was not this tragedy that transformed the MST into a
recognised political force, but rather the way the movement responded
to the repression. In February of the following year, in the face of
police impunity and the paralysis of agrarian reform, 1,300 MST
activists began a long march from three starting points across the
country that was set to arrive in the capital, Brasília, on 17 April
1997, exactly one year after the Eldorado do Carajás Massacre. At the
time, the minister of agrarian development agreed to meet with the
marchers only because he was convinced that they would never complete
the roughly 1,000 km journey to Brasília. Nevertheless, the three MST
columns entered the capital, on schedule, with 100,000 supporters –
the most significant political action against the neoliberal
government of then President Fernando Henrique Cardoso. This
demonstration of strength and organisation transformed the MST into a
major player in Brazilian politics – a position it holds to this
day.1

Eight years later, under the presidency of Luíz Inácio Lula da Silva
(an old ally and supporter of the struggle for agrarian reform), the
MST organised a national march to raise the government’s awareness
of the impact of the financialisation of agriculture and to demand a
new national plan for agrarian reform.2  From 2 to 17 May 2005,
15,000 landless workers pitched tents along their route every day,
creating what was effectively a small, moving city with infrastructure
such as bathrooms, kitchens that provided food for all of the
marchers, and facilities that allowed the children who were
accompanying their parents to keep up their studies at the end of each
day. To ensure organisation in the ranks, a portable radio transmitter
sent messages to 15,000 radios carried by the peasants. After the
march, the Brazilian army invited an MST leader to deliver a lecture
at the War College (_Escola__ Superior de Guerra_) to learn how a
grassroots movement had achieved such a high level of organisation.3

In the four decades since its founding, the MST has achieved
significant milestones: for one, 450,000 families have gained legal
tenure of their land, which has been transformed into agrarian reform
settlements. The residents of the settlements have formed 1,900
peasant associations as well as 185 cooperatives, ranging from local
agricultural production cooperatives to marketing and service
provision cooperatives that operate on a regional level. Part of what
is produced in the settlements is processed in 120 MST-owned
agro-industrial sites. In addition to the settlements
(_assentamentos_), which have gained legal ownership of the land,
there are another 65,000 organised families living in squatters’
encampments (_acampamentos_) fighting for legal recognition of land.4

There are several reasons why the MST is the only peasant social
movement in Brazil’s history that has managed to survive for over a
decade in the face of the political, economic, and military power of
Brazil’s large landowners. One of the main explanations for how the
movement has managed to resist and keep growing in spite of such an
unequal correlation of forces is the strength it draws from its mass
base and its organisational methods. Another reason for the MST’s
resilience is solidarity, both within the country and internationally.
Though there are many aspects of the MST’s struggle that merit
further discussion (such as the movement’s pedagogical
approach,5 political education, women’s organising, agroecological
production, and organisation of cooperatives), this dossier focuses on
the MST’s tactics. It is hoped that this experience – described in
the context of Brazil and without trying to offer set formulas – can
contribute to the reflections and organisational efforts of other
popular and peasant movements around the world.

In September 1982, thirty rural workers and twenty-two clergy members
took part in a meeting in Goiânia, in Brazil’s Central-West region,
convened by the Pastoral Land Commission (CPT, a branch of the
Catholic Church inspired by liberation theology). This small group of
workers would go on to lead the first peasant protests to take place
after eighteen years of repression at the hands of the
business-military dictatorship that governed Brazil for twenty-one
years (1964—1985).

The mood was hopeful. The dictatorship was languishing due to its
economic failures and the resumption of mass struggles in Brazil,
primarily led by a labour movement that would go on to produce new
leaders and give rise to the foundation of the Workers’ Party (PT)
in 1980 and the _Unified Workers’ Central of Brazil_ (CUT) in
1983, a powerful trade union federation without parallel in the
country’s history. Similar dynamics were underway throughout Latin
America and the Caribbean as the liberation struggles in Nicaragua and
El Salvador brought other U.S.-aligned military dictatorships to their
knees, sending waves of inspiration across the continent just as the
Cuban Revolution had done years before.

Peasant protests, still a disparate force spread across Brazil’s
vast landscape, faced political repression as well as the forced
modernisation of agriculture through mechanisation, the intensive use
of pesticides, and subsidies for large rural properties, triggering a
rural exodus. Despite this, the peasants began to occupy large estates
in several states from 1979 onwards, in many instances with the
support and participation of the CPT. Participants of the Goiânia
meeting discussed what might come from these actions and issued a
statement underscoring the need for a national, autonomous peasant
movement that would fight for agrarian reform. The meeting bore fruit
two years later, in 1984, when Brazil’s Landless Workers’ Movement
(MST) was founded at a meeting in Cascavel, Paraná attended by
ninety-two peasant leaders.

By 1996, the MST was operating in every region in Brazil and had won
land for thousands of families, with its agrarian reform settlements
receiving support and solidarity from a number of Brazilian and
international left-wing organisations and individuals. However, the
MST was not yet seen as a relevant political actor in the country, as
it was unknown to most of Brazil’s urban population. This would soon
change. That year, thousands of peasants marched on Belém, the
capital of the Amazonian state Pará, to demand a public hearing with
the governor. At the head of the march was nineteen-year-old Oziel
Alves, who was tasked with keeping morale high among his comrades with
slogans and words of encouragement.

In Eldorado do Carajás (in southern Pará), the peasants were
surrounded by police and gunmen who had been hired by powerful
companies in the region. The police identified Oziel as a leader,
separated him from the group, and—at gunpoint—ordered him to kneel
and repeat the words he had said into his microphone minutes earlier.
Without missing a beat, Oziel yelled his last words: ‘long live the
MST!’.

Oziel was one of nineteen activists killed in what became known as the
Eldorado dos Carajás Massacre.

The days following the massacre were recorded by the internationally
renowned photographer Sebastião Salgado. These photographs,
accompanied by the music of singer-songwriter Chico Buarque de
Hollanda and the prose of Portuguese writer José Saramago, travelled
across the globe in an exhibition entitled _Terra_(‘Land’).

However, it was not this tragedy that transformed the MST into a
recognised political force, but rather the way the movement responded
to the repression. In February of the following year, in the face of
police impunity and the paralysis of agrarian reform, 1,300 MST
activists began a long march from three starting points across the
country that was set to arrive in the capital, Brasília, on 17 April
1997, exactly one year after the Eldorado do Carajás Massacre. At the
time, the minister of agrarian development agreed to meet with the
marchers only because he was convinced that they would never complete
the roughly 1,000 km journey to Brasília. Nevertheless, the three MST
columns entered the capital, on schedule, with 100,000
supporters—the most significant political action against the
neoliberal government of then President Fernando Henrique Cardoso.
This demonstration of strength and organisation transformed the MST
into a major player in Brazilian politics—a position it holds to
this day.1
[[link removed]]

Eight years later, under the presidency of Luíz Inácio Lula da Silva
(an old ally and supporter of the struggle for agrarian reform), the
MST organised a national march to raise the government’s awareness
of the impact of the financialisation of agriculture and to demand a
new national plan for agrarian reform.2
[[link removed]] From
2 to 17 May 2005, 15,000 landless workers pitched tents along their
route every day, creating what was effectively a small, moving city
with infrastructure such as bathrooms, kitchens that provided food for
all of the marchers, and facilities that allowed the children who were
accompanying their parents to keep up their studies at the end of each
day. To ensure organisation in the ranks, a portable radio transmitter
sent messages to 15,000 radios carried by the peasants. After the
march, the Brazilian army invited an MST leader to deliver a lecture
at the War College (_Escola__ Superior de Guerra_) to learn how a
grassroots movement had achieved such a high level of organisation.3
[[link removed]]

In the four decades since its founding, the MST has achieved
significant milestones: for one, 450,000 families have gained legal
tenure of their land, which has been transformed into agrarian reform
settlements. The residents of the settlements have formed 1,900
peasant associations as well as 185 cooperatives, ranging from local
agricultural production cooperatives to marketing and service
provision cooperatives that operate on a regional level. Part of what
is produced in the settlements is processed in 120 MST-owned
agro-industrial sites. In addition to the settlements
(_assentamentos_), which have gained legal ownership of the land,
there are another 65,000 organised families living in squatters’
encampments (_acampamentos_) fighting for legal recognition of land.4
[[link removed]]

There are several reasons why the MST is the only peasant social
movement in Brazil’s history that has managed to survive for over a
decade in the face of the political, economic, and military power of
Brazil’s large landowners. One of the main explanations for how the
movement has managed to resist and keep growing in spite of such an
unequal correlation of forces is the strength it draws from its mass
base and its organisational methods. Another reason for the MST’s
resilience is solidarity, both within the country and internationally.
Though there are many aspects of the MST’s struggle that merit
further discussion (such as the movement’s pedagogical
approach,5 political education, women’s organising, agroecological
production, and organisation of cooperatives), this dossier focuses on
the MST’s tactics. It is hoped that this experience – described in
the context of Brazil and without trying to offer set formulas – can
contribute to the reflections and organisational efforts of other
popular and peasant movements around the world.

Artwork by Duda Oliva.

The Agrarian Question in Brazil

From the sixteenth century onwards, what is now Brazil was founded and
organised as an export colony based on large-scale land ownership,
slave labour, and export-oriented monoculture production. Through
gunpowder and the cross, the Portuguese colonial enterprise created a
violent rupture with indigenous societies’ way of life, introducing
a concept that was alien to them: private ownership of nature’s
common goods.6

In 1850, faced with the imminent end of slavery due to abolitionist
movements and uprisings by enslaved peoples, the Brazilian Empire
instituted the country’s first land law to prevent freed slaves from
accessing the country’s greatest source of wealth: land. Through
this law, land became a commodity. Furthermore, the plantation model,
centred on large estates that relied on export-oriented monoculture
and the super-exploitation of labour, would become the only constant
in Brazilian history, regardless of whether Brazil was a Portuguese
colony or an independent nation, whether it was a monarchy or a
republic, and whether it was characterised by a parliamentary or a
presidential system of government.

The agrarian question has been a central theme in Brazil’s history
and the reason for many uprisings, revolts, and popular movements,
from indigenous resistance and uprisings against slavery to the
establishment of _quilombo7_ communities and the first peasant and
labour movements. The role of the state in defending the interests of
landowners and repressing the poor is particularly noteworthy. While
indigenous and enslaved populations were primarily persecuted and
attacked by private militias, the army of the newly declared republic
was used to crush the movements in Canudos (1897), a self-managed
community of 25,000 peasants; Contestado (1916), an armed revolt by
farmers who sought to prevent their lands from being taken over by an
American railway company; and other organisations such as the Peasant
Leagues, which fought for agrarian reform before the business-military
coup d’état of 1964. As a consequence of centuries of repression,
twenty-first century Brazil remains the country with the
second-highest level of land concentration on the planet, a title it
has held throughout the last century, with 42.5% of land controlled by
less than 1% of the population.8 Meanwhile, there are 4.5 million
landless peasants _.9_

Though the class enemies of landless rural workers are the large
landowners and transnational companies that appropriate land to
produce commodities, part of the pressure generated by people’s
movements must also be directed towards the state. This is necessary,
in part, because of the nature of the Brazilian Constitution, which
was approved in 1988 after the fall of the dictatorship and has many
progressive components—including some related to agrarian
reform–since it was drafted amidst the rise of mass popular
struggles. For instance, Article 184 requires rural property to fulfil
a social function, be productive, and respect labour and environmental
rights. The state has the right to expropriate landholdings that do
not meet these criteria, though it must compensate the owner before
transferring the deed to public ownership or granting land rights to
the landless families who settle there.

Nonetheless, over the last few decades, large, landed estates have
shifted to a model known as agribusiness, leading Brazil to become the
largest consumer of pesticides in the world, with a record consumption
of 130,000 tonnes in 2023.10 International financial capital, which
now controls the entire rural production chain, from seeds to the sale
of agro-industrial products, has made substantial investments in
large, unproductive estates that are used for speculation. In 2016,
twenty foreign corporations controlled 2.7 million hectares of
Brazilian agricultural land.11 This land is used for export-oriented
monoculture, now converted into commodities (primary products traded
on a large scale according to global standards) as financial and
speculative assets and traded on stock and commodities exchanges. In
2021, a mere five commodities—soy, corn, cotton, sugar cane, and
cattle—accounted for 86% of Brazil’s agricultural land as well as
94% of the volume of production and 86% of its value.12

This economic power is also manifest in political power, as evidenced
by the fact that people who represent agribusiness interests have held
ministerial positions in every single administration over the last
three decades. The _Ruralista_ Caucus, a multipartisan organisation
of elected representatives dedicated to defending the interests of
agribusiness, brings together 324 members, or 61%, of Congress and 50
members, or 35%, of the Senate.13 This has given the group enough
power to pass environmental and land deregulation laws and to submit
the MST to four investigations through the Parliamentary Commission of
Inquiry (CPI) over the last two decades. No other grassroots
organisation in Brazil’s history has been the object of so many
attempts at criminalisation by parliament.

The first CPI took place in 2003 and sought to force then President
Lula’s administration to distance itself from the MST as well as to
prevent public funds from being allocated to agrarian reform and to
criminalise the struggle for land. The 2023 CPI investigation, led by
members of the most radical core of former President Jair
Bolsonaro’s coalition, had similar goals to pressure the new Lula
administration, which brought the Workers’ Party back to power
following a judicial coup and the 580-day imprisonment of
then-candidate Lula. However, it backfired. By the time the 2023
investigation took place, the MST’s public image had been
strengthened as a result of the solidarity activities it carried out
during the COVID-19 pandemic. This in turn increased solidarity with
the MST and thereby deprived the commission of political or media
support, leaving it unable to even approve a final report.

This is no small feat, given the hegemony of agribusiness in Brazilian
society, which is built upon not only a sophisticated and powerful
cultural industry, from television to music, but also archaic methods
of violence and repression. This is evidenced by the CPT’s 2022
survey, which recorded 2,018 incidents of social conflicts in the
countryside—a 33.6% rise from the average figure in 2016—and 47
murders linked to land or environmental issues.14

But, despite its deep entrenchment in Brazilian, society, economics,
and politics, agribusiness is not the only agricultural model, nor is
it one that responds to the needs of the majority or the planet.
During its Third National Congress in 1995, the MST presented and
ratified its agrarian reform programme for the first time, based on an
analysis of the class struggle in the Brazilian countryside and a set
of proposals to transform the structure of Brazilian land ownership
and the conditions of rural life. In 2015, the programme was updated
with an important theoretical and structural change: while political
parties and universities misunderstood the nature of and even welcomed
agribusiness in Brazil, the MST built a collective definition of the
term as ‘the presence of transnational financial capital in the
countryside for the production of commodities’.15 Furthermore, the
MST warned that the mere existence of agribusiness and its links with
the state prevented any classical type of agrarian reform within a
capitalist framework, in which land is simply redistributed or its
access is democratised, from moving forward.

Artwork by Vienno.

In this context, the MST redefined its tactics and its agrarian
programme by creating a new concept: POPULAR AGRARIAN REFORM. In
addition to demanding that land be distributed to peasants, popular
agrarian reform discusses the need to produce healthy food for the
entire population alongside changing the current production process,
which is based on the agribusiness model, to one based on agroecology,
which preserves nature’s common goods. This shift also helped build
a greater alliance with urban workers, who are the biggest
beneficiaries of access to affordable, healthy food. Popular agrarian
reform not only seeks to further the interests of the peasantry, but
those of society as a whole. This is reflected, for instance, in its
understanding of food sovereignty, in its potential to generate
alternative forms of employment and income, and its commitment to
fighting the environmental catastrophe.

Forms of Struggle and Consciousness-Raising

The MST has three goals: 1) TO FIGHT FOR LAND (that is, for families
who are part of the movement to gain enough land to survive through
their own labour with dignity); 2) TO FIGHT FOR AGRARIAN REFORM,
which means restructuring land ownership and use; and 3) TO TRANSFORM
SOCIETY. To achieve these goals, the MST has, from the beginning,
defined itself as ‘a mass movement that is popular, union-like, and
political in nature’.16 It is aMASS movement because it
understands that the correlation of forces can only be changed in its
favour by a large number of organised people. It is
a POPULAR movement because it is open to the participation of all
people who wish to fight for the right to work the land. It is
structured like a UNION because the struggle for agrarian reform has
an economic dimension that involves real and immediate gains, and it
is POLITICAL because it knows that agrarian reform can only be
achieved through the structural transformation of society.

The MST is a national movement that operates in twenty-four of
Brazil’s twenty-six states. This differentiates it from the
movements that preceded it, which were local and regional in scale,
enabling them to be isolated by repressive forces. The MST’s
presence across most of Brazil enables it to support individual state
chapters that are facing challenges and amplify local struggles on a
national level.

The strength of the MST, therefore, lies in the size and organisation
of its base. Even though the MST has many forms of organisation, which
vary according to each context and place, the fundamental feature of
its organisational methodology is to put people IN MOTION and in
struggle. They then develop their political and social consciousness
through their struggle.

The first way in which the MST engages in struggle is through land
occupations. Before or during the period when the land is first
occupied, the MST organises encampments for landless families. These
families are organised through grassroots outreach, first by
identifying areas where peasants are concentrated and then by holding
meetings. The families then participate in organising and preparing
what is needed for the encampment, looking for ways to obtain tarps
for their shelters, transportation for families to the locations to be
occupied, and so on. These encampments play the role that factories
played in building workers’ struggles in the nineteenth and
twentieth centuries. Bringing peasants together in the same place and
overcoming geographic isolation fosters cooperation and sociability.

When families join an encampment, they are organised into base
groups17 of ten to twenty people. This number is small so that
members can get to know each other and avoid being infiltrated by
strangers. Furthermore, by being divided into small groups, more
people have an opportunity to participate in discussions and voice
their opinions on the encampment’s political organisation. Everyone
has the right to speak in these groups, including children. In the
encampments, tasks are organised collectively, such as collecting
water and firewood, securing food donations, setting up shelters,
providing security, and educating the children. These tasks are
allocated to teams called_setores_ (‘sectors’), which are made up
of members of the base groups in such a way that every base group has
at least one participant in every sector. In this way, everyone
participates in debates and political and organisational life, and the
tasks in the encampment are carried out collectively. Regardless of
the number of people involved, base group and sector meetings are
always scheduled in advance, with a well-defined agenda for
discussion, and are always coordinated by a man and a woman. One of
the group members is tasked with taking notes at the meeting so that
they can be ratified by the group as a whole.

When it comes to decisions that affect the whole encampment, base
groups discuss the issues at hand and then their coordinators meet,
each bringing their group’s opinions. If there is no consensus, they
return to their groups with new questions, seeking to synthesise the
discussion and reach collective decisions.

In these encampments and land occupations, assemblies are frequently
used as a means to arrive at collective decisions on issues, such as
whether to occupy a large estate or whether to retreat in a conflict.
But assemblies are only efficient when all participants understand all
aspects of what is being discussed and the discussions are restricted
to a few options, such as whether or not to occupy land and whether or
not to resist a forced eviction. Therefore, they are neither the main
nor the most common form of participation in the movement.

Once the land is legally acquired, it becomes an agrarian reform
settlement and families remain organised in the movement. One of the
first challenges the movement faces as encampments become settlements
is how to keep families organised once they acquire legal rights to
the land. Part of the sociability and cooperation that exists in the
encampment is lost in this transition. So, the MST has developed some
strategies to keep the _assentados_ (residents of the agrarian
reform settlements) IN MOTION.

The years of living and struggling in encampments before being granted
legal rights to the land forges an identity through shared struggle,
leading members of the settlements to identify with families who are
still in encampments. This collective struggle also instils values
like internationalism and solidarity. Workers organised by the MST
identify themselves as Landless (_Sem Terra_, with capital letters).
This identity remains even after they are granted legal rights to the
land.

When the _Sem Terra_ win their legal right to the land and begin to
set up the agrarian reform settlement, new demands and struggles arise
such as access to rural credit, education, health, culture, and
communication structures both within the settlements and encampments
and with the society at large. In order to meet the new needs that
arise, the MST relies on the same organisational structure that it
established as the encampment fought for legal recognition. All
families in the agrarian reform settlement are organised into
neighbourhood base groups, which are also coordinated by a man and a
woman who call meetings, keep track of decisions that are made, and
communicate with the settlement’s leadership. Each organisational
level within the MST, from encampments to settlements, from states to
regions and nationwide, is collectively and democratically managed.

In order to prevent centralism and personalism, the MST does not and
has never had a single ‘president’ or ‘director’ who is
responsible for making political decisions or who is differentiated
from the other activists. All leadership positions of decision-making
bodies in the movement, from the base groups to the national
directorate, are collective and carry renewable two-year mandates. The
division of labour is based on this principle: everyone must have, to
a greater or lesser extent, responsibilities within the organisation
so that there is no excessive centralisation and so that no activist
is overwhelmed with work.

Towards this end, the daily tasks in the encampments and settlements
are distributed among teams that respond to needs as they arise, such
as organising education, health, and financial issues. As situations
become more complex and more organisation is needed, more teams are
formed. They are organised into sectors at the state and national
level to plan and carry out specialised tasks, such as production; the
mass front, which coordinates protests and occupations; education; and
training. For example, an education sector is made up of all educators
or those involved in education within a defined area of municipalities
in a region, and it develops pedagogical proposals and works in the
schools in this area on a day-to-day basis. In the production sector,
activists organise the local economy and cooperatives, as well as the
agroecological technology used for cultivation. Within the sectors,
the various aspects of the _Sem Terra_’s identity, beyond their
identity as members of the encampments or settlements, are recognised
and given representation, whether as youth, members of the LGBTQ+
community, or otherwise. Activities and meetings held with the
‘Little Landless’ children (_Sem Terrinhas_) in agrarian reform
settlements and encampments are another way of ensuring the full
participation of all of the MST’s base, no matter their age,
identity, or otherwise. In July 2018, the first National Meeting
of _Sem Terrinhas_ in Brasília convened over a thousand children,
setting up a temporary encampment for the event where children—who
led the activities, assisted by adults—studied, played games, and
learned about the struggle for land.

It is essential to bring people together, create spaces for collective
discussion, and set them in motion through struggle and cooperation.
This means that, even though the MST is best known for land
occupations, the movement employs different tactics according to its
needs and conditions. Among them are marches (some of them national,
as in 1997 and 2005), occupations of public buildings, road blockades,
and hunger strikes.

It is concrete actions and struggle that prevent activists’
political consciousness from going dormant in the encampments and
settlements. For instance, solidarity is not merely rhetorical or
theoretical—it is one of the MST’s main human and socialist
values. This is evidenced by the fact that the MST donated over 1,000
tonnes of food across Brazil during the COVID-19 pandemic, which it
organised through its solidarity kitchens, gardens, and communities.
From October to December 2023 alone, the MST sent 13 tonnes of food as
part of an ongoing effort to provide aid to the victims of Israel’s
attacks on the Gaza Strip.18 Through such actions, the MST holds
conversations with families on the settlements and encampments to
discuss not only the act of solidarity itself but also the production
and logistical planning that it requires. During this process,
families are able to develop practical knowledge of realities
different from their own, especially urban environments.

Artwork by Nicolas Antunez.

Another important way that the MST shapes their activists’ political
consciousness is by organising cooperatives. This process is not only
cooperative in terms of its labour structure, but also in terms of how
the surplus produced by the cooperatives is distributed and how the
land itself is organised. For instance, _agrovilas_ (agrovillages)
are established within the settlements, bringing individual households
and their plots together into housing clusters that coordinate their
harvests collectively and socialise domestic work with collectively
run kitchens and children’s circles that provide childcare.

The MST’s Organisational Principles

As a national mass movement, the MST embraces the autonomy of its
state, regional, and local groups. In this way, each group of
organised families, whether in a settlement or encampment, has the
authority to make decisions regarding their reality. For this
mechanism to function in an autonomous manner with organisational
consistency, UNITY is essential. This unity is possible because of
the characteristics that have defined the MST since it was founded in
1984.

The identity and unity of the MST, and any organisation, are defined
by its values, form of organisation, and goals. Suppressing any of
these principles would distort the organisation and alter its nature.
These characteristics have remained unchanged in essence for the last
four decades since the MST’s founding, but they have become deepened
and expanded upon at times to increase participation and raise
consciousness levels in the mass movement.

One of these principles is AUTONOMY in relation to political
parties, churches, governments, and other institutions. The MST is
autonomous in relation to other organisations so that it can define
its own political agenda. This means that while the MST works with
other political parties and religious organisations, this relationship
is fraternal, not subordinate. Thus, the MST can build its own reading
of reality and the struggle for land, and it can establish tactics
based on its own perceptions along with the demands of the organised
families.

As mentioned earlier, PARTICIPATION is necessary for the movement to
be popular and of the masses. The following is an example of how this
principle can be expanded and deepened while preserving its essence.
Initially, men occupied most of the MST’s coordinating positions.
Women’s organising, which was part of the MST’s struggle from the
beginning, grew in several ways over the years, primarily through the
Women’s Collective. The collective organised political education for
encampments, direct actions against transnational corporations, and
study spaces on gender relations and capitalism, among other
activities. As a result of the collective’s work, the movement
created a new standard in the late 1990s that every leadership
position must be occupied by a man and a woman. This doubled the
number of participants and began to accurately represent the weight
that women held in the organisation. This mechanism reinforced another
principle: COLLECTIVE LEADERSHIP.

DISCIPLINE is fundamental for the principles of participation and
collective leadership to work. For the MST, discipline means
respecting collective decisions and political positions and complying
with them. Decisions are rarely made by vote in the MST. Most
decisions are made by consensus. When there is a problem building
consensus on an issue, the debate returns to the base groups and
coordinating bodies until the decisions have gained acceptance and
then, once next steps have been decided upon, all members of the
movement follow and implement it. Discipline refers to this compliance
with collective decisions.

A common characteristic of social movements is that they build
strategies and tactics based on their own practices. Without action
and practice, there can be no popular movement. However, for an
ongoing interpretation of reality, practice alone is insufficient. For
this reason, another organisational principle valued in the MST
is STUDY. The movement has organised families to fight for schools in
settlements and encampments, successfully pressuring local authorities
to build more than 2,000 public schools in agrarian reform
settlements. Furthermore, 50,000 people have learned to read and write
through its literacy programmes for youth and adults, whether
stand-alone or in partnership with local governments.19 Another
aspect of study is political education, which is conducted through
different processes such as publishing books and pamphlets, creating
grassroots study groups, and organising courses, which have come
together in the Florestan Fernandes National School (_Escola Nacional
Florestan Fernandes_ or ENFF). The ENFF is the MST’s national
political education school and is a member of the coalition of
political education schools of the International Peoples’ Assembly,
a global process of peoples’ organisations, social movements,
political parties, and unions.

The ENFF was inaugurated on 23 January 2005 and named in honour of the
Brazilian Marxist activist, sociologist, and politician Florestan
Fernandes, who was a founder of the Workers’ Party and a federal
deputy involved in drafting the Brazilian Constitution after the end
of the business-military dictatorship. Since then, the school has
become an international reference point for uniting practice with
political theory. Throughout the year, activists, leaders, and cadres
from peoples’ organisations that fight for social change across the
world study a broad range of topics, such as the classics of Brazilian
and international political theory. Courses last from one week to
three months and are taught by volunteer teachers and
intellectuals.20 The ENFF also offers training focusing on various
topics, such as the agrarian question, Marxism, feminism, and
diversity. With teachers and students coming from a broad range of
countries, most of them from across Latin America, the ENFF fosters
cultural and political exchanges between popular movements and
provides political education on the global economic and social
panorama, always from a working-class perspective.21 The school was
built by landless workers from across Brazil who organised themselves
into volunteer work brigades. The construction materials were gathered
through international solidarity committees, and the intellectual
property rights from the_Terra_ exhibition made up of the work of
Sebastião Salgado, Chico Buarque, and José Saramago were donated to
generate funds.

In addition to the ENFF, the movement has organised other schools,
such as the Josué de Castro Education Institute, which specialises in
training young managers for cooperatives, and agroecology schools such
as the Latin American School of Agroecology (ELAA) and the Educar
Institute in southern Brazil; the Egídio Brunetto Popular School of
Agroecology and Agroforestry (EPAAEB) in north-eastern Brazil; and the
Latin American Agroecology Institute (IALA) in the Amazon region.

Part of the efforts to democratise access to learning materialised
with the National Education Programme for Agrarian Reform (PRONERA), a
public policy that was implemented as a result of the national march
to Brasília in 1997. Through PRONERA, the Brazilian government
encourages the creation of educational programmes, including
undergraduate and postgraduate programmes for landless workers.
Through this programme, over 100 agreements have been made with public
universities that have enabled access to agricultural engineering,
veterinary, and nursing degree programmes, as well as teacher training
courses, among many others. In this way, the MST has occupied a
traditionally elitist and inaccessible space and forced the academic
world to open its doors to the experience and knowledge produced in
the heat of the struggle.

Another key principle within the MST is INTERNATIONALISM, both as a
value and political strategy. As a world system, capitalism treats the
entire globe as a battlefield. For this reason, resistance must also
be global. In addition to its relationships with peasant movements
such as La Vía Campesina and the Latin American Coordination of Rural
Organisations (CLOC), the MST participates in broader spaces such as
ALBA Movements and the International Peoples’ Assembly.

However, internationalism is not limited to spaces for international
encounters and meetings: it must also materialise through action. This
takes place in various ways, from the simplest acts of solidarity with
families on encampments and settlements to creating internationalist
brigades formed by members of the MST to work on exchange visits in
the fields of agroecology, production, education, and political
education. Since their start in 2006, the MST’s internationalist
brigades are currently operating or have operated in Venezuela, Haiti,
Cuba, Honduras, El Salvador, Bolivia, Paraguay, Guatemala, East Timor,
China, Mozambique, South Africa, and Zambia.

Artwork by Fabrício Rangel.

The longest standing of them, the Apolônio de Carvalho Brigade, whose
name pays homage to a Brazilian communist activist who fought in the
Spanish Civil War and the French Resistance, operates in Venezuela,
where it provides political education and promotes agroecological
techniques. The Jean-Jacques Dessalines Brigade in Haiti has been
operating in a similar manner since 2009, the year before an
earthquake ravaged the country. In Zambia, the Samora Machel Brigade
works to further literacy and promote agroecology among peasants. In
Palestine, every two years the Ghassan Kanafani Brigade collaborates
in harvesting olives in territories threatened by Israeli settlers.

The Future of the Struggle for Land in Brazil

The MST’s current agrarian reform programme is shaped by the
contradictions and demands of the struggle in the countryside, which
establish the direction that the struggle for land should take not
only in Brazil but across the Global South. In this section, we will
highlight some of the characteristics of this struggle and the
challenges it faces.

THE STRUGGLE FOR LAND IS INCREASINGLY INTERNATIONAL. Financial capital
has concentrated income and land into very few hands across the planet
and has reduced control of the entire agricultural production chain to
just 87 corporations based in 30 countries.22 These transnational
corporations threaten biodiversity and local culture with their
demands to standardise food, set prices globally, and interfere with
national legislation and rights. This means that peasant resistance
must also be increasingly international and use joint platforms and
actions to pressure multilateral organisations. Above all, these
transnational corporations must be fought everywhere.

THE STRUGGLE FOR LAND IS A STRUGGLE OVER TECHNOLOGY. The widespread
use of Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs) and the intensive use of
pesticides are inherent to agribusiness. Without this technological
package, it is impossible to produce monoculture on a global scale. To
speak of ‘green’ or ‘sustainable’ agribusiness is nothing more
than advertising. To overcome this model, agroecology must be
strengthened and adopted on a massive scale, such as by regenerating
soil and biodiversity, adopting and disseminating new production and
environmental preservation techniques and technologies, and
manufacturing machinery, equipment, and tools suited to the needs of
peasants.

Agriculture is not the only sector plagued by big tech: the
centralisation and concentration that are characteristic of financial
capital have brought technology companies, financial technology firms,
and agribusiness companies closer together, as we described in our
dossier no. 46, _Big Tech and the Current Challenges Facing the Class
Struggle_. This tendency sets the technological standard for machinery
by appropriating vast amounts of data from nature, which is then
‘imprisoned’ in the cloud infrastructure controlled by the Global
North.23

THE STRUGGLE FOR LAND IS A STRUGGLE FOR FOOD. The COVID-19 pandemic
demonstrated how transnational corporations took advantage of the
global crisis to inflate food prices and profit from speculation. But
subjecting food to the logic of the financial market has other
consequences, too, such as reducing the production of traditional or
local crops and replacing them with commodities that have greater
market acceptance. Crops like soy, which are cultivated to produce
fuel and animal feed, have transformed farms that formerly created
food for human consumption into monoculture-commodity crop
deserts.24 Furthermore, futures trading in agricultural commodities
in the stock and commodities exchanges increases the risk of food
crises. When agribusiness isn’t reducing the production of food for
human consumption or hindering access to it, it is producing
poor-quality food that is rich in pesticide residues.

THE STRUGGLE FOR LAND IS A STRUGGLE FOR THE ENVIRONMENT. Agribusiness
is one of the key forces responsible for the climate and environmental
catastrophe, mainly due to large-scale deforestation to clear the way
for commodity crops and extensive ranching, which also emit large
amounts of carbon. Furthermore, the expansion of the agribusiness
model requires the excessive and unregulated consumption of water
resources, the disappearance of traditional plant varieties and seeds,
and immediate environmental impacts such as the reduction of soil
biodiversity.

Weaving together the struggles for land and the environment requires
condemning the false solutions of green capitalism, such as the carbon
credit market. In this context, the MST launched an initiative in 2019
to plant 100 million trees across the country in the coming years,
which will have an immediate and tangible effect. During the first
four years of this initiative, the movement has already planted 25
million trees.

The MST brings together the struggles for the environment, technology,
and food. A perfect example of this is the agrarian reform settlements
in greater Porto Alegre, in southern Brazil, which is the largest
producer of agroecological rice in Latin America. Here, more than a
thousand families produce individually or in local cooperatives, all
organised through a central cooperative which provides technical
assistance and manages the agro-industrialisation and
commercialisation of the final products. Families participate in
technical, economic, and political management on the settlements and
are responsible for supervising agroecological production and
guaranteeing agroecological certification. The production of
agroecological, organic rice has become a symbol of the large-scale
productive capacity of agroecology as well as the MST’s commitment
to healthy eating and solidarity, since large quantities of grains are
frequently donated to urban community kitchens in the region and to
other countries.

THE STRUGGLE FOR LAND IS A BATTLE OVER CULTURE. The hegemony of
agribusiness is not only achieved by solidifying economic and
technological control, but also by disseminating neoliberal values and
defending agribusiness as the ‘way of life’ through countless
cultural mechanisms, constant advertising on television, sponsorship
and financing from media outlets, and organising shows and financing
for artists who sing odes to monoculture plantations. Constructing a
counter-hegemonic agricultural model requires transforming the mode of
agricultural production and social relations in the countryside
through agroecology, cooperation, and study as opposed to monoculture,
individualism, and ignorance.

Artwork by Natália Gregorini.

Agroecology has helped convey the message that there is an alternative
agricultural model by addressing the environment, health, popular and
scientific knowledge, and diverse forms of popular culture. The MST
Culture Collective is an example of how this can develop. This
collective works to produce and strengthen its own culture in the
areas of literature, theatre, and art. It plays an important role in
the movement’s relationship with society by organising state-wide
agrarian reform festivals which resemble state fairs, featuring the
sale of agricultural products along with cultural activities and
musical acts made up of MST members and their supporters. These
festivals are local versions of the National Agrarian Reform Fair in
São Paulo, whose fourth iteration in 2023 drew over 320,000 visitors
during the four days of the event.

Finally _, _THE STRUGGLE FOR LAND IS PART OF AND DEPENDS ON THE
OVERALL STRUGGLES OF THE WORKING CLASS. On their own, peasants do not
have the strength to face large transnational agribusiness
corporations. To defeat them, and the financial capital that supports
them, a powerful mass movement is needed. This would create
opportunities for socialism. In other words, since the current stage
of capitalism has enabled the model of agribusiness transnational
corporations to become the most powerful they have ever been, every
defeat inflicted upon this model has the potential to, and must be,
anti-capitalist. These defeats, therefore, contribute to building a
project for human emancipation built by the peasants in alliance with
urban workers.

Notes:

* MST, ‘Nossa Historia’.
* The first National Agrarian Reform Plan was announced in 1985,
after fall of the business-military dictatorship, but was never
implemented.
* Jakobskind, ‘Stedile faz palestra’.
* MST, ‘Nossa produção’.
* As the MST explains in its journal _ITERRA Notebooks_, the
movement’s pedagogy ‘understands that social subjects are shaped
in people’s movements and that it is in these spaces that
fundamental processes of human development and education take place.
In other words, social subjects are molded and learn within the
dynamics of organised social struggle, which is the material basis of
the MST’s educational processes. The movement also understands that
the social struggle that molds subjects produces and reproduces
society and people’s lives as a revolutionary praxis’.
ITERRA, _Método Pedagógico_.
* Before the arrival of the Portuguese, the land that was to become
Brazil was home to an estimated five million people who lived in
village communities, with communal control over hunting, fishing,
gathering, and horticulture. See Maestri, ‘A Aldeia ausente’.
* TRANSLATOR’S NOTE: _Quilombos_, occasionally translated as
‘maroon communities’ were rural settlements founded by people who
escaped from slavery that became sites of resistance and created their
own form of organisation. The communities where their descendants
live, known as _quilombolas_, have special land and social rights and
benefits similar to those of indigenous reservations.
* DIEESE, _Estatísticas do meio rural 2010—2011_, 30.
* For a more detailed analysis of the agrarian question in Brazil,
see our dossier no. 27, _Popular Agrarian Reform_ and IBGE, _Censo
Agropecuário_.
* Spadotto and Gomes, ‘Agrotoxicos no Brasil’.
* Martins, _A Questão Agrária no Brasil_, 302.
* MST, _Programa de Reforma Agrária Popular_.
* FPA, ‘Todos os membros’.
* CPT, _Conflitos no campo Brasil 2022_, 5.
* MST, _Programa de Reforma Agrária Popular_, 13—14, our
translation.
* Castro, ‘MST completa 37 anos’.
* TRANSLATOR’S NOTE: A fundamental organisational unit within the
MST, base groups are small, grassroots collectives of landless
families or individuals that serve as the primary space for political
education, decision-making, and the coordination of activities. The
structure and function of base groups reflect the movement’s
commitment to participatory democracy, grassroots organising, and the
creation of an alternative, more equitable society.
* MST, ‘With Another Donation’.
* MST, ‘Educação’.
* To learn more about the role of intellectuals in our work, see:
Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research, _The New
Intellectual_, dossier no. 14, 11 February
2019, [link removed].
* Sudré, ‘Conheça a escola nacional’.
* Pine, ‘Empressa controlam’.
* Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research, _Big Tech_.

* Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research, ‘Complexo da
soja’.
Bibliography

* Mariana Castro, ‘MST completa 37 anos e mostra a força da
agricultura familiar durante a pandemia’ [The MST Turns 37 and Shows
the Strength of Family Farming during the Pandemic], _MST_, 22
January
2021, [link removed].
* Comissão Pastoral da Terra [Pastoral Land
Commission]. _Conflitos no campo Brasil 2022_[Conflicts in Brazil’s
Countryside 2022]. Goiânia: CPT Nacional,
2023. [link removed].
* Departamento Intersindical de Estatística e Estudos
Socioeconômicos (DIEESE) [Inter-Union Department of Statistics and
Socioeconomic Studies]. _Estatísticas do meio rural
2010—2011_[Rural Statistics 2010—2011]. 4th edition. Brasília:
Departamento Intersindical de Estatística e Estudos Socioeconômicos,
Núcleo de Estudos Agrários, and Desenvolvimento Rural / Ministério
do Desenvolvimento Agrário,
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* Frente Parlamentar da Agropecuária (FPA) [Parliamentary
Agricultural Front]. ‘Todos os membros’ [All Members]. 25 July
2023. [link removed].
* Greco Martins, Adalberto Floriano. _A produção ecológica de
arroz e a reforma agrária popular_[Ecological Rice Production and
Popular Agrarian Reform]. São Paulo: Expressão Popular, 2019.
* Greco Martins, Adalberto Floriano. _A Questão Agrária no
Brasil: da colônia ao governo Bolsonaro_[The Agrarian Question in
Brazil: From the Colony to the Bolsonaro Government]. Volume 10. São
Paulo: Expressão Popular, 2022.
* Instituto Técnico de Capacitação e Pesquisa da Reforma Agrária
(ITERRA). _Cadernos do Iterra no. 9—Método Pedagógico_ [ITERRA
Notebooks no. 9: Pedagogical Method]. Veranópolis: ITERRA,
2004. [link removed]º-09-Metodo-Pedagogico-2004
[[link removed]].
* Instituto Brasileiro de Geografia e Estatística (IBGE) [Brazilian
Institute of Geography and Statistics]. _Censo Agropecuário,
Florestal e Aquícola 2017_ [Agricultural, Forestry, and Aquaculture
Census 2017]. Accessed 29 March
2024. [link removed]
[[link removed]].
* Jakobskind, Mário Augusto. ‘Stedile faz palestra na escola
superior de guerra’ [Stedile Gives a Lecture at War College]. 19
July
2006. [link removed].
* Maestri, Mario. ‘A Aldeia ausente: índios, caboclos, cativos,
moradores e imigrantes na formação da classe camponesa brasileira’
[The Absent Village: Indians, Caboclos, Captives, Residents, and
Immigrants in the Formation of the Brazilian Peasant Class]. In _A
questão agrária no Brasil, volume 2—O debate na esquerda
1960—1980 _[The Agrarian Question in Brazil, Volume 2: The Debate
on the Left 1960—1980]. Organised by João Pedro Stedile. São
Paulo: Expressão Popular, 2005. 217—276.
* Movimento dos Trabalhadores Rurais Sem Terra (MST) [Landless Rural
Workers’ Movement]. _Normas gerais e Princípios
Organizativos_ [General Rules and Organisational Principles].
Training Notebook no. 40,
2016. [link removed]º-40-Normas-gerais-e-principios
[[link removed]].
* MST. ‘With Another Donation, the Landless Workers Movement (MST)
Sends Out another 11 Tons of Food to Families in Gaza’. 8 December
2023. [link removed].
* MST. _Programa de Reforma Agrária Popular_ [Popular Agrarian
Reform Programme]. 2024. Unpublished.
* MST. ‘O MST: Nossa historia: 97—99’ [The MST: Our History:
97—99]. Accessed 27 February
2024. [link removed].
* MST. ‘O MST: Nossa produção’ [The MST: Our Production].
Accessed 27 February 2024. [link removed].
* MST. ‘Educação MST’ [MST Education]. Accessed 27 February
2024. [link removed].
* Pina, Rute. ‘Só 87 empresas controlam a cadeia produtiva do
agronegócio’ [Just 87 Companies Control the Agribusiness Supply
Chain]. _Brasil de Fato_, 4 September
2018. [link removed].
* Salgado, Sebastião. _Terra: Struggle of the Landless_. London:
Phaidon Press, 1997.
* Spadotto, Cláudio Aparecido and Marco Antonio Ferreira Gomes.
‘Agrotóxicos no Brasil’ [Agrotoxins in Brazil]. _Embrapa_, 22
December
2021. [link removed].
* Sudré, Lu. ‘Conheça a Escola Nacional Florestan Fernandes, há
15 anos formando militantes’ [Get to Know the Florestan Fernandes
National School, Which Has Been Training Militants for 15
Years]. _MST_, 24 January
2020. [link removed].
* Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research. ‘Complexo da
Soja: Análise dos dados nacionais e internacionais’ [The Soy
Complex: Analysing National and International Data]. 13 November
2019. [link removed].
* Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research._ Popular Agrarian
Reform and the Struggle for Land in Brazil._ Dossier no. 27, 6 April
2020. [link removed].
* Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research. _Big Tech and the
Current Challenges Facing the Class__Struggle_. Dossier no. 46, 1
November 2021. [link removed].
* Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research. _Gramsci in the
Midst of Brazil’s Landless Workers’ Movement (MST): An Interview
with ‘Militante’ Neuri Rossetto_. Dossier no. 54, 19 July
2022. [link removed].

_About The Tricontinental_

_Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research
[[link removed]] is an international,
movement-driven institution that carries out empirically based
research guided by political movements. We seek to bridge gaps in our
knowledge about the political economy as well as social hierarchy that
will facilitate the work of our political movements and involve
ourselves in the “battle of ideas” to fight against bourgeois
ideology that has swept through intellectual institutions from the
academy to the media._

_This publication is issued under a Creative Commons
Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0) license.
The human-readable summary of the license is available
at [link removed]

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