Zander Navarro

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Introduction

Contemporary social and political history in Brazil is characterized by distinct social processes, specially after the final years of the military period, that is, between late 70s and the first half of the next decade, stretching up to the present. Although some of those might as well be seen in other Latin American societies within the same time span, others came as a surprise. As many authors have pointed out, the first ones include the rapid consolidation of political regimes inspired on the somewhat strict limits of a primarily electoral democracy. Or, still within the first group of processes, deep social changes (such as fast urbanization) or economic ones, as the chronicle inflationary processes which are now only partially tamed as well as the adoption of "structural adjustment" policies, started in the mid-1980s.

Recommended by international financial bodies, those policies forcedly integrated the continent’s economies into international financial and commercial environments, making the region one of the paradigmatic cases of the globalization phenomenon.

On the other hand, if we examine the social developments in Brazil during that period, it is hard not to see the emergency of social struggle in rural areas, those carried out by the so-called landless being the most symbolic and distinguishing. That struggle was unexpected, specially if seen in the light of typical prior analyses, including those by Marxists, who were generally skeptical of the chances of meaningful political organization by rural workers and peasants. The birth and growth of the Movimento dos Trabalhadors Rurais Sem-Terra (Landless Rural Workers’ Movement in Brazil) in early 80s, made the acronym MST gradually known, as well as other widely publicized icons, such as the red flag and the typical caps worn by its militants.

The struggle carried out by that organization, born out of the social movement originated in the political transition experienced by the country after the end of the 70s (later marked by the inauguration of the first civil president, in 1985) is probably one of the most startling social processes under way. The organization will henceforth be called Movement, MST, or simply "the landless organization" (besides its political importance for understanding the Movement, the conceptual distinction between social movement and formal organization will not be examined here). Being more active in southern Brazil during the 80s, the MST gradually became a very visible organization nationwide, setting foot in most of the states and even drawing international attention. The studies on the subject remain largely insufficient, even though they have expanded over recent years. Those have been mostly idealizing and superficial, uncritically reporting the movement’s external actions, its unlikely "revolutionary potential" and thus echoing its laudatory literature. There were also academic studies focused on the Movement’s restricted action environment, generally rural settlements, on which there already is a great deal of writing.

A third group of studies sees the MST from a more ambitious point-of-view, going beyond state limits and into a national scenario, within more recent socio-political and economical developments. Its scarcity reflects the methodological difficulties of such a venture. As a result, it is remarkable that knowledge about the movement in Brazil (and internationally) is still largely inadequate and partial, generating great analytical discrepancies when speaking about such a social phenomenon, regardless of the theoretical and/or political perspective and echoing analyses characterized by ideological enchantment and superficiality. Such discrepancies are in fact more complex, as José de Souza Martins has pointed out, since they involve almost every actor in social struggle in rural areas, including the mediation agencies which intend to represent the landless in the "general politics" arena. According to that author, "(...) The silence of the poor is not only a consequence of the enclosure they live in. It also comes from the usurpation of their voice, of their will and hope by those who, intending to act with generous solidarity, end up imposing a new and more serious silence, that of artificial, inauthentic and anomic speech" (Martins, 2000a: 69).

Formally born in 1984, besides having arisen a few years earlier, from the redemocratization during of the military cycle, the Movement is the social and political product of several factors which will be described in the following sections. Such factors range from repressive political conditions of the authoritarian period and the resulting political activism to the mobilization and politicization carried out by radical sectors of the Catholic clergy; from the effects of that decade’s vigorous agricultural modernization to the political history of rural communities in southern Brazil (where the movement was first organized); or from the political redemocratization started in 1979 to the social processes which generated a "cycle of protest" in rural areas in that part of the country. It may be one of the most fascinating sociopolitical courses ever produced by Brazilian history, since in the past twenty years the MST has been active enough to influence public rural agenda and carry out collective actions of great repercussion, being a necessary reference for all Brazilian agrarian matters. Extremely agile, the Movement has also developed organizational processes and internal dynamics that justify its political power in spite of those operational mechanisms being usually unknown, even to researchers of the field whose attention is more directed towards its external actions and public visibility.

Three initial warnings are needed in order to locate the arguments of this article and clearly set its aims. Firstly, we choose to adopt an analytical distinction, with clear political implications, between the "landless organization", which includes the whole of its main leadership and intermediate militants, directly linked to the organization as its staff, and the broad social base of "landless families". Those families include impoverished small farmers, land-owning or not (in this case, land squatters, land tenants, sharecroppers), who own tiny lots insufficient for their social reproduction, as well as thousands of poor rural families who wander around the country in search of work and income and also part of waged rural workers who have been drawn to the movement in certain agrarian regions. The article’s main focus is almost solely the organization and its leadership, its history, strategies and range of choices and decisions along the period but not the landless people under its influence, even because, as will be argued, the gap between the social base and the Movement’s leadership’s chosen discursive agenda and forms of social action is often significant. Then the mobilizing success of the MST would be explained otherwise, differently from the voluntary and conscious participation of its social base. The second aspect highlighted refers to the field of social processes under analysis. It should be stressed that this text neither makes social analysis on contemporary Brazil nor discusses the country’s agrarian issue lato sensu. The most important factors of economic or sociopolitical order are mentioned only to establish contexts and circumstances. The analytical focus is on the organization of the landless, regarding the other popular organizations, the relationships established, the nature of conflicts among those organizations as secondary (sometimes not even mentioned). The role of the state and its policies will only be discussed in contextual terms, even though they are crucial. The nature of government actions will be pointed out within specific periods. In face of the high variability of the network of relations which was built and went through changes, between those actors, they will be only occasionally mentioned here, in order to support the arguments put forward. Finally, as will be seen, empirical evidences are almost totally related to southern Brazil (most of them to the state of Rio Grande do Sul), which sets a third limit for the article. Even reflecting the author’s experience as a researcher, it is important to notice that the empirical examples taken from MST’s history in that state (or in southern Brazil) are largely exemplar and representative to be generalized to the rest of the country. Born in Southern Brazil, the landless organization has its oldest and strongest branch in the state, where virtually all its activities were first tried, serving as an testing field for several actions carried out along the years and later repeated nationwide.

Another preliminary note, essential for setting the article’s limits, is related to the very notion of emancipation applied. Differently from other conceptual possibilities (such as the classical Habermasian notion of "emancipatory knowledge") the idea in this text is only informed by an essentially political dimension. It refers precisely to the chances of subordinate classes and poorer social groups from different identities autonomously build its several forms of association and representation of interests. More important, to their possibilities of entering the field of political dispute and exercising their legitimate right to defend their own claims and seek to realize their demands, without running the risk of elimination or politically illegitimate embarrassments by opponent social groups. That means a political system which would assimilate social conflict as an integral part of its own nature and legitimacy, differently from Brazilian tradition of dealing with conflict as an anomalism to be fought against by all repressive means. In such an unequal society, with conflict not being part of politics, subordinate classes will never have the opportunity of altering different existing unbalances (and, autonomy of representation forms and conflict legitimacy being real, "emancipatory democracy" would certainly be on its way). Therefore, such notion is entirely different from the ambitious idea (nowadays a fantasy) of correspondence between emancipation and the "the great societal transformation", characterized by deep disruption of the current order. That is, in this text, emancipation is not a synonym of anti-systemic rupture, of a vague socialist political order. From a strict perspective, we join the idea, quite obvious in the case of Brazil, of granting a real meaning to that concept through the possibility of participation and political representation (once again, autonomously, without resorting to the Messianic leader, political parties that suffocate the interests of subordinate groups or other falsely mediating representation). We also join the notion of actualizing the presence of those groups in a political dispute system that accepts them and integrates them in a legitimate way. As will be said later, even under that limited idea of emancipation, the huge success of the MST in mobilizing landless social groups in order to build its architecture of collective actions, does not come even close to the above (restricted) notion of emancipation - which actually justifies the article’s title. Adopting the totalizing perspective of big political schemes of orthodox Marxist traditions, which play down social difference and alterity, the MST hampers the autonomy of microsocial organizational forms, both local and regional, since they would threaten its very national dimension. The movement, as a political entity, has actually played a role in preventing the emancipation of the poorest people in rural areas, who end up serving to the sometimes undisclosed purposes of the organization’s leading body.

This article starts by presenting a concise history of that social movement, highlighting the original determinants which gave rise to forms of social protest in southern Brazil, thus generating several rural social movements, among which the landless’ organization. The next section presents the most prominent phases and the distinctive characteristics of its evolution in the last two decades. We seek to show that the MST’s development has been producing over the last years extremely arguable forms of internal organization, political choices and strategies, as well as specific "reality reading", whether to the other rural organizations or to its own members. Those alternatives have been embraced specially because of its political power and ideological orientation. Finally, before the closing arguments, the section examines a summary of the Movement’s current dilemmas, highlighting some critical and controversial aspects of its political action. Thus, we present and discuss a set de aspects regarding the invisible facet of the Movement, still not introduced (and actually not recognized as existing and real by most of the movement’s analysts and supporters), before going on to point out to the most noticeable results of its political and organizational action. We hope the section helps to broaden the knowledge about that organization, specially its political actions, which seem to stand few chances for building a real emancipation for rural Brazil’s poor.

1. MST: a concise history (1980-2000)

1. The original context

Just as in other Latin American countries in the postwar period, it is possible to identify in Brazil several moments in which the poorest rural populations, politically excluded and economically subordinated, were able to exercise their rights to mobilize and organize themselves, entering the tough and complex field of politics, in agreement with what some authors called have called "cycles of protest" (Tarrow, 1994). In Brazil, two of those arguments are usually accepted. The first one, including part of the 50s and early 60s and suddenly ending with the 1964 military coup, is related to the growing number of rural workers’ unions, mobilizing mostly waged workers from commercial parts of the country. The second one is the rise of peasant leagues, primarily embracing the demands of small farmers, usually not landowners, mostly in Northeastern Brazil. Besides, as a result of the political liberalization, characteristic of populism as well as changes in rural areas, other actors, such as the state, political parties and institutions as the Catholic Church came heavily into the political arena. Those elements disputed influence and control over the process of organizing the "rural poor", also presenting change or continuity projects which became increasingly polarized. As a result, the agrarian issue ended up being an important starting element for the military coup which defeated the political forces favoring structural changes in the country.

Another meaningful scenario of (re)emergence of popular movements in rural areas started to materialize in the late 70s. That decade actually saw an unprecedented pattern of rural violence and, on the other hand, processes of modernization and capitalist development also never witnessed before. From those years on, the official union movement became more dynamic. However, a competing national union would be organized, the Central Única dos Trabalhadores (CUT) (Worker’s Central Union). Other events in early 80s would eventually lead to the constitution of the MST, which aggressively reintroduced the demand for agrarian reform into the country’s political scene. Several forms of more regionalized forms of organizational expression also came up, such as rural women’s movements, rural workers threatened by the development of large public works (such as hydroelectric plants), small farmers demanding access to state policies for the sector, etc. Similarly, and as a result of extraordinary rural changes, a rapid process of commodification of productive activities brought about increasing social gaps, specialization of production and integration of new agroindustrial complexes formed during that period, generating other interests and the need for new forms of representation and encouraging several collective actions by small farmers and rural workers.

There are many determinants contributing for the emergency and development of those new rural social movements, starting in Southern Brazil (and specially in Rio Grande do Sul), between late 70s and the following years. That long list incorporates aspects related to the history of political participation in the state as well as to the existence of an traditional "organization culture" in rural communities and responsive elements such as the opposition to control by local elites. In this section, however, we will ascertain that the social movements in the aforementioned region are mainly three: the political liberalization of the period, during the final years of the military cycle; the agrarian economy’s structural changes in those states that modernized their agriculture (basically central-southern Brazil) and their social impacts; and the action of progressive sectors of the Catholic Church. The Church’s action was inspired at first by increasing rural conflict during the 70s and later, during the next decade, in the context of the discursive apparatus put forward by the Theology of Liberation, factors which, as would be expected, have had distinct influence on agrarian time and space circumstances (Navarro, 1996). The combined effects of those three factors, specially in southern states, had concrete results due to the specific characteristics of agriculture in that part of the country. There is a strong presence of family farming and the Catholic Church’s mediators and physical facilities, probably stronger than in other Brazilian states (due to its the historical presence among rural communities, recruiting the farmers’ children for religious careers and also receiving material support to build churches, parish facilities, seminars and even for long-term maintenance). The process of agricultural modernization of the 70s integrated most of those rural families to the several economic and financial scenes. When it was over, it had left a growing problem of social reproduction, generating an alliance between the Catholic Church’s rural branch, represented by the CPT-Comissão Pastoral da terra, the church’s Land Pastoral Comission (with its mediators originated exactly in family farming) and the then fledging popular organizations, such as unions and social movements, including the MST. It was only after their consolidation in the southern states, in the second half of that decade, and specially from the 1990s on, that those organizations were gradually able to spread their action to other states.

2. The MST: stages of its history

An analysis of the history of the MST, even if limited to specific regions of the country, would pose a real research challenge, because of the its vigorous social history since the early years of the last decade. Nationally organized since mid-80s, the MST has had a surprising ability to reinvent itself, according to context variations, as well as an unparalleled creativity if compared to other movements. It has thus been able to keep up and avoid situations of strong undecidedness, such as those in labor unions and other social movements. It faces challenges that are also proportionally bigger, since its social base is "the poorest amongst the rural poor", who usually have no permanent occupation or residence, no schooling and are generally easy targets of all sorts of political manipulation - in the Movement’s jargon, the "lumpen", the most fragile social rural groups. Nevertheless, its main challenge is exactly that derived from the very reason for its existence, that is, exercising social pressure to change a historically rooted land ownership pattern, in which control remains in the hands of a minority of landowners.

Among the social movements arisen during those years of political transition, the MST has the strongest social identity and has been able to define and motivate its social base. As a result, it has an important mobilization ability and its actions have a strong public visibility. Having become a recognized social actor which takes part in social struggle, its actions have had fairly significant results, since it has forced the creation of thousands of new settlements all over the country - even though the numbers themselves might not be so relevant when compared to the land-demanding population. According to official figures, until the end of 1996, 117.000 families had been settled in the country, but only between January 1997 and June of the following year, other 114.000 got their lot, and the federal agrarian reform programs estimate figures of 400.000 families for the 1999-2000 period. Such results, at least in some sub-regions, have contributed for a better land distribution in several rural areas of the country, creating occupational and land access opportunities for thousands of families as well as generating new economic dynamics.

Probably, from a general perspective, it is possible to segment the movement’s history in three main moments - at the risk, of course, of oversimplifying, especially from 1994/95 on, when it spread to the rest of the nation and regional differences were significantly deepened. The first moment is that of the formative years of the beginning of the 1980s, when the first landless groups were organized, specially in Rio Grande do Sul and Santa Catarina, through its formal structuring (in 1984, in the foundation congress, in the town of Cascavel, Paraná), the first national congress, in Curitiba, January 1985, until the exemplar year of 1986, which closes that first stage, with a still basically southern movement. During that first period, the MST had a strong presence of religious mediators linked to the Catholic Church’s progressive groups, some of them leaders of the movement. It chose less confrontational actions, often towards negotiation and having the state governments as its main interlocutor - until 1985. That year marked the inauguration of the first civil government, closing the military cycle and also a confrontation between the movement and the federal government. Non-violent actions were common due to the presence of the church. The agrarian reform became part o the federal government’s agenda, since social disputes were militarized. However, those were times when recruiting farmers with little or no land was easy and the Movement grew actively, based on the significant support by religious mediators of the Land Pastoral Comission and operational structure offered by the Catholic Church. Not many settlements were created but they served as a strong encouragement to enlarging the Movement’s mobilizing capacity.

A second stage occurred between 1986 and 1993, when the Movement’s actions became gradually confrontational (symbolized in the change in the motto, from "Land for those who work on it" to "Occupy, resist, produce") with several shocks with the police and the big landowners’ hit men, since such was the new internal guidance - specially after the MST’s farmers refused to submit to the so far irrefutable leadership of mediators from the Catholic Church. From that point on those mediators went from defining the Movement’s stances to being side aids. In the following years, that situation only deepened and the most radical Catholic clergymen were the only ones to remain close to the MST. An episode in the south, among many others, illustrates that time. That was the "Matriz Square conflict", which happened in downtown Porto Alegre, when rural militants confronted state military police, with a level of violence that surprised the state’s public opinion. In sum, those trends reflected the organization too quickly joining Leninist ideas even though simplified by a few main leaders, going as far as committing its newspaper, which became a mere "inciting and propaganda" tool.

As a result, the period saw the decision to make the social movement into a "movement de militants" (instead of a "mass movement", as was the church’s initial inspiration) in the ideological sense, but with a centralized organization. Then, the MST left the south as a main field for its actions and transferred its headquarters to São Paulo (where it still is). In those years, the federal government would become the main interlocutor, at least until 1988, when the hopes for broad processes of land expropriation by the government were dropped, since the government abandoned such intentions, an early promise of the "Democratic Alliance", which came to power in 1985. At the end of that stage, the Movement went back to confronting state governments. Nevertheless, the period was one of the most practically effective (second only to that starting in 1996), with growing numbers of settlers and farmers recruited for the proposed actions. At the end of the second stage, the MST went through a relative period of crisis because of the strong presence of opponent forces, such as the short-lived UDR-União Democrática Ruralista (Democratic Rural Union), a confrontational and violent landowner organization. However, another problem arose, one that is somewhat still unresolved, related to the growing number of settlements. Those started posing an urgent question: How would the production in those areas be organized, making the settlers economically viable and presenting the places as "model areas"? The answer to that question, developed by the Movement in several settlements, in several states, was one of the most fascinating ideology exercises ever carried out. The MST proposed the creation of totally collectivist co-operatives - an evidence of the level of ideological mystification reached at that point.

The third moment covers more recent years, from 1994, when new political facts had to be considered by the MST, such as growing lack of trust by other movements, due to distinct understandings about social life and strategies for political change. The new reality of the growing number of settlements also played its role, demanding quick answers regarding the organization of production and producers in those areas. The important fact, however, is that the MST "conquered" São Paulo, setting foot in that state and discovering a privileged ground for action, the region of the "Pontal do Paranapanema", a huge rural area, perfect for the struggle tactics of the Movement, since it is a public area, where most landowners can not appeal of expropriation (already having a final court decision). Acting with such ease in the most prominent state, having great repercussion in the media, the Movement widened its presence in matters concerning agrarian reform and became a crucial interlocutor for that subject and the settlements. Another reason for the MST’s political clout and strength was derived from tragic events in land invasion in recent years - which are not surprising, due to the confrontational stance adopted as its main struggle means and the normal use of military forces to violently repress those land occupations. Two of them were particularly decisive to encourage social pressure in favor of agrarian reform in recent years: the events in Corumbiara, Rondônia (August 1995) and later, the massacre in Eldorado dos Carajás, in the southern area of the state of Pará, in April the following year. In both cases, several rural workers were murdered by the brutal action of police forces. Those events reflected in a way a strong public tilt in favor of the landless’ organization. The second event generated great repercussion, since it was taped and broadcasted several times, in different moments. Because of its influence in that context, the MST changed once more its political motto, this time to "Agrarian reform: everybody’s struggle".

There is another factor that has been mostly ignored, despite its relative internal importance for the organizations’ decisions and current characteristics. Recently, a "second generation of militants" came from MST’s schools, with political as well as some professional educational activities. This generation has young people coming from all states, thus reflecting distinct agrarian realities. Besides, in the northern states, the militants were much more open to radical readings of reality, reflecting their own life experiences. As a result, a new group of leaders has come to back collective actions that are more daring and confrontational to the social order. The image of an "inciting" MST reflects more the actions of those regional leaders and less the dominant political perception of the (mostly southern) "first generation" leadership. Those are still in charge, but are constantly confronted by radical young leaders who recently entered the organization’s decision structure. There is also a surprise in the contrasting discourses of young leaders from different southern states and those from, say, the Northeast.

In recent years (since 1994/95) the actions have widened in some areas and receded in others (such as Rio Grande do Sul and Santa Catarina, the birthplace of the MST). Not being the aim of this article to discuss the reasons for such variations, it is probably more relevant to present the main challenges posed to the Movement. Firstly, the democracy problem, since the movement is approaching a time when it might face growing dissent and conflicts, not only internally, but also in its relationship with other social movements within the so-called "popular field", the latter because of deeper political and ideological differences. Having an essentially nondemocratic structure, however, there are also great signs of internal conflicts, in which the militarist ethos and near religious devotion of some of its intermediate militants, led by a few main national leaders, might no longer be able to control the camps and, specially, the settlements. The most evident factor in that regard is exactly the instrumentalism of an ideologically anti-systemic rhetoric, built only for internal aims (to keep the cohesion of core militants), and which has succeeded in developing a uniform political identity and guaranteed its political aims and forms of action. It appears to be a charade, maybe incomprehensible to those who learn about the MST only peripherally (or through superficial and impressionist newspaper articles), generating curious behaviors on certain distinct but equally mistaken social groups. On the one hand, conservative groups react to the leftist rhetoric and to the symbols which, as they see it, "should have been buried under the wall", claiming for the enforcement of legal instruments to hinder the MST’s occupation of private land. But urban social groups and socialist parties, just as badly informed about the world of rural politics, and/or moved only by the "classic" manuals, see transforming political potential which is not part of the expectations of landless rural workers. Those changes are relevant to the democratization of rural society, but they are not motivated to promote ruptures.

The political education of young landless farmers in the Movement’s schools has entirely different aims - in sum, the sole intention is to make them join a "total" and closed understanding of politics, which does not even consider the recent Brazilian political developments, turning instead "inwards’. It is aimed mainly to keep discipline, motivation and cohesion among its intermediate militants. The ideological mystification can sometimes be pathetic in trying to stress a polarized worldview and Manichaeistic political interpretation. The movement’s newspaper, for instance, is perhaps the best mirror for the changes that have been operated. Being a rural publication until 1986, the national leadership made it into a "mass incitation instrument", following the classic Leninist prescription. Its journalists were dismissed for lack of confidence and replaced by "popular reporters", a change which reflected on the publication’s pages. As an example of the new ideological option, among the numerous deliberate distortions of facts, the newspaper published in its "general facts" column, an article on the 1991 arrest of American boxer Mike Tyson, charged (and later convicted, having even confessed) with rape. From the newspaper’s "political" viewpoint, the fact simply did not happen, the arrest and conviction being due only to that country’s historical racial discrimination, probably to the surprise of its better-informed readers. As in most of the leadership’s political agenda, it resorts to the extreme polarization between "good" and "evil’, discourse inspired by those linked to the Land Pastoral Commission, which serves as its religious legitimating support. Curiously, besides the growing social and cultural complexity in the country, as well as the widening of the political and ideological spectrum and overcoming of the military cycle, the mobilizing instruments of the movement never went beyond the strict limits of the opposition between what is malevolent and what is virtuous, certainly lacking any real correspondence. Being locked inside that clear ideological oversimplification with its merely instrumental aims, the inability of the organization to establish alliances or a common agenda even with the other popular organizations within the Brazilian popular field comes at no surprise.

Such political background obviously keeps the militants from understanding social reality and politics at large. Being superficial and incongruent, it has produced surprising cases of rupture and conflict - specially when the original social identity raised in the world of "small farming" and broken during camp and land occupations is reestablished with arrival to the settlement and the restitution of former community life. In such situations, many settlers wish to get away from the organization. However, since dissident groups have no word in the means of their support created by the MST, those families are quickly drawn apart of the other settlers and, in some cases, even taken out of the settlement itself. For that reason, not being able to count on the "virtuous cycle" which keeps the Movement, such dissidents rarely constitute organized groups with power and public visibility. When that happened, they became simple appendices of leftist parties or were short-lived. In the state of Pernambuco, for instance, in 1996 and 1997, there were at least six "landless Movements". None, however, posed a challenge to the MST or stood a chance of surviving for a long time.

The management of the increasing number of new settlements has been yet another challenge. This article does not intend to examine the subject specifically, only to say that the productive proposals so far have not been able to realize innovative situations compared to what impoverished farmers usually face. So the settlements should not be more than a temporary way of survival for families who have lost their land and once again have part of a lot. Most settlements have made technological choices typical of "subsistence farming" or, in the case of southern Brazil, "modern agriculture", which demands agroindustrial inputs and productive structures. That model does not offer economic and productive viability to new plot owners, specially within the recent macroeconomic conditions.

A fourth stage in the history of the Movement is probably under way, maybe started in 1998, when the difficulties for the organization’s action became notably greater. The rhetoric to justify the uncertainty of these years has been pointing out to the "criminalizing acts" by the government. Such argument seems to be far away from reality (a typical case of self-deceiving shared by so many of the MST’s allies), the increasing isolation to other popular rural organizations and even to some of typically urban former allies reflecting the recent political choices of the organization.

Ironically, MST’s recent history repeats in several aspects that of the Peasant Leagues in the years after the 1964 institutional rupture, thus proving the cyclic nature of social processes. From the exacerbation of political rhetoric to extreme forms of social struggle, through attacking the state and even to childishly adopting "military schemes", the lessons of past history seem to have been forgotten by the organization’s leadership. In the last three years, the movement has chosen a process of political radicalization whose rationale is not open to any interpretive framework. Among those, invading public buildings, occupying clearly productive properties (which can not be desapropriadas, according to the law), invading ships to denounce "transgenic grains" cargo, directly confronting the other rural organizations. Besides that, acts of political pressure related to very recent and still controversial public debates (such as the free trade agreements currently proposed or genetically modified organisms) and the repetition of an anti-state discourse have all contributed to draw the Movement away from its former areas of political alliance, narrowing its field of action. The most significant sign of that new stage, in case it is realized, might be the reluctance of the Catholic Church to give its almost unconditional support (as it has done in the past). The church has grown increasingly suspicious of the Movement’s forms of actions and political choices, even though its mediating agency, the Land Pastoral Commission, has been acting for years as a supporting force to the MST (for the most rigorous analysis on the Commission’s activity and recent history, see Martins, 2000: 11-71 and 133-153). Only time will show if such ruptures will be realized in wider terms or if, otherwise, the MST will be able to politically reorganize and better interpret its alternatives and possibilities, in the light of recent changes in Brazil.

2. The MST and the dilemmas of rural social struggle

The movement’s social and political experience, specially in recent years (since mid-1990s) has shown its extraordinary ability to be proactive as a social actor with strong presence in political life. On the other hand, it is an illustrative organizational history, revealing its current impasses.

In this article, in the light of the most expressive results achieved by the MST, a considerable space would be necessary for all it has done along the years in all Brazilian rural areas. There are several cases of formerly "dormant" areas from an economic point-of-view, which had scarce productive activities. Those have been made relatively dynamic by the settlements and the arrival of the MST and its leadership. A new group of "farmers-turned-into-municipal-leaders" started to pressure local institutions, interfering more strongly in government policies and specially watching political practices more closely. Those small revitalized subnational areas are numerous and spread all over the country, accounting for the appearance of more participatory rural families and, as a result, contributing to the democratization of their towns. As a consequence, the growing number of settlements in almost every state has produced the political renewal of remote rural areas, slowly democratizing them and generating new political practices, formerly controlled by big landowners. The settlements themselves derive also more from the Movement’s pressure and less from governmental decision. Even though agrarian reform and "the need to change the land ownership structure" had been present in the Brazilian political agenda for a long time and some governments have been favorable, the unprecedented number of new settlements in the last five years is directly related to the pressures by the MST (and in some states, by rural workers’ unions). It should be also recognized that the favorable context for this policy, resulting of the weakening of big landowners has played a role. In effect, land occupation has been decisive to push for the agrarian reform program. The 100-odd occupations in the whole country in the early 1990s grew to 398, starting in 1996, reaching nearly 600 two years later, and having a slight decrease in the last years. Symptomatically, this is the period in which the Federal Administration’ program of settlements was most advanced.

In that sense, the MST’s political and organizational effectiveness might be limited to three sets of significant results. Firstly, the permanent political debate on agrarian reform within Brazilian society during the period. That demand would be probably weakened or even eliminated without the landless insisting on it. Secondly, the expressive number of settlements, which guaranteed land access to a significant amount of poor families (aforementioned). Without such option, those families would have to migrate to urban areas when the economy is not the least dynamic and job opportunities in the cities are decreasing.

The third aspect to be highlighted in several regions is exactly the referred democratization of public life in small towns after the constitution of new forms of representation and organization encouraged by the Movement, as soon as the settlements are in place. Another associated effect is the change in relations between the "rural poor" and big landowners, as a result of the MST’s bold actions. Those relations historically reflected the clear political domination by farmers from all agrarian regions which appears under distinct forms of economic dependence by subordinate classes in rural Brazil. In some areas, however, the increasing incidence of the Movement’s pressure tool (land occupation) has altered those relations. There is a growing fear among big landowners who watch the ineffectiveness of the state in opposing such practice, as it has done in the past. In areas such as the south, those fears are clearly expressed in the landowners’ reactions when the occupations grow in quantity and specific region. That change in the past dominance by landowners is perhaps one of the most remarkable results in the History of the Movement. It increases the chances for growing the land inventory for agrarian reform programs, now easier because of lack of hope among landowners who are increasingly powerless to face occupations.

Having pointed out the general success of the MST’s agenda, it is worthwhile mentioning what the literature rarely does, that is, a series of difficulties and problems generated by the form of action and political choices made by the Movement which expose its recent history to increasing criticism. Among those impasses, some are succinctly discussed below:

(a) the formation of a "virtuous cycle" which supports the organization’s political action and allows for countless surprising public actions. However, it is based on forms of social control within "its" settlements, where rural families are submitted to the bossing of intermediate leaders, thus repeating the hierarchy that has always characterized rural social relations in Brazil (as shown by extensive research). Such social control happens through the mediation of government policies towards the settlements by those leaders. As a result, access to public funds has been the main social control mechanism on the settlers. Through that pattern, control is also exercised on those to be recruited, not only to form new militants for the organization (the children of the settlers, submitted to doctrinaire understandings about social life) but also those who will be called to strengthen public actions, occupying rural properties, going on parades, invading government buildings and other such actions which form the MST’s repertoire. The agility of the Movement during these years has thus been based on two pillars, the human resources recruited in the settlements (both to form militants and to present the quantitative of its external actions) and the control exercised by the Movement as a mediator on the use of public funds in the settlements. This allowed for the selection of militants who are more loyal to its strategic goals and for virtually irresistible pressures, even on those who do not accept the MST’s attempts at hegemony in the settlements. The access to such funds has counted on both the range of new policies created during the period in several fields and the wide support of more radical urban social groups and government workers who have been helping in specific projects. The MST legitimate claims (and receives) access to the public policies created in recent years. Nevertheless, it is curious that the social urban actors with which the organization has a relationship almost completely ignore the interlocutor representing the landless. The exception is the external actions carried out from time to time, which have had the sometimes unconditional loyalty of urban segments. Once more, we see the dissonance between the "real MST" and the "virtual MST", proposed by Hermann regarding the Zapatista Movement in Mexico. Surprised by the huge international support and solidarity the latter have received, the author justifies it as an "extreme case" which appears as direct confrontation between the poorest and the most powerful, covering the analytical problems behind the most visible and public facet of the Zapatistas. Likewise, we could echo the author regarding the history of Brazil’s landless as she says: "virtual Chiapas holds a seductive attraction for disenchanted and discouraged people on the left that is fundamentally different than the appeal of the struggles under way in the real Chiapas" (Hellman, 2000:1);

(b)as a consequence, the Movement’s political practice along the years, following the orthodox Leninist preference of its main leadership, has been essentially nondemocratic, as has been pointed out. None of the leaders, for instance, is submitted to any internal accountability (or external, for that matter), since there are no such mechanisms. Leadership are not public elected, but carefully picked up by higher level militants, the criteria being the loyalty and submission to the main guidance, strictly obeyed at the risk of losing one’s position within the organizational structure. There are numerous examples to illustrate that curious conflict between the leadership’s public discourse claiming for democratization of society and its political structures, and the authoritarian internal hierarchy, which accepts no dissent. Two distinct cases, occurred in different areas, can be cited. Firstly, deciding to fight the privatization process of the 90s, a group of militants invaded a highway toll plaza and ravaged its facilities. Since opinion pools show most of users have not been against such road privatization (some have only do not like the prices), how can the Movement’s leadership be held accountable for an act that finds no legitimacy, lacking any political support? Surprisingly, as in other similar actions, the leadership has been trying to make the arrest of some of those responsible, now subject to criminal inquiry, into an exclusively political fact, carrying out intense propaganda activity, presenting those as "political prisoners". Another case, in a different arena, is the recent decision by federal environmental authorities to hold the MST responsible for randomly deforesting areas in settlements, with a heavy financial penalty (which, actually, is mandated by Brazilian environmental law, considered one of the most progressive worldwide). Or the news of the biggest continuous land deforestation in the Atlantic Forest in the last 15 years, exactly at the same time as a big settlement was built in the area (see O Estado de São Paulo, April 27, 2001). How can the Movement be accountable if its formal leadership can not be identified, since the organization’s practice is not legalizing its structures, choosing subordinate and unknown militants to publicly take responsibility for its legal façade, under different names (the legal way for the MST to receive public funds, sign agreements and other legal acts)? Essentially, that topic does not refer, as it could seem at first sight, to the methods of political action, which, even being illegal, are often legitimate. It concerns the crucial element of the democratic game, the unrestricted possibility of autonomous representation able to organize its interests and dispute them openly in the public struggle arena, however, taking responsibility for more daring, confrontational and controversial public actions. As an example, how can we recognized the rights of Indian communities, almost always present in areas adjacent to the settlement using their natural resources as a subsistence activity, a very common situation in Northern Brazil? The Movement’s nondemocratic practice of banning any debate and compromise with other rural social groups, although notorious, has been downplayed by virtually every sector on the left, as if it were a minor and irrelevant point.

A counterargument to that notion would lead us to yet another question, often posed: could the Movement’s stance be different, given the existing judicial structure, the repressive role of the state, the intimidating action of landowners’ organizations and even the cultural depreciation of the "rural" (and its inhabitants), so strong in Brazilian social imagery? How is it possible to mobilize extremely poor rural families, without any schooling and regular occupation, sometimes without even a regular residence? Is there any organizational form, other than the centralized one, based on strict discipline, including the punishment of those breaking the Movement’s disciplinary rules? Would not a democratic internal structure end up weakening the Movement and its ability for social struggle? Such doubts, in the light of Brazilian political history, are certainly quite reasonable and real. Nonetheless, this article questions precisely the decision of never even trying another organizational form, whether according to different regional realities or (more relevant), because of changes in the political situation along the organization’s history. Even the least sophisticated analyses would likely agree, despite differences in theoretical and political outlooks, that the Brazilian political system has undergone changes since the early years of the Movement, demanding changes also in the forms of struggle. If land occupations represented acts of extreme confrontation with power structures based on agrarian oligarchies during the 80s, would that hold true for the 90s in most states? An anti-system discursive agenda had a clear political meaning during the long night of the generals, from 1964 to 1984 (precisely because it materialized the polarity "us" versus "them", reasserting the "good" and "evil" moral polarity). Would it make sense, however, in the political context of the 90s, when governments were put in place after legitimate electoral disputes? The act of politically and ideologically downplaying the state back then expressed the opposition of society to military dictatorship. Does it fit the political rationality at the turn of the millennium? Persistently refusing any democratic experience, whether internally or in its relationship with other rural organizations makes it impossible to affirm, by absence, its political viability. On the other hand, it also shows the inconsistency between a political regime that democratizes and institutionalizes itself and an organization insisting on an anti-system rhetoric.

(c) unfortunately, the anti-democratic facet of the Movement’s history could be easily demonstrated from other viewpoints. Without going too far into those considerations, it is possible to mention three other aspects. Firstly, as said, the social control over the settler families, whose empirical evidence comes out as a result of sociological research based more on rigorous investigation work and less on militant preferences. Thus, the mechanisms used by the leaders responsible for a certain area to control the settlements not only submit the settlers through control of public funds but often resort to open intimidation, including physical. The formation of totally collectivist cooperatives, regarding farmers’ social history as a tabula rasa, many of them being former small owners, for instance, finds great resistance in rural families, generating numerous conflicts in the settlements. As an illustration, Eliane Cardoso Brenneisen’s careful and original study on rural settlements in Paraná transcribes the speech of a woman farmer who left a "socialist co-operative" formed in the settlements, a paradigmatic example of the several situations of social inconformity so common within settlements controlled by the MST. The interviewee, referring to the organizational forms put in place, argues that "(...) the community [collective] work would be kind of a slave thing, everyone stays together, but there’s only one boss (...) if you have a milk cow, you had no voice, if you have a pig, you had no voice (...) a time to go to work, if a relative arrived at your place, they could only stay for three days (...) we have always worked as employees and never been treated like that" (Brenneisen, 2000:165. Souza, 1999 and Pereira, 2000 also show the numerous ways found by the settlers to resist to the imposed organizational rules). Such behaviors have actually become part of the organization’s everyday life, even in epic and very visible moments. During the March to Brasilia, in 1997, for instance, the strict control methods used by the leadership were made public, later studied by those who investigated the event. In his painstaking study on the March, Chaves reports on the nearly military control of the event, the heavy punishments and the totally centralized decision process, without even communicating the participants. Narrating the case of the expulsion of a member of the march for allegedly breaking rules, he says

The second aspect to be stressed still within this subject refers to the "forced homogenization" of differences and strong refusal of alterity. The best example might be the subordination of women’s groups’ specific demands, forcedly included within "higher struggles" which supposedly would guarantee, if successful, their incorporation in the future. In the Movement’s social and political history, the life courses of many women with remarkable talent for leadership have been somber. Those women have not been able to fulfill important positions for being subject to MST’s dominant machismo. Or, even more perverse, they undertake that dominant discourse, somewhat "masculinizing" theirs, as the only way to keep positions and climb the organization’s structure. As a consequence of that gender-based control, which associates patriarchalism and the ideological Chimera of the "principal and secondary struggles" women’s courses within the MST have been subject to a clear contradiction, that is, the gap between the public egalitarian discourse and internal practices, even hiding and disqualifying their work. The widest research ever carried out on the subject is categorical in its conclusions, in declaring that

Another aspect to be emphasized here is the somewhat surprising persistent political stance of categorically deligitimize the state. That seems hard to understand, firstly, for being the MST the most integrated of Brazilian popular movements, reason for its main financial maintenance. Such delegitimization, already stressed by Martins (2000), is part of the discursive architecture of the landless organization, probably driven by two reasons: the first being the ideological stance of its leadership and the other, the referred "instrumental reason", that is, to keep a unified discourse that strengthens the internal cohesion of its militants and also attracts support by radical urban groups. Such an approach, however, is carried out in several occasions, specially those which do not affect public funds, whose interruption could financially affect the organization. As an example, although it does not have a formal existence, the MST was invited to participate in the "National Council for Sustainable Rural Development". The organization peremptorily refused the idea, but keeps demanding access to public policies implemented by the corresponding ministry under the supervision of that council. With that goal, it has been resorting to all possible actions, even the confrontational ones (in fact, even when that means openly confronting the other organizations representing poorer groups, equally demanding access to such public funds). Similarly, the Movement has not recognized some recent measures in the agrarian arena, which are unprecedented and mean a blow to the power structure represented by big rural properties. Among such measures, for instance, one of the most remarkable is the government decision to cancel the register of all big properties not able to show the legality of their titles. At the deadline, almost 2000 latifundia were not able to produce convincing information and had their registers cancelled (in practice, the rights to the properties). That represented an area of more than 60 million hectares, almost four times as large as the state of São Paulo. That is a huge short-term increment in the land inventory available for agrarian reform, opening numerous opportunities for new settlements. Had the Movement’s operating logic been, in recent years, the effective representation of the landless and its main demand, the agrarian reform (instead of other objectives, even partisan ones), the communication with the federal government could greatly foster the productive occupation of that land, even keeping critical criteria and political distance.

The quotation below is perhaps an evidence of the Movement’s ongoing practice of delegitimizing the state. The organization’s highest leader puts forward a vitriolic attack to the judiciary, in a (public) speech delivered a few years ago. Other such examples could be repeated ad nauseam, even in the most recent period, showing the limited political notion embraced by the main leadership of the MST since mid-80s, when the organization adopted its then new (and still current) political doctrine. João Pedro Stédile, founder and now the most prominent leader of the Movement, then probably considering himself soon to be in charge of the government agrarian reform sector, for his candidate for the 1994 presidential election had a comfortable lead in the polls, did not hesitate to disqualify any governmental effort on the subject. Regarding justice, he presented a curious neutralizing mechanism, when necessary, stressing, according to his own words, that

(d) finally, it is neither possible to write down the long list of the MST’s current political and organizational problems (contrary to the common sense shared by social analysts away from agrarian realities) nor to detail other controversial and/or nondemocratic decisions made by the organization. Therefore, it is necessary to highlight the fact that the strategies selected by the Movement and its acts of pressure and demand have also ignored a historical and maybe unique opportunity that came out in the 90s. That could allow the Movement’s interests and its social and political clout to greatly broaden the results: it is the (re) emergence of rural "development" as a growing demand of rural populations, specially where their organizations are more active. For many known reasons, the conditions of production in the Brazilian rural areas were modified in the last decade. Together with political changes operated by a decentralization process in the same period and new state management mechanisms implemented by recent governments, they have brought back that demand in several agrarian regions. All the organizations (with the exception of the MST) increasingly join a propositional set of ideas aimed at reconstructing forms of rural development that could make local and region al economies more dynamic, which establish new income-generating alternatives and widening job opportunities, market integration and also influence municipal or regional political spheres. They are intended to assure the improvement of life conditions of rural families representing those efforts which currently characterize certain subregions of Brazilian rural world, starting to come out and give rise to new forms of social, economic and political dynamics. The Movement has always chosen either to ignore such efforts or, even worst, to fight them, sometimes aggressively, refusing any political alliance with the organizations trying to carry out such changes.

This a time when big landowners have been substantially weakened, not being able to get the federal financial support they were used to. Besides, poorer farmers (within the general category of "family farmers") have created an unprecedented opening within that state (primarily through specific public policies, such as the Programa National de Fortalecimento da Agricultura Familiar-PRONAF (National Program for Family Agriculture Support) and more recently establishing the Ministério do Desenvolvimento Agrário (Ministry of Agricultural Development), which is, in fact, the "ministry of the rural poor"). In that context, it is amazing that the MST is still indifferent to those recent changes. The movement surprisingly keeps on the same strategy mentioned above, being resistant (and even hostile) to the other organizations of small farmers and rural workers, as well as dreaming with the "storming of the Winter Palace". All this when the rural economy in the country is totally commodified and rural families would not, even remotely, take up projects which are not at least reformist. They would never join the political change projects of the Movement’s leadership (taught in the political education schools to rural youth recruited in their settlements). That is probably the biggest political impasse experienced by poorer rural families in the country: the democratization process in Brazilian society has generated an unprecedented ability for rural demand, as well as a presence in public sphere. Besides, there is much more room for political action by the Federal Administration and a weakened opposition (and action) by landowners’ organizations. However, as a perverse irony, the organization that has most developed itself is increasingly an obstacle for building new and promising processes of rural development. Thus, it takes on an unexpected conservative face, when its social struggle is compared to the demands of the poorest rural families in the country.

Once social movements are turned into formal organizations such as the MST there is a change in their constitutive logics, as well as their interests, whether regarding external relations with other political groups or in its internal relations. In this case, we should point out to the strict relationship between the landless social origin and the opportunities created for the organization’s expansion, including those for political career. There is also an extraordinary widening of upwards social mobility forms, to be kept while the organization is able to keep its growing pace. In that sense, the "misplaced" analyses on the MST, that is, those still focusing on political contexts from the military period or the immediately following years, usually informed by political-ideological polarities typical of the past but distant from current societal forms, follow primarily partisan dispute needs or represent clear analytical mistakes.

The title of this article was inspired by Maxime Molyneaux’s well-known study on the role of women and their participation, as well as gender interests in the so-called "Sandinist Revolution" in Nicaragua. In that case, a process of sociopolitical rupture carried the promise of emancipation for the country’s women, who were a significant and active part of the guerrilla armies. However, the author sustains, during the revolutionary process and specially after victory by the insurgent groups, the specificity of their political subjects submerged under the "general struggle". Facing a clear and decisive political problem, unresolved in that case, the author claims that

Although apparently distinct, the history the MST in Brazil is quite similar, regarding the obstacles of emancipation for the social groups it represents. Not only specific sociocultural differences between groups of rural families have been ignored, subordinated to mobilization forms promoted by the Movement. More importantly, previous age and gender differences, forms of productive integration in different markets, regional agricultural histories, kinds of organizations and representation previously experienced (strongly opposed on behalf of "unity in struggle") as well as distinct strategic views and political action consistently disqualified and refused on behalf of a supposed political homogeneity never actually clearly exposed.

The final result in all regions has been a significant mobilization ability by the MST, rooted in the above mechanisms and shown in numerous events and actions. On the other hand, there was also an inability to generate social subjects who carry a real organizational autonomy, in charge of their own destinies and thus able to include social and political emancipation amongst their life goals. Therefore, the Movement’s history loses its novelty and only replicates the melancholic path of other political organizations within the traditional left, only apparently promising, in the light of its external actions. Under the symbols and icons made up for the external public, though, there is a silent mistrust by its subordinate members, unaware of the Movement’s own objectives and the productive stalemates existing in all rural settlements, the fierce political dispute for organizational hegemony over the rural poor, the disdain for democratic practices. More importantly, to our surprise, the reproduction of social control and forms of power exercised in the Brazilian rural areas, formerly carried out by big landowners and their representatives, currently under new forms and covered up by the progressive discourse.

The Movement has taken little advantage of the possibilities for external support, in the face of globalization’s social and economic constraints widening the social gap in so many countries, including Brazil. Its international influence in search of support reflects its contacts with institutions within the religious field. Those entities periodically carry out propaganda actions, campaigns and several forms of protest that are not very effective for publicizing the "agrarian problem" in Brazil. The attempt by the organization to create some kind o international coordinating body is still very incipient. At first, the "Coordenação Latino-americana de Organizações Camponesas"-Cloc (Latin-American Coordination of Peasant Organizations) had no practical effect. Recently, an association of peasant organizations has been pursued though the "Via Campesina" (The Peasant Way) [www.viacampesina.org], of which the MST is a leading member. Besides that, its campaigns are publicized in internet portals [www.mst.org.br], also without significant international repercussion. Even the so-called "Alternative Nobel Prize" or "King Balduino Award", given by the government of Belgium to organizations working for human rights has had limited effects in promoting a network of international cooperation which could carry out different actions and exercise effective pressure. Thus, differently from other emerging fields, such as the international protests against the organizations promoting free trade or the increasing action towards the subject of GMOs (no to mention the environment), it seems like an emancipatory "counter-globalization" incorporating the landless’ interests has not yet found the conditions for its realization. One of the reasons might be the nature of the social struggle led by the organization, which probably lacks the "novelty" (compare, for instance, to the Chiapas case and its innovative particularities, discussed by Hellman 2000). But yet another reason for this ineffectiveness for change, at the international level, certainly points out to the political nature of the MST. In the light of the organization’s last twenty years, as we have said in this article, that diagnosis and evaluation might not be unexpected. The social and political emancipation of the rural poor, in Brazil, is still a mirage, offered only by a fabled and utopian future, postponing, as has always been the case, a societal environment were hopes and reality are not separated by unbridgeable chasms.