Brazil's Peasant Movements and Land Struggles

Peasant movements in Brazil
Introduction
Almost from the very arrival of the Portuguese in 1500 land has been divided
unequally in Brazil. Until our days land has remained concentrated, very few people
still own most of it. In the beginning the Portuguese did not know very well what
to do with their conquest where at that time an estimated 2.5 million Indians were
living whose numbers decreased rapidly to an estimated 350.000 from war and
infectious diseases brought to them by their new masters. They tried to make their
colony profitable first by exploiting pau-brasil, later on by introducing sugarcane and
setting up plantations (16th, 17th century, by goldmining (18th century) and coffee
(19th, 20th century). Tobacco and rubber have been less significant. The plantation
agriculture formed the basis of Brazilian society during colonial times and the first
period of the Republic. It’s characteristics are large-scale landownership (latifúndia),
monoculture and slavery until the abolition in 1888. As there were too few local
Indian workers, one started to import slaves from Africa who provided most of the
labour. From 1500 until 1930 Brazil’s economy depended on exportation of
commodities, mainly agricultural products, in1930 the ISI-model was introduced
(industrialization as a substitute for importation) and from 1989 on neoliberalism was
embraced. Still after the abolition of slavery in 1888 agricultural workers receive low
salaries and bad treatment.
This paper is meant to represent an investigation of how agricultural workers have
been organized over time. Unpretending to present a complete survey of a
phenomenon as complicated as the agrarian question and Brazilian latifúndia it will be
limited to the period from 1946 on when the first peasant league was born.
A description will follow of the development of peasant political movements before
the military dictatorship (1964-1985) and of the movement that became the most
important after it, the Rural Workers’ without Land Movement (MST), “Movimento
dos Trabalhadores Rurais sem Terra” in Portuguese.
Peasant political movements before the dictatorship
Historically Brazil’s agriculture consisted in large-scale plantations where crops for
exportation were produced, first by slaves and afterwards by freemen who generally
were legally free but economically had no opportunity to leave.
The average peasant depended on his patron and in politics he would vote as his
master wanted him to do in exchange for his favor. The clear social hierarchy kept the
peasant from any possible action to improve his situation. Communication was top-
down and he had very few options to give utterance to his grievances, as he could
either turn to his patron or rebel against him openly. Brazil’s rapid industrialization
(ISI) went along with rapid urban growth which, as can easily be understood, had
serious effects on the countryside. Forman1 puts that urban growth causes an
1 Forman, Shepard, “Disunity and Discontent: A Study of Peasant Political
Movements in Brazil”, Journal of Latin American Studies, 3(1), May 1971,
pp. 3-24

increased demand of agricultural products and distribution for lower prices which
changes the internal marketing system. He calls it the “rationalization of the internal
market system”. Crops are directly transported to the cities bypassing the local
markets. Producing more at lower prices requires investments the local peasant cannot
make. Foodprices will rise as does the value of the land which causes rents to go up.
The small peasant cannot possibly compete with the latifúndia and loses his land.
Meanwhile more and more manufactured goods produced by urban industries can be
bought on the local markets which, bypassed by crops, get a different character. The
peasant and the salaryman are tempted to consume, but lack the money to do so their
real wages having been affected by inflation. These circumstances made people more
politically aware, in the cities as well as in the countryside. Along with agricultural
commercialization they caused people to get organized in peasant and rural worker
associations in the fifties and the sixties. In 1962 the Ministry of Labour gave
instructions for union organization and an Agency for Agrarian Reform (SUPRA) was
created.
In 1963 the National Confederation of Rural Workers, Confederação Nacional dos
Trabalhadores na Agricultura (CONTAG), comprised 500 unions with each over
500.000 members. It consisted of diverse groups: for example the Church-supported
rural unions, peasant leagues, the Union of Agricultural Labourers and Rural Workers
of São Paulo, the Movement of Landless Workers in Rio Grande do Sul and many
more. Forman2 divides them into 3 categories: 1) reformist movements for salaried
rural workers and Church-sponsored rural unions 2) potentially revolutionary
movements for tenants and smallholders (peasants with less than 50 acres) including
the peasant leagues 3) and in between are the radical independent Catholic peasant
associations for the more militant reformist primarly salaried workers.
The first peasant league was founded in 1946 by the Communist Party in the North-
East. It may be seen as a reaction to the end in 1945 of the Estado Novo of Getúlio
Vargas (1930-1945; 1951-1954) who had established a corporatistic state under
dictatorial rule, as well as to social and political legislation by Vargas including labor
rights for rural workers and organizational structures for peasants. For Brazil a
democratic era that would end in 1964 had begun, although the Communistic Party
already was declared illegal in 1947 by Eurico Dutra, a democratically elected
president. The communists aimed more at demanding better education, medical care
and burial funds than at agrarian reform. They were organizing the salaried rural
workers, the same group the Catholic Church focused on ever since 1960. These
church-supported rural unions were set up as a response of the clergy to the secular
peasant leagues whose membership mainly comprised peasants who controlled a
piece of land themselves however small.
The Communist Party, Partida Comunista do Brasil (PCB), empowered rural workers
and inspired landless peasants who organized the peasant leagues (ligas camponesas)
in Pernambuco and other Northeastern states under Francisco Julião, a lawyer and
socialist politician.
In Julião’s opinion the rural population comprised the salaried workers forming the
proletariat, those with just temporary work forming the semi-proletariat, and those
2 Forman, Shepard, “Disunity and Discontent: A Study of Peasant Political
Movements in Brazil”, Journal of Latin American Studies, 3(1), May 1971,
pp. 9-10

with some sort of control over land forming the peasants. It is the last group, the
landed peasants, he mainly focused on, as he thought them, their rights falling under
the civil code and being able to pay for legal defense, to be the most fitted to fight the
latifúndia. Legal defense could be done by himself, a lawyer, for example in cases of
land occupation or not paying the rent. The struggle between landed peasant and
fazendeiro is about rights and so is a political one, whereas the struggle between
salaried worker and fazeindero is rather an economic one. Julião wrote Que são as
Ligas Camponesas? [what are the peasant leagues?], part of which he spread to the
countryside as “a letter of the peasant’s liberation” through a troubadour. It is in the
marketplaces that people used to listen the troubadour’s songs of heroes and of the
news. Julião tried to organize the leagues as rural societies rather than as unions in
order to avoid bureaucratic consequences connected with legislation concerning
unions. Rural workers were unionized in the syndicalistic corporatistic state of
Vargas. Non- competing unions formed state federations which formed a national
confederation that was controlled by the Ministry of Labour; a strict hierarchic
bureaucratic system. Julião’s goal was agrarian reform to be attained primarily by the
juridical process, but he called for land occupations by invasion and did not preclude
the use of violence. Although he was an important leader, Julião’s leagues were not
the only ones. As already said the PCB mainly aimed at achieving labor legislation in
rural areas and registration of the leagues as unions. The communists suspected Julião
of wanting to create a substantial electoral base by his leadership, yet in organizing
the rural proletariat they rather were competing with the Catholic Church than with
Julião. The role of the Catholic Church was conciliatory, denying class struggle,
cooperative with the Federal Government and not after agrarian reform, as the church
itself historically had been tied to the latifúndia. Some clergymen though were critical
about this attitude and had different ideas; one of them was Antonio Melo from
Pernambuco who wanted real agrarian reform, saw strike as a legitimate means for
change, and led a successful strike for better salaries for sugarcane workers in 1963
in Pernambuco.
He was an advocate of colonization projects and garden plots around towns and cities.
The colonization projects would diminsh the surplus of rural workers and therefore
establish an equilibrium in the labour market with rising salaries and consequent
technological developments. Urban foodsupply would benefit from the garden plots.
President João Goulart (1960-1964), considering the peasant movements as a solid
political basis, enacted The Rural Labour Statute3 (Estatuto do Trabalhador Rural) in
1963. The law lays down rules for the relation between employee and employer and
rules concerning the duration of the work, minimum wage, paid free-time weekly,
paid holidays, hygiene and security, housing, health, work by women and minors,
contracts and nullification of the workers’ contracts and also prescribes the
organization of unions of the rural classes and the organization of associations of
these unions. The statute complies with the demands of the rural proletariat, but
instead of being concerned with agrarian reform it puts the peasant movement under
government control. The unions were meant to occupy themselves with economic
3 LEI Nº 4.214 - DE 2 DE MARÇO DE 1963 - DOU DE 22/3/63 – Available from:
http://www2.camara.gov.br/legin/fed/lei/1960-1969/lei-4214-2-marco-1963-353992-
publicacaooriginal-1-pl.html

issues, political activity was theoretically forbidden to them. João Goulart seemingly
tried to satisfy the fazendeiros as well as the peasants, but did not manage to do so as
the peasants demanded more radical reforms and Goulart gave in. He installed the
agrarian reform agency, Superintendência Regional da Política Agrária (SUPRA) by
the so-called SUPRA-decree4 on March 13th 1964. This agrarian reform law promoted
the expropriation of under-utilized properties of over 500 hectares within 10
kilometres of routes of communication (motorways and railways) and of over 30
hectares within 10 kilometres of dams, irrigation and drainage works. Not any
indemnification for the expropriated land was provided for, which meant that the
fazendeiros would lose properties without compensation. The answer came fast.
On April 1st 1964 the military took over, a coup d’état put an end to the peasant
leagues and associations. Francisco Julião was imprisoned and went into excile. Only
the Church-supported rural unions were allowed to go on provided that they were led
by representatives of the government.
The Castelo Branco military government legislated a survey of the land register, a
progressive land tax, control over rural labour contracts, expropriation of land with
indemnification for the owner, establishment of co-operatives and protection of the
rural economy. Yet the goal of the government, the formation of a rural middle class,
was not achieved. The landed elite supported the military strongly and for the moment
did not have to fear from the peasants, as the peasant movement was repressed and
seriously set back by the regime change. Land reform remained limited to a
colonization project in the Amazon and the subject was not part of the public debate
any longer.
MST
It was not until the late 1970’s and early 1980’s that peasant mobilizations ocurred
again when what is called “a abertura política”, the liberalization of the dictatorship,
continued. Not in the poor northeast, but in southern Brazil where historically
immigration of many Europeans had taken place. Activists started to organize land
occupations and roadside camps. Liberation theology had inspired catholic activists
who were most important in organizing the “landless” movement that would evolve to
the MST, founded in 1984, with aspirations to be a national organization. In 1985
José Sarney (Partido da Frente Liberal (PFL)), the indirectly elected vice-president
and substitute for the elected president Tancredo Neves who died before his
inauguration), president of a coalition government (Aliança Democrática), announced
a plan for agrarian reform. The landowners protested by means of the União
Democrática Ruralista (UDR) and influenced the constitutional convention of
1987/1988 so that the new Constitution of 1988 was intentionally unclear about the
expropriation of land. Article 186 of the 1988 Constitution5 says that land must have a
4 Decreto SUPRA 53.700 of March 13th 1964 – Available from:
http://www2.camara.gov.br/legin/fed/decret/1960-1969/decreto-53700-13-marco-
1964-393661-publicacaooriginal-1-pe.html
5 Constitução da República Federativa do Brasil de 1988 – Available from:
http://www.planalto.gov.br/ccivil_03/Constituicao/Constitui%C3%A7ao.htm

social function. It requires rational and adequate use of land, of the available natural
resources and preservation of the environment, observance of the regulations that
control labour relations and exploitation in favor of the well-being of the owners and
the workers. If land is productive, it cannot be expropriated by the state for the
purpose of land reform. The discussion about what exactly is productive proved to be
an impediment for later agrarian reform.6
The leadership of the MST comprise many who acquired land through struggle and
others who joined for ideological reasons. Confrontational tactics like massive land
invasion and occupation are considered fundamental to achieve social reform.
Occupations may range in size from dozens to thousands of families that after
invading the land set up encampments. When forced to leave by the police or the
fazendeiro they move to a spot nearby where they are visible to the outside world and
the media in order to put the authorities under pressure.
So the objective of MST’s tactics is the expropriation of large, unused properties for
agrarian reform, the occupying families receiving plots in settlements at that time
sponsored by the government. After having been dependent on the Catholic Church at
the start, the movement became independent but was close to the Workers Party,
Partido dos Trabalhadores (PT) and the Unified Workers Central Labour
Confederation, Central Unica dos Trabalhadores (CUT). Of the Rural Union
Confederation, Confederação Nacional dos Trabalhadores na Agricultura (CONTAG)
that in 1963 replaced the Farmers’ and Farmworkers’ Union of Brazil, União de
Lavradores e Trabalhadores Agrícolas (ULTAB) founded in 19547 though, the MST
was critical as the confederation with its union culture being legalistic and framed by
laws8 was considered an extension of the government. MST obtains funds from
foreign non-governmental organizations and from its settlers. 9
During the presidency of Sarney not much happened and even less during Fernando
Collor de Mello, elected president in 1989. Intending to stop inflation and to deal with
corruption, he introduced the stabilization programs Collor I and Collor II and started
neoliberal reforms with great impact on agriculture, cuts of subsidies and deregulation
of the market. The fazendeiros suffered subsidy cuts, but lower prices of import
products profited them. The reforms were more difficult for the small farmer who did
not fit easily into the restructured agrarian sector. Leaders of the MST were harassed
by the federal police and land expropriations almost did not occur.The MST adopted a
more radical attitude, stronger determination to resist repression and not to leave
occupied land again.
6 Meszaros, George, “No Ordinary Revolution: Brazil’s Landless Workers’
Movement”, Race and Class, 42(2), 2000, p. 4
7 Welch, Cliff, “Camponeses : Brazil’s Peasant Movement in Historical Perspective
(1946-2004)”, Latin American Perspectives, Issue 167, 36(4),
July 2009, pp. 133-134
9 Ondetti, Gabriel, “Repression, Opportunity, and Protest: Explaining the Takeoff of
Brazil’s Landless Movement”, Latin American Politics and Society,
48(2), Summer 2006, pp. 61-94

The impeachment procedure against Collor in 1992 led to his resignation and
succession by Itamar Franco, the vice-president. Under Franco, the first president who
met with the MST, expropriation was legally facilitated. Inflation continued to be high
and therefore Fernando Henrique Cardoso, minister of finance, a progressive
intellectual, and one of the founders of the Social Democratic Party, Partido da Social
Democracia Brasileira (PSDB), launched a new stabilization plan, the Plano Real. He
resigned in order to run for the presidency and got elected supported by conservatives
who were afraid of a possible victory of Luiz Lula da Silva, the candidate for the
Partido dos Trabalhadores (PT). Cardoso formed a coalition with the right-wing PFL
and the center-right Partido trabalhista Brasileiro (PTB). During his campaign
stateowned companies were privatized, the tax system, labour legislation and the
social security system were revised, measures to promote economic development.
Cardoso had social inequality declared a priority during his campaign, but no social
programs were introduced. The Constitution was changed to make a second term for
the presidency possible in order to reinforce the basis of the neoliberal system.
Cardoso appointed a wealthy banker, PTB-member, as minister of Agriculture who
replaced a progressive president of the Instituto Nacional de Colonização e Reforma
Agrária (INCRA) with a UDR-linked fazendeiro. INCRA did not settle as many
people as it should have done and agrarian reform seemed to have disappeared from
the public debate again. This changed completely with the incidents of Corumbiara
and Eldorado do Carajás in august 1995 and april 1996 respectively. In Corumbiara in
Rondônia the police very violently attacked an encampment of landless people
occupying property resulting in many casualties. Some of the occupiers were tortured
and executed. The media paid much attention to what had happened holding the
government resposible for not stopping the violence in land questions and laid stress
on the necessity of agrarian reform. The National Conference of Catholic Bishops
also condemned the occurrence and asked for land reform.
An even more violent attack took place in Eldorado do Carajás in Pará when the
military police attacked some 1200 MST demonstrators who were blocking a
motorway. A great number of casualties resulted, 19 dead of whom some were
executed and 60 injured. This time the incident had been filmed by local television,
the images were spread by the press in and outside Brazil and the government got
criticized again for not dealing with the question of land reform. Nobody was found
guilty, as there seemed to be a total incapacity or unwillingness to convict the
offenders.10
Cardoso created the Extraordinary Ministry for Land Policy that took over INCRA
from the Ministry of Agriculture and he met with MST leaders. He promised
legislation to fasten the reform process and to restrain violence. The media spread
supportive reactions (not only from the left) in favor of agrarian reform and the MST.
A huge mobilization of Brazilian and international civil society occurred around the
issue. The MST internationally received support from human rights and development
organizations. The land issue even became the theme of a telenovela, o Rei do Gado.
In 1997 MST organized the National March for Justice, Employment and Land
Reform that arrived in Brasilia on the first anniversary of the attack on the
demonstrators in Eldorado. The number of land occupations was growing fast. In
1999 Cardoso started his 2nd term in which expenditure on land reform was reduced.

He issued a decree making expropriation of occupied rural properties impossible for
at least two years.11
In 2003 Lula’s election brought the expectation that the PT government would
promote agrarian reform, but the agricultural policy of Lula’s administration proved
to be orthodox, supporting a commodity-export model of wealth accumulation. Profits
were necessary to pay Brazil’s debts first in order to enable social investments to be
made later including family agriculture.12 Actually Lula’s government supported the
expansion of large-scale agribusiness farming to obtain hard currency and to increase
the production of agro-fuels.13 Frustrated by Lula the MST had to find new means to
achieve agrarian reform which involved a closer relationship with international allies
and confronting transnational agribusiness corporations and Western governments in
favor of transnational agribusiness. The MST reinforced it’s relationship with Via
Campesina.14
“La Via Campesina is the international movement which brings together millions of
peasants, small and medium-size farmers, landless people, women farmers,
indigenous people, migrants and agricultural workers from around the world. It
defends small-scale sustainable agriculture as a way to promote social justice and
dignity. It strongly opposes corporate driven agriculture and transnational companies
that are destroying people and nature.”15
The foundation of the MST is the Land Statute in the Constitution. From the
beginning it has promoted immediate struggle for land through non-violent
occupation of unproductive land, agrarian reform and programs to develop and sustain
rural families and a more just society. The killing of 19 of its members in Eldorado in
1996 made the MST decide to bring their struggle to the international community, it
caused international solidarity with MST and it caused the federal government to
respect human rights more. In 1997 the World Bank (WB) with the Brazilian federal
government started an alternative to land reform through expropriation based on the
free market principle called Land Bank, Cédula da Terra. Fazendeiros could sell land
to the WB at free market prices and landless peasants could buy land borrowing the
money from the WB. Often the fazendeiros sold just hilly and rocky lands not so easy
11 Ondetti, Gabriel, “Repression, Opportunity, and Protest: Explaining the Takeoff of
48(2), Summer 2006, pp. 61-94
July 2009, pp. 146-147
13 Carter, Miguel, “The Landless Rural Workers Movement and Democracy
in Brazil”, Latin American Research Review, Special Issue 2010, p. 197
July 2009, pp. 146-147
15http://viacampesina.org/en/index.php?option=com_content&view=category&layout
=blog&id=27&Itemid=44

to cultivate and the farmers who lacked education and therefore many times had not
understood the contract at all, remained indebted to the Bank. This was not true
agrarian reform. The MST was not opposed to the money of the WB, but to the way
of applying it in favor of the fazendeiros. It started to organize courses in agricultural
techniques, health education, education and literacy programs using pedagogical
methods inspired by Paulo Freire and granting credit and start-up capital through
MST rural cooperatives. The MST has carried out many development projects and
collaborated with the Ministry of Health on programs of HIV/AIDS prevention, the
cultivation of herbal medicines. It has it’s own natural medicine processing plant in
Ceará whose construction has been financed by Petrobras.16
As already mentioned the MST is a member of La Via Campesina17 (among 148
organizations in 69 countries), whose main issues18 are agrarian reform and water,
biodiversity and genetic resources, food sovereignty and trade, women, human rights,
migrations and rural workers, sustainable peasants’ agriculture and youth.
The MST takes part in organizing the World Social Forum, the counterpart of the
World Economic Forum, each year held in Davos, Switzerland. Under the slogan
“Another World is Possible” it tries to develop alternative strategies to neo-liberal
globalization. In the context of globalization governments have reduced their own role
in society by neoliberal reforms, thereby promoting the role of civil society, non-
governmental organizations and new social movements of which the MST is an
example. It is called a new social movement, because the MST unlike the older
movements is not based on traditional class formations and workers’ struggles for
state power, because it incorporates families as members rather than just males heads-
of-household, because it has a participatory decision-making structure, because it
builds alliances with other civic-society institutions, because it is autonomous and
untied to political parties (even to the PT), because it has a national and international
view using the concepts of mass mobilization to change Brazilian society and
economy and participating in the struggle of globalization.19
The MST certainly is not an ordinary revolutionary movement as it’s “basic demand,
land reform, envisages the creation of millions of property owners rather than the
abolition of property relations.”
In spite of a radical perspective and radical actions the MST to some extent has
become “institutionalised”, which seems a paradox. But it is a kind of an institution as
it negotiates and signs contracts with all levels of government, federal, state and local,
16 Carter, Miguel, “The Landless Rural Workers Movement and Democracy
in Brazil”, Latin American Research Review, Special Issue 2010, pp. 186-217
17http://viacampesina.org/en/index.php?option=com_wrapper&view=wrapper&Itemid
=71
18http://viacampesina.org/en/index.php?option=com_content&view=section&layout=
blog&id=5&Itemid=27
July 2009, pp. 127-128

in matters like ownership and management of land and plant, the provision of
technical assistance, education and legal advice.20
Summary:
The Brazilian agrarian question is historically determined and complicated.
This paper tries to describe peasant movements in relation to the social and political
context in the 20th century from 1946 onwards.
Middelburg, April 12th 2012
Floris Jan Heere, s 0932930
Movement”, Race and Class, 42(2), 2000, pp. 8-9

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