Producing Community: The MST and Land Reform Settlements in Brazil

500 Wendy Wolford

© Blackwell Publishing Ltd, Henry Bernstein and Terence J. Byres 2003.

Journal of Agrarian Change, Vol. 3 No. 4, October 2003, pp. 500–520.

Wendy Wolford, Department of Geography, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 203Saunders Hall, Campus Box 3220, Chapel Hill, NC 27599, USA. e-mail: [email protected]

The research for this paper was generously supported by grants from the Social Science ResearchCouncil, the National Science Foundation, the Institute of International Studies at the University ofCalifornia, Berkeley and the Institute for the Study of World Peace. The author would like to thankHenry Bernstein for his helpful comments and advice.1 For updated numbers and information about MST’s activities, see the movement’s own web pageat: www.mst.org.br. Also see a web site on MST maintained in the United States by a group calledFriends of MST at: www.mstbrazil.org/index.html.

Producing Community: The MST andLand Reform Settlements in Brazil

WENDY WOLFORD

This paper analyses the attempt to create an ‘imagined community’ amongmembers of the MST (Movimento Dos Trabalhadores Rurais Sem Terra,Movement of Rural Landless Workers) as a way of maintaining high levelsof participation. As one of the most active rural movements in Brazilianhistory, MST owes much of its success to high levels of involvement amongmembers who have already achieved their initial goal of access to land. Move-ment leaders and activists encourage participation by creating a communitythrough ideas and practices and distilled into symbols, slogans and ritual. Thelived experiences of community differ from the imaginings, however, and inthis paper I show how MST members negotiate the movement’s expressionof community in ways that reflect historical experiences of economy and society.Ultimately, MST’s imagined community is effective because the movementhas established itself as a successful mediator between the settlers and theBrazilian State.

Keywords: land occupations, land reform, social movements, Brazil

INTRODUCTION

Established in 1984, the MST is now ‘the most active organization in the Braziliancountryside’ (Navarro 2000: 37). At the movement’s first National Congress in1985, members decided on two main goals. MST would fight for an agrarianreform that distributed land to those who would work it, and for the develop-ment of a just, fraternal society (Rocha and Branford 2002; Fernandes 1999). Inthe years since then, the movement has organized over 230,000 land occupationsand overseen the creation of approximately 1200 agrarian reform settlements.1

Movement efforts have been critical in pushing through legislation geared towardsland redistribution and the promotion of small family farming. Partly as a result

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of these successes, MST’s membership has increased from several hundred in1984 to over one million today.

The vast majority of these members are not, in fact, ‘sem terra’ (landless) anymore – they are people who have won access to land through the movement andnow could be more accurately described as ‘com terra’ (landed). These com terraare very important to the maintenance of movement activities because they typic-ally have better access to resources than sem terra and can support ongoing landoccupations and political battles. Maintaining a high level of participation andcommitment among members who have already won access to land is thereforecrucial to MST’s continued growth and impact. But most social movements findit difficult to generate such ongoing momentum. They often become victims oftheir own success, particularly when they are invested in the acquisition of aneasily identifiable, tangible good such as land (cf. Zamosc 1986). MST memberswho have satisfied their initial demand for land need to be convinced of a reasonto remain active in the movement, or many will cease to participate.

Many of MST’s accomplishments over the past seventeen years can be attrib-uted to its success in convincing members that there is a reason to stay in themovement after they win land. MST leaders and activists have worked hard tocreate, in Benedict Anderson’s (1983) words, an ‘imagined community’, consti-tuted through ideas and practices and distilled into symbols, slogans and ritual.Embedded in this sense of community are ideological guidelines for interpretingdifferent experiences, events and relationships. In this paper, I describe MST’sefforts to create an ‘imagined community’ of settlers conceived as a class for itselfin a system dominated by landed elites. I then briefly examine the experiencesof community on two MST settlements, one in southern Brazil and one innortheastern Brazil. These two settlements provide an interesting comparisonbecause of the different occupational histories shared by a majority of MSTmembers in the two places. The settlers in southern Brazil were primarily smallfamily farmers before joining the movement, while the settlers in northeasternBrazil were primarily salaried rural workers. The settlers in both places struggleover their understanding of what community means to them – they struggleinwardly and they struggle with each other. Sometimes the everyday experienceof ‘community’ is not very communal at all. Ultimately, I argue that while manyelements of MST’s framing are successful, people participate in the movementfor reasons that have less to do with the appeal to community and more to dowith the movement’s effective positioning as mediator between the settlers andthe Brazilian State.

HISTORICAL BACKGROUND AND THE RISE OF MST

MST’s call for agrarian reform is not a new idea in Brazil. Land distribution hasbeen both inequitable and contested since the Portuguese began to settle the newcolony in the early 1500s. Because the Portuguese crown was unwilling andunable to colonize Brazil directly, the area’s known territory was divided into 15captaincies in 1534, and considerable rights over these areas were bequeathed to

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hereditary captains ( Johnson 1987). The captains oversaw land distribution withintheir territories, and colonists who had connections to the captains were able toobtain large plots of land. Smaller plots of land were also set aside for poor settlerswho were convinced to emigrate to Brazil, but the successful captaincies reliedon wealthy men who produced export crops on large rural properties. Access toland could also be obtained through the act of squatting (posseiro), which waspractised by wealthy and poor colonists alike. In general, however, these twomechanisms of land distribution (patronage and squatting) favoured the wealthy,and this bias is reflected in Brazilian land tenure patterns today (Stein 1985).

Until the 1930s, Brazil’s economy was dependent on the production of a fewprimary commodities. In the early colonial years, sugarcane dominated, but bythe 1670s when competition from Dutch producers in the Antilles lowered demandfor Brazilian sugar (Schwartz 1985), new commodities such as gold, rubber,cocoa, dairy and coffee became increasingly important. Sugarcane and coffeewere the principal crops in the densely settled areas of the country, the Northeastand the South/Southeast. Produced for export, both crops were grown on large-scale plantations owned by wealthy elites and worked by slaves until the mid-1800s (Dean 1976; Eisenberg 1974).2 The plantations, which were often richerthan the towns, were set up as individual communities, with the owner – thesenhor do engenho – at their head, followed by a group of skilled or semi-skilledemployees, and surrounded by a mass of unskilled workers. The hierarchicalpaternalism of sugar and coffee plantations shaped social and economic develop-ment in Brazil and similar communities are still evident in its rural areas today.

In spite of the restrictive conditions keeping indigenous and African slavesat work in the sugar mills, a surprising number of runaway slave communities,called quilombos, were set up in remote areas as refuge communities. The mostfamous quilombo, called Palmares, was actually a network of settlements that ranthroughout 200 square kilometres in the Northeast, an area now known as theState of Alagoas. Palmares existed for almost 100 years until the Brazilian gov-ernment succeeded in destroying the quilombo in 1695, decapitating its leaderZumbi and imprisoning the women and children who were not killed during themilitary operations (Schwartz 1992). The existence of Palmares, a communitybased on very different rules than Brazilian society, threatened the colonial rulersand provoked a violent reaction.

When Brazil was granted independence from Portugal in 1822, members ofthe newly established government debated the issue of land distribution (Viottida Costa 2000). Access to land was an important subject because Brazil still hadconsiderable territory open for settlement, and distributing property was seenas a way of encouraging immigration. Immigration was increasingly viewed asnecessary to supplement the domestic labour force in the event that slavery was

2 Between 1500 and 1850, when the slave trade was finally abolished, over 3.65 million slaves wereshipped into Brazil, more than to any other region in the Americas (Skidmore 1999: 17). Historians’estimates of numbers vary, as it is difficult to produce reliable figures after 1830 when the slave trade(though not slavery) was abolished and Africans were smuggled into the country illegally.


abolished or became prohibitively expensive (Dean 1976). The two most popularproposals for regulating land distribution were market-based (making land avail-able for sale) and government-based (making land available for public distribu-tion) (Viotti da Costa 2000). In 1850, the land issue was resolved with a new landlaw that theoretically moved land onto the market, although in practice wealthyelites were able to continue the practice of claiming land through possession(Wright 2001). The government and plantation owners agreed to promoteimmigration by making frontier areas available for colonization, particularly inthe southern end of the country.

In 1886, planters from the State of São Paulo organized the Sociedade Pro-motora de Imigração (Society for Promoting Immigration) and the number ofimmigrants to Brazil increased from 33,000 in 1886 to 132,000 in 1888 (Skidmore1999: 72–3). Migrants received some private and public subsidization of travelcosts, but the conditions they found in Brazil were far from the paradise theywere promised. The planters found it difficult to reconceptualize their relation-ship with labour as a voluntary wage contract (Stein 1985; Viotti da Costa 2000),and they worked to frustrate settlers’ desire for land because the plantations wereonly viable with a steady source of labour. If immigrants were free to settleelsewhere, it was unlikely they would choose to stay on the plantations, and soplanters restricted their mobility through debt peonage and intimidation (Dean1976; Stolcke 1988). In 1902, the Italian government officially prohibited itscitizens from accepting subsidies for travel to Brazil, and the Swiss Consul inBrazil was actively investigating several accounts of persecution (Lesser 1999).Descendants of these immigrants, some of whom found their own land, wouldbe among the first members of MST.

By the early 1900s, Brazil’s economy was beginning to diversify as the profitsof coffee production were invested in industrialization, particularly in the south-eastern State of São Paulo (Dean 1969). As industrialization increased, govern-ment officials discussed the ‘agrarian problem’. The large-scale properties andplantations in rural Brazil were seen as traditional and backward (Stein 1985),and it was doubted that they could satisfy the growing demand for cheap foodfrom urban workers and employers. The large estates were seen as a barrier tothe modernization of both the rural and urban areas. By the 1950s, the call forland redistribution was growing stronger, although the method was debated.Two classic opinions were presented by Ignácio Rangel (1956) and Caio PradoJúnior (1945, 1966). Rangel believed that industrialization would naturally leadto land tenure change and agricultural modernization, while Prado Júnior believedthat a State-led socialist reform was necessary for boosting both agriculturalproduction and development. During the 1950s and early 1960s, grassrootsorganizers with the Brazilian Communist Party (PCB), rural trade unions andthe Catholic Church, increased their presence in the rural areas and advocated adistributive agrarian reform (Medeiros 1989). In 1954, the PCB included agrarianreform as part of its strategy for carrying out a democratic-bourgeois revolution,and in 1957 formed a national union of peasants and rural workers in São Paulo(the Union of Farmers and Agricultural Workers of Brazil, ULTAB). Throughout

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the 1950s and 1960s, the Communist Party organized rural trade associations inseveral States, particularly Rio de Janeiro, São Paulo and Bahia (Maybury-Lewis1994).3

In 1955, rural sugarcane workers in the northeastern State of Pernambucofounded a society that came to be known as the Peasant Leagues (Ligas Cam-ponesas). The rural workers, led by a plantation-born lawyer, formed their societyin protest over their plantation owner’s decision to violate traditional practiceand withhold money for a coffin intended for the burial of a worker (Pereira1997). The Peasant Leagues grew rapidly and their development, combined withthe activities of the Communist Party, stirred suspicions that a left-wing revolu-tion was imminent.4 The fear over revolution in the countryside was heightenedby then President Goulart’s decision to announce a radical agrarian reform, expro-priating rural properties over 600 hectares without compensation.

In March 1964, the armed forces of Brazil seized power, forcing Goulart intoexile and establishing military rule. Once in power, the military adopted anapproach to the rural areas that would solve the agrarian problem by redistri-buting land through colonization and modernizing agricultural production. Themilitary believed that it could satisfy the demand for land that was generatingunrest in the Northeast and South of the country by moving ‘men without land’to a ‘land without men’. The plan involved settling 200,000 families in the sparselypopulated savannahs of the Centre-West and the Amazon Basin. In this way, themilitary could also secure the Northwest border of the country through effectivepossession.5

As the second part of its agrarian reform project, the military governmenttargeted large-scale producers for subsidized modernization.6 The governmentpoured millions of dollars of subsidized credit into the hands of private pro-ducers (Delgado 1985). Rural credit increased five times in real terms between1968 and 1978 (Goodman et al. 1984: 198). During years of high inflation, suchcredit carried a negative rate of interest and financed the soybean and wheatboom in the southern and central-west States. Agricultural technology moved

3 When the National Confederation of Agricultural Workers (CONTAG) was formed in 1964,replacing ULTAB as an umbrella movement representing rural workers, the Brazilian CommunistParty provided some of its most active leaders. Although the military government banned theCommunist Party later that year, CONTAG continued to organize rural workers, focusing prim-arily on securing workers’ rights.4 See Forman (1975) who has an interesting discussion of the Peasant Leagues.5 The planned colonization projects were largely failures because they did not provide the necessaryinfrastructure, and basic services such as health and sanitation were never offered. The militarymanaged to create only 43 settlements for 8000 of the 100,000 people expected. The military’sexperiment with colonization brought international condemnation because of the difficult conditionsexperienced by the settlers and because of the environmental damage caused to the Amazon region(Schmink and Wood 1984).6 According to José de Souza Martins, ‘five months after the coup and some time before the LandStatute was sent to Congress, the North American representative for the Alliance for Progress, WaltRostow, was in São Paulo speaking animatedly with industrialists about the issue of the internalmarket. [He emphasized] that the industrialists should take an interest in transforming and modernizingtheir agriculture’ (Martins 1981: 94).


increasingly towards mechanized planting and threshing and chemical inputs.The use of irrigation equipment, pesticides and fertilizers all expanded produc-tion at an unprecedented rate.

The modernization of agriculture restructured land and labour relationships.Mechanized production reduced the need for workers and, without the moneyto pay for land of their own, millions of rural workers left for the urban areas(Graziano da Silva 1982). Large farmers out-competed small, traditional ones,making it more difficult for the latter to make a living. Land ownership becamemore concentrated, with the GINI index of land distribution increasing from0.731 in 1960 to 0.867 in 1985 (Cardoso 1997). Through selective modernizationand the urban migration of rural workers, the military government effectively‘solved’ the agrarian problem. Agricultural production increased rapidly andBrazilian producers became internationally competitive in several lucrative com-modities, including soy, wheat, orange juice, poultry and cattle/beef (Müller 1989).

During military rule (1964–82), the Catholic Church grew into a force forradical organization and change in the Brazilian countryside. In 1961, the RomanCatholic Church officially decided to focus on land tenure issues in Latin America,publishing a series of educational documents to inform rural workers in Brazilof the biblical statement that ‘the land is a gift of God’. Throughout the 1960sand 1970s, the Brazilian episcopate was one of the most progressive religiousclergies in the world (Mainwaring 1986). In 1963, the first Ecclesiastical BaseCommunities (Comunidades Eclesiais de Base – CEBs) were created as a means ofenabling communities to hold Sunday service without a priest, and in 1972 theChurch formed the Pastoral Land Commission (Comissão Pastoral da Terra– CPT) to protect landless workers in the Amazon. By 1975, the CPT hadextended its activities to peasants all over Brazil. By 1985, it was estimated thatthere were over 100,000 CEBs in local communities. Because of their integrationinto local communities and connection with a wider network of reform-mindedactivists, the CEBs were an ideal channel for grassroots organization (Houtzager1997).

In 1982, the military formally withdrew from government. They had steppedinto office ‘temporarily’ in 1964 to restore order to the country and had ended upruling for eighteen years. The gradual end of authoritarian rule was characterizedby economic crisis. The Brazilian State was deeply in debt and hyper-inflationthreatened even as society clamoured noisily for a piece of the country’s eco-nomic wealth. When José Sarney was inaugurated as president in 1985, heremarked, ‘I have inherited the greatest political crisis in Brazilian history, thelargest foreign debt in the world and the greatest internal debt and inflation wehave ever had’ (Selcher 1986: 7).

In 1985 MST held its first National Congress. Tracing its roots back to thequilombos and Peasant Leagues, the movement grew out of several different landdisputes in southern Brazil during the late 1970s and early 1980s (Fernandes1999). MST members argued that the military had not only failed to solve theagrarian problem, it had created new ones. MST employed an aggressive methodof land occupations, while justifying its actions with an appeal to the Federal

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Constitution, which states that ‘land has a social responsibility to be productive’.Land occupations were organized by activists, many of whom came out of theCatholic and Lutheran Churches. Activists travelled through poor rural and urbanareas, informing people about their rights to land and organizing occupations.Once an encampment was set up on occupied land, activists and new memberswaited for representatives of the government or the landlord (sometimes thesame) to visit. Negotiations over expropriated/occupied land were often violentand protracted, but MST won key successes early on that fuelled the movement’sgrowing momentum.

THE IMAGINED COMMUNITY OF MST

From the very beginning, MST activists have envisioned a struggle that goeswell beyond the simple demand for land. This has created some difficulties forthe movement because most of those who join it do so as a means to a verydefinite end. Although members ascribe different meanings to land (Wolfordforthcoming a), most join the movement in the hope of incorporation into thegovernment’s agrarian reform programme. Successful members usually expressgratitude towards the movement and remember their experiences with pride andeven pleasure, but without a compelling reason to continue as sem terra (landless)after receiving land, many would cease to participate regularly in movementevents or drop out altogether. MST cannot afford to let this happen, as landedmembers constitute a valuable source of ideological and material support. Landedmembers are often asked to provide food for people living in occupation camps,and they even participate in new occupations as a way of adding numerical andemotional strength (Fernandes 1999). Landed members also attend regular publicdemonstrations that are considered crucial for raising government and publicawareness about the plight of landless workers and small family farmers.

MST leaders address this dilemma of participation among successful membersby creating an imagined community complete with group norms and expecta-tions that will tie members into the movement. As Benedict Anderson wroteof nationalism, this community of sem terra is imagined because most of itsmembers will never actually meet each other, no matter how many nationalmeetings they attend. In addition, the community is imagined because adherenceto MST’s ideological and practical guidelines requires each individual to go wellbeyond past experiences to imagine a new social, political and economic ideal.Borrowing the language of ‘frames’ from Erving Goffman (1974), Robert Benfordand David Snow (2000; see also Snow et al. 1986) have referred to this sort ofideological guidance within movements as the creation of ‘schemata of interpre-tation’ that ascribe meaning to past, present and future events and relationshipsin order to explain and legitimate movement activity. MST leaders developframes of community that will close the gap between what they see as the‘objective conditions of exploitation’ and the subjective interpretation of thoseconditions as exploitation. Because the frames that MST presents conflict withhegemonic interpretations of reality, the imagined community needs to change


not just the settlers’ economic situation but their cultural and social situationsas well.

The main element of MST’s imagined community is its oppositional classcharacter. The movement argues that as small farmers in rural Brazil, the settlersare exploited by a capitalist system whose chief engineers are large landowners,politicians and corporations. The sem terra are landless because others (capitalists,bankers, politicians, etc.) stole, misused and abused property that should belongto society as a whole. Within the dominant system, rural workers have fewoptions: ‘The rural worker justifies an anti-capitalist stance because his onlyalternative under capitalism is “inevitable proletarianization”’ ( Jornal Sem Terra92: 6). As an internal MST document argues, quoting Karl Marx: ‘All progressin capitalist agriculture is progress in the art of exploitation, whether of theworker or of the soil’. Participation in MST is presented as an expression of aclass for itself: ‘we aren’t fighting against one land-grabber, we are fighting againsta class, the land owning elite’ (Stedile and Fernandes 1999: 35). Although themovement has moved away from a dogmatic reliance on Marxist-Leninist theory,a recent anthology of ‘Marxism in Latin America’ cited MST as one of the mostimportant ‘new tendencies’ in the region (Löwy 1999: 63). According to MST’soutline of class conflict in Brazil, the landowning elite is supported ideologicallyand practically by the Brazilian State. At the movement’s First National Con-gress in 1985, the 1600 delegates present decided to take a stand against the NewRepublic (1985–9), and MST has rejected every government since on the groundsthat the administrations represented ‘a bourgeois state . . . invested with classinterest’ (Stedile and Fernandes 1999: 36, 51).

The other side of MST’s class positioning is that within the movement allmembers are theoretically equal, part of a class in itself. This is deliberately basedon the socialist ideal of egalitarianism and embodied in the concept of ‘union’, orunity. In the words of one MST member: ‘è a união que faz a força’ (it is unity thatmakes us strong)’.7 Leadership in the movement is carefully structured to be ashorizontal as possible and all offices are, in principle, occupied temporarily.8 Allparticipants in national-level decision making are selected on a rotating basis orare elected by the members of their communities. Through this ideal of equality,members across the country are encouraged to feel kinship with, and pride in,their unknown but imagined companheiros (comrades).9

Through documents and rituals, MST leaders carefully embed the class natureof the movement’s imagined community in historical structures and experiences.The historical tradition that MST draws upon goes back 500 years to injustices thatare depicted as a direct consequence of the way in which Brazil was colonized.10

7 Interview #10, Flora, Agua Preta, PE.8 Movement members at the first meeting in 1984 decided that they did not want a presidentbecause it would invest one office and one person with too much power. Six of the most visibleMST leaders, however, have been in positions of power since the movement was first formed.9 As a figure in one of MST’s educational booklets explains: ‘Companheiros! We have to stay to-gether – IN ALL OF BRAZIL, you know how it is! Unity brings Strength’.10 A popular MST slogan reads: ‘500 Years of Injustice’.

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MST consciously unites time and space by invoking events that took place indifferent time periods and regions to explain the present reality of Brazil as awhole. In a document prepared for discussion, an MST leader argues: ‘If agrarianreform was originally justified because it was necessary for overcoming feudalrelations in the countryside . . . in ‘modern Brazil’ it is justified for even moreimportant reasons. Not only do feudal social relations remain, but [so do] pro-duction relations that are effectively slavery’ (Teixeira 1999: 17). MST activistsemphasize their belief that the movement is only the most recent expression ofdiscontent in the rural areas. They invoke Zumbi, the leader of the quilomboPalmares, and the Peasant Leagues to establish a noble line of predecessors.During an MST meeting in the State of Santa Catarina, a theatre piece featuredsettlers dressed up as participants in past resistance movements, all holding upMST’s flag in symbolic support of their contemporary counterparts. Establish-ing the belief that peasants throughout time have fought and died for causessimilar to that of MST plays an important part in the movement’s imaginedcommunity. When the government or national media ridicules MST members,calling them vagabonds and bandits, they are reminded that others suffered thesame ill treatment. To paraphrase Benedict Anderson, it is through such emo-tional linkages to heroic ancestors that ‘pasts are restored, fellowships are imag-ined and futures dreamed’ (Anderson 1983: 154).

The historical tradition extends globally to include heroes of Marxist-inspiredresistance around the world. Posters of Vladimir Lenin and Che Guevera areregularly present at MST meetings, as in the case of this photograph taken duringa 1999 meeting in Pernambuco (Plate 1). The large red flag stretched across thestage pictures Che Guevera, Fidel Castro, Rosa Luxembourg and Nelson Mandela,among others. The words framing the flag read: Proletarians of the World Unite.

MST’s imagined community, like most communities, has important rulesabout who can be included and who cannot. As one older woman on an MSTsettlement said: ‘We are all together here – you can already see how differentsomeone is who isn’t in the movement’.11 Membership in the movement is ‘elite’in the sense that theoretically only those who fulfil the appropriate criteria areaccepted. The ideal settler is a combination of the traditional peasant and the so-called ‘new man and woman’. The early editions of MST’s monthly newspaper,O Jornal Sem Terra (The Landless Newspaper, or JST), were filled with discussionsof the new ‘social citizen’ that MST wished to create, as well as imaginative waysof encouraging settlers to willingly conform to this image. The vices that MSTmembers are warned against are ‘reflexes of a sub-ideology generated by theprivate ownership of the means of production’. The vices range from ‘individu-alism’ (where one person ‘puts himself above the organization’) to ‘spon-taneity’ and ‘immobility’ (which causes a person to not ‘involve himself withanything’) ( Jornal Sem Terra January 1991: 3).12 MST activists are encouraged to

11 Interview #19, Vento, Campos Novos, SC.12 The full list of vices includes: personalism, anarchy, complacency, sectarianism or ‘radicalism’,impatience, adventurism and self-sufficiency.


promote discussion so that people will ‘know the vices [in order] to overcomethem’ ( Jornal Sem Terra January 1991: 3).

Most movement leaders are not conscious of promoting an ‘ideal’ settler, butthe outlines of what is considered acceptable behaviour are evident in the imaginedcommunity’s guidelines for participation. These guidelines are distributed bymovement activists who travel regularly throughout the settlements, both tohear from the settlers and to disseminate information from the movement’sheadquarters in São Paulo. MST activists provide information, material goodsand ideas that have both practical and ideological value. Acceptance of one legitim-ates, and encourages, acceptance of the other. Being a member of MST’s imag-ined community requires some degree of involvement in movement activities,whether through participation or support. Adherence to the behaviour appropri-ate to membership in MST is continually assessed from within. Any individualcan be kicked out of the group for violating the rules of personal conduct(although violations would have to be extreme). The practice of peer evaluation issupported by government legislation on the land reform settlements. Section 5,part e, of the Settlement Contract signed by all agrarian reform beneficiariesstates that settlers can be kicked off their land if they ‘become disruptive ele-ments [that negatively affect] the development of the workers in the project areadue either to poor conduct or inability to adapt to community life’. Sufficientagreement among MST members can result in a settler losing rights to his or herland as well as membership in the movement. During a 1997 demonstration,

Plate 1. Flag displayed at MST meeting, Pernambuco 1999

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two supposed MST members were expelled from the movement because theywere believed to be spies. This sort of discriminatory membership is an import-ant component of any community, particularly a social movement community.There would be little appeal to sacrificing everything for a movement that any-one could join.

MST’s imagined community is symbolically represented in the movement’sdramatic flag: a deep red, the flag is stamped by an outline of the Braziliannation. A generic representation of a man and woman are poised at the edgeof the outline, his hand holding high a machete to symbolize resistance andstruggle. At the movement’s first meeting, members chose this symbol over astraw hat because they wanted to express the movement’s commitment to abetter, more progressive Brazilian nation (Rocha and Branford 2002). The flag’semblem is repeated on T-shirts, baseball caps and posters that can be seen at anyMST demonstration and on any settlement.

One of the main methods for actively presenting the frames underlying MST’scommunity is through what the movement calls ‘mysticism’ (see Schwade 1992).Mysticism is a legacy of Liberation Theology, which relied on charismatic leaderswho were able to re-engage people in the practices of the Church. MST activistsbuild on this combination of worldliness and idealism by creatively using songs,theatre and chants to help form new ideas and mould behaviour. Symbols ofthe struggle for land that characterize mysticism include dramatic representationsof a joyful harvest where people work together to bring in the crops, and visitsfrom past resistance leaders. In 1998, one State-wide meeting in Santa Catarinaopened with several children walking single file through the audience carryingthe tools and fruits of working the land – a machete, a handful of beans, a largesquash. These were all laid at the front on a large outline of Brazil, signifying theconstruction of a better nation through the practices and values of MST’s newcommunity. The dominant messages of mysticism are humility, honesty, convic-tion, perseverance, sacrifice, gratitude, responsibility and discipline. Accordingto an MST publication, mysticism ‘reduces the distance between the present andthe future, helping us to anticipate the good things that are coming’ ( Jornal SemTerra 102: 3). Movement leaders encourage activists to use mysticism to tiesettlers more firmly into the movement: ‘the more that the masses attach them-selves to their symbols, leaders and the organization, the more they fight, themore they mobilize and the more they organize themselves’ ( Jornal Sem Terra97: 3). Mysticism is always present at MST meetings, assemblies and publicdemonstrations.

NEGOTIATING MST, COMMUNITY AND THE STATE

Most academic discussions of MST refer to the imagined community as repre-sentative of the movement (Hammond 1999; Petras 1997, 1998; Robles 2000).MST leaders themselves attribute the movement’s success to the formation of animagined community that resonates with the settlers’ historical experiences and newexpectations. But MST members have come to the movement from many


different backgrounds, and they bring with them varied experiences of com-munity. During field research conducted in 1998–9 and 2001, I found very dif-ferent ideas shaping community relationships on settlements in the sugarcaneplantation region of northeastern Brazil and the small family-farming region ofsouthern Brazil (Figure 1; Wolford forthcoming a). Members of the two groupsnegotiated MST’s imagined community in ways that reflected their particularunderstanding of community.

The historical community described by the rural workers on a settlement inPernambuco named Flora was segmented hierarchically along occupational lines,from the plantation owner at the top to the day labourer contracted illegally atthe bottom (Sigaud 1979). Members of the plantation community lived in closephysical proximity, but relations between occupational groups were marked bysocial distance. The rural workers rarely met socially as a community, because asone older man who had worked on different plantations in the region since 1961said, ‘in that time there were no workers’ meetings. A meeting was to do forcedlabour’.13

In contrast, the historical community described by the small family farmerson a settlement in Santa Catarina named Vento was organized horizontally, asthere was little occupational differentiation between families. Unlike the familieson Flora, contact among the families was relatively rare because houses weredispersed, and interaction was usually reserved for the weekend soccer game orchurch service. Families would co-operate occasionally, however, on tasks that

13 Interview #25, Flora, Agua Preta, PE.

Figure 1. Location of two MST communities

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benefited the community, such as repairing the roof of the school house, or ontasks that benefited individual families, such as bringing in the harvest when itwas ready or helping a neighbour build a fence. These mutirões, as they werecalled, usually took place among relatives, although many of the settlers onVento remembered group projects that had involved the whole community. Asone settler said: ‘we’d been working in a group since we were little. Everyonegot along’.14 When the first occupation in Santa Catarina took place in 1980, thelandless squatters (not yet a part of MST) sent a portion of their first harvestdown to their counterparts on an occupation site in the neighbouring State ofRio Grande do Sul.15

These different historical experiences with community shaped the way thatsettlers on Flora and Vento interacted with MST’s presentation of community.For the settlers on Flora, MST was an organization that they participated inalmost reluctantly (Wolford forthcoming b). As plantation workers, they hadlittle experience deriving their livelihood from their own farming, and mostexpressed a preference for wage labour over working the land. As one older manon Flora said, ‘What I thought [about getting land] was the same thing thateveryone thought. We were used to our boss, every week we worked, and themoney came for us to do our little shopping in town. Afterwards, with agrarianreform, we didn’t have the right to that any more . . . And so this was why wethought [that becoming settlers] was difficult’.16 Thirteen of the forty-six familiesliving on Flora had joined MST because they felt there was little alternative whenthey were unable to find work in the crumbling sugarcane economy. The re-maining thirty-three had effectively joined the movement when the governmentexpropriated the plantation property they were living on and offered them apiece of land. MST’s propositions for community were not ones that resonatedwith the settlers, and many perceived the movement as a trade organization thatprovided services for the settlers rather than a political community. When askedwhether he had joined MST, one settler on Flora said, ‘Listen, it’s like this, I livehere inside the settlement, what they say that I have to do, what I have to payand what I have to do about the association, these things, I do’.17

The settlers on Vento participated in MST’s imagined community very dif-ferently than the settlers on Flora. Only twenty-three of the ninety-six familieson the settlement had received land on the settlement without participating in anMST occupation. The families who had come to Vento through MST said thatthey joined in order to get land for themselves or for their children. A youngman preparing to get married said, ‘To have land is a beautiful thing’.18 A womanon Vento said she and her husband had joined MST because ‘our kids weregrowing up and they had no land – through the struggle, our kids have gotten

14 Interview #38, Vento, Campos Novos, SC.15 For more information on this, see Fernandes (1999).16 Interview #27, Flora, Agua Preta, PE.17 Interview #14, Flora, Agua Preta, PE.18 Interview #3, Vento, Campos Novos, PE.


married and gone after their own land’.19 For the former small family farmers,many of the MST’s messages resonated with their own experiences of com-munity. They believed in MST’s struggle to ‘transform society’20 and to ‘fightfor equality and a better life for everyone’.21 The settlers on Vento were willingto work within the general guidelines of MST’s imagined community, althoughcollective production projects established on the settlement suffered severe prob-lems. MST settlers who had tried to work in the collective project and foundthey could not, remained committed to the movement. As one woman who waspreparing to leave the collective for an individual plot on the settlement said,‘We still participate – we are still in favour of the movement. The movement stillhelps us, they won’t throw us out. We are not leaving [the collective] becauseof them’.22

Even as MST members work with very different understandings of the move-ment’s imagined community, few cite the ideological frame components as thereasons for their continued participation. Members continue to attend meetingsand demonstrations in large part because MST has successfully linked materialresources to ideological resources by situating itself as the mediator between thesettlers and the State. Although MST has theoretically and practically organizeditself in opposition to the Brazilian State, one marked consequence of winningland through the movement is increased interaction with representatives andresources from the State. The settlers’ relationship with the State begins duringthe occupation period, when they rely on local government to send food andhealth supplies. Even though the act of occupying property is portrayed by themedia and government as illegal, people living in MST encampments usuallyreceive basic support from local government. Activists organizing occupationstell participants to bring enough food to last a few days, until the governmentand other settlers begin to contribute.

Once MST members receive land, the government becomes their landlord,creditor, educator and overseer. Technically, the agrarian reform process estab-lishes the State as a landlord because the settlers are given use rights, not title, tothe land, although they are expected to begin paying for the land in ten years.Both MST and the settlers militate against being ‘liberated’ from government inthis way. MST argues that the State has a moral obligation to give the settlerstheir land because wealthy landlords were able to acquire land without payment.The movement also recognizes that being liberated from the government wouldcut the settlers off from an important source of support. The State acts as theprincipal creditor for agrarian reform settlers because it provides significant fundsfor start up and investment. Start up funds include money to build a house andbuy an initial set of supplies for production. Subsidized funds for short- andlong-term investment are also provided on an annual basis, although these

19 Interview #21, Vento, Campos Novos, SC.20 Interview #2, Vento, Campos Novos, SC. The speaker is a young man on the settlement.21 Interview #12, Vento, Campos Novos, SC. The speaker is an older woman on the settlement.22 Interview #4, Vento, Campos Novos, SC.

514 Wendy Wolford

are continually being reduced.23 The State is also involved in maintaining basicinfrastructure on the settlements, including roads, primary education, health serv-ices, etc. In providing these goods and services, the State establishes itself as theultimate overseer of settlement life and activities. If settlers want to move to anew settlement, experiment with alternative production practices or request ad-ditional assistance, they need to go through agents of the State.

Most settlers believe they need access to government resources to survive onthe land. The government agrees, estimating that a majority of the settlers in thecountry would be forced to give up their land if they did not have access to theassistance it provides. A study conducted in 1998 estimated that only settlers inSanta Catarina had the means to pay back their State subsidized loans (Buainainand De Souza Filho 1998). Settlers are always nervous that the government willreduce their access to resources. As one settler in Santa Catarina said: ‘[The Stateis] going to abandon me, and I will only get resources from PRONAF. And thisis how one loses the land’.24

MST’s ability to maintain participation turns on its presentation of the move-ment as the primary mediator between a cruel State and its members. The Stateis depicted as cruel because it is biased towards large landowners and, movementleaders argue, has no desire to see agrarian reform succeed. The State’s ownvisibility in the settlements makes it a good target. Poor roads, insufficient elec-tricity and a lack of resources all vividly maintain the impression that the govern-ment needs to do more in the settlements. As a settler on Vento said, ‘Eventhough we have a lot of things now, we cannot stop yet because the situation isnot easy’.25 Having promised a regular supply of resources, the Federal govern-ment has had a very difficult time fulfilling what have come to be seen as itsobligations. Short-term investment credit, for example, habitually arrives lateor in the wrong season altogether.26 When this happens, settlers either have tosimply give the money back or plant in the off-season and suffer significantproduction losses. MST activists and leaders continually warn settlers that theState will only fulfil its promises if constant and forceful pressure is applied.When resources are secured from the State, the movement argues that this is theresult of successful organization within the sem terra community.

23 Until 2001, each settler had the right to almost R$20,000 when they received land throughINCRA (National Institute for Colonization and Agrarian Reform). This money included an initialamount of R$340, to be spent on emergency food supplies which many of the families need whenthey arrive in the settlement. The emergency money is followed by a grant of R$740 for start-upsupplies such as a hoe, wheelbarrow and seeds, and as soon as boundaries between plots are legallydocumented, each settler received R$2000 to build a house. The remainder of the R$20,000 consistsof long-term investment funds from the Program for Agrarian Reform Credit (PROCERA), whichwas created in 1985. Since 2001, settlers have been incorporated into PRONAF (Program for SmallFarmers), where they are treated as small family farmers (instead of settlers) and eligible for lessgenerous funding.24 Interview #2, Vento, Campos Novos, SC.25 Interview #42, Vento, Campos Novos, SC.26 Beginning with an economic downturn in 1999, the Federal government began to hold back thefunds for agrarian reform more and more regularly. There was a noticeable deceleration in thenumber of settlements created and the amount of support disbursed overall in 1999.


And the movement’s positioning between settlers and the State has been verysuccessful. During interviews with settlers on six settlements in the southernState of Santa Catarina and the northeastern State of Pernambuco, the mainreason given for supporting MST and continued participation in movement activit-ies was the MST’s position of influence vis-à-vis local and Federal governments.As one older settler on Vento said: ‘Nothing would function without the move-ment. If it weren’t for protests, the struggle, everyone participating together,then we wouldn’t get anything’.27 Resources such as credit are seen as comingfrom MST rather than coming from the State. One former rural worker on Florawho was a spokesperson for the settlement in its struggle for State resourcessaid: ‘The Federal Government is obligated to settle us, to provide infrastructurefor the settlement and to give us credit. Unfortunately, it takes too long to dothis – you only get [these things] through pressure, we only receive somethingafter the government has been pressured, and this is done by the movement’.28

Most settlers feel that they won their land because of MST’s strength as anorganization and they continue to see organization as an effective means topursue resources. Movement demonstrations are considered largely responsiblefor ensuring a government-funded supply of credit in the first place: ‘Today themovement is respected because we have won some of the things that we wanted.Our credit is subsidized, for example, and not even the rural trade union gotthat!’29 Movement activists continually remind the settlers of the debt they owethe MST. And most people agree because they believe that ‘the people who getland through agrarian reform will be guaranteed a better life’.30

Over the past ten years, the State has increased the flow of resources to MSTmembers. In some ways, the government has organized its own agrarian reformprogramme around social movements. As one government official said, ‘we arealways just one step behind the movement’.31 Between 1993 and 1997, thirty-seven properties in Santa Catarina were distributed for the purposes of agrarianreform. Of these, only seven were not the result of organized pressure.32 In 1996,the country’s largest rural union, the Confederation of Agricultural Workers(CONTAG), identified 226 estates that were eligible for expropriation under theFederal Constitution. The Federal government inspected 198 of the propertiesand expropriated or bought 100. MST also identified 196 estates eligible forexpropriation and the government followed up on 181, expropriating or pur-chasing 126 (Cardoso 1997, quoted in Deere and León De Leal 1999: 33). MST’ssuccess in winning expropriations is such that new recruits and squatters con-sider it extremely unlikely that they will not win access to land (Deere and León

27 Interview #10, Vento, Campos Novos, SC.28 Interview #3, Flora, Agua Preta, PE.29 Interview #2, Vento, Campos Novos, SC.30 Interview #36, Vento, Campos Novos, SC.31 Interview with Dr Alacir Pereira Batista, INCRA Superintendent, Florianopolis, SC. 24 March1999.32 Figures from the Regional INCRA office of Santa Catarina. Supported by an interview with thesettlement division of the regional INCRA office in Santa Catarina, 26 March 1999. INCRA estim-ates that in Santa Catarina roughly 60 per cent of all expropriations are the result of social pressure.

516 Wendy Wolford

De Leal 1999; Hammond 1999). The Fernando Henrique Cardoso (FHC) admin-istration (1995–2003) authorized the creation of more new settlements than allthe previous administrations from 1970 to 1994 combined (see Table 1). AndCardoso’s administration more than quintupled the resources allocated for reformunder the INCRA, the National Institute for Colonization and Agrarian Reform,since 1994 (see Table 2).

Even as resources from the State have increased, however, the movement hasstepped up its offensive against the government, arguing that the FHC adminis-tration is a more dangerous enemy than any past administration. MST activistsand leaders have travelled throughout the settlements, discussing the state of thenational political economy with settlers. They argue that under Cardoso, theFederal government is providing resources with one hand and taking them backwith the other through discriminatory trade and production policies. Discussionof these policies links Cardoso’s administration to neo-liberalism, US imperialismand the so-called Washington Consensus. MST documents argue that even ifCardoso authorizes settlements and provides credit for settlers, he is committedto an economic and political system incompatible with Brazilian sovereignty andsmall family farming. Included in the MST’s Manifesto to the Brazilian People,written during the 2000 National Congress, is an indictment of the Cardosoadministration:

It is true that our society has always been unjust. Like any capitalist society,the poor have always been exploited and humiliated. And the rich class,earning more and more all the time, has always repressed the people andsubmitted it to the interests of international capital. But since 1994, withthe neoliberal policies of Fernando Henrique Cardoso’s government, the

Table 1. Settlement projects created 1970–94 and 1995–7

Period Years Settlements

1970–1994 25 7951995–1997 3 1454

Source: Seligmann (1998).

Table 2. INCRA’s annual budget 1994–8

Year Amount (in R$ million)

1994 3901995 12791996 14251997 20201998 2243

Source: Seligmann (1998).


problems have become even more acute. This economic policy representsonly the interests of the banks and of multinational companies. For these,the government guarantees high interest rates and financial help. Sufficeto say: last year the government spent 64 percent of the national budgetservicing the interest on internal and external debt. Despite all the socialproblems, the government of the Brazilian elites has the nerve to send 50billion dollars to the rich countries every year. That is why there is a lackof money for education, health, public transport, popular housing andemployment generation. In agriculture the situation is more grave still.The Cardoso government wants to ‘modernize’ the rural areas stimulatinglarge export-orientated estates; handing control of the agricultural marketover to the multinational corporations; and allowing agro-industries to con-trol the storage of food products. (MST 2000)

Settlers are reminded that even if access to land is authorized by the government,it is won through the struggle. As one settler on Flora said: ‘The one who gaveme land was INCRA, that is to say, in the first place, it was MST, because if wewere to wait for INCRA, it would never have come through. It had already beentwenty years that we were waiting for INCRA. But then MST came and campedout here and they fought [for the land]’.33 Another settler on Flora agreed,although less robustly, saying ‘we have this here and they say it is because of themovement’.34

When Cardoso was re-elected President of Brazil in 1998, settlers were warnedby the MST that they would have to increase their organizational efforts toprotect their gains. As an older settler on Vento said, ‘Our government is againstus. For all these four years [of Cardoso’s presidency], we are the ones who aregoing to lose. The big guys aren’t going to suffer. We need money – and theyalways hold it back. We always argued that we had to fight for a dignified life. . . Because if we don’t, [the government] will get us’.35

In presenting the State as the settlers’ primary enemy, MST is able to takeadvantage of necessary State resources without allowing individual members orthe movement as a whole to be co-opted through incorporation. MST settlersrely heavily on the State for access to resources, including the basic recognitionof their right to property, and so the movement has to justify the seemingparadox of reliance on a State it opposes. The movement has done this bypresenting itself as the effective mediator between the settlers and the State andby insisting that continued access to State resources requires participation in themovement’s imagined community of sem terra. Framing the State as corrupt,cruel and incompetent is an effective means of convincing settlers that this com-munity is necessary long after they receive land. Even as settlers negotiate themovement’s imagined community, rejecting and adapting many elements, theyare convinced that continued participation is necessary for their economicsurvival.

33 Interview #8, Flora, Agua Preta, PE.34 Interview #13, Flora, Agua Preta, PE.35 Interview #1, Vento, Campos Novos, SC.

518 Wendy Wolford

CONCLUSION

Although MST’s numbers are relatively insignificant compared to the totalpopulation of Brazil and its total land area, the movement is widely consideredan important voice for effective national democracy (Gohn 1997; Rossiaud andScherer-Warren 2000). The demand for land redistribution is a familiar one inthe country, and MST’s agenda has won many supporters in the urban areas anduniversities.

MST’s consistent and coherent presentation of the movement’s communityhas led supporters and detractors alike to judge the movement according tostatements made by representative leaders. But MST’s presentation of commun-ity differs greatly from the negotiations and experiences of community on theground. MST leaders and activists have built the movement’s community arounda series of frames – interpretive, diagnostic and prognostic frames, in Benfordand Snow’s (2000) words. These frames explain rural workers’ subordinate posi-tion within Brazilian capitalism and provide workers with the means for address-ing their situation. The presentation of poverty as a result of class exploitationgenerates both opposition and solidarity, making it possible to identify whom tofight against and whom to fight with. Explicit ties to past resistance contextualizesparticipation in the movement, investing the present with a rich legacy. Move-ment members share experiences, and there is an expectation of shared valuesacross community members such that a red cap or T-shirt symbolizes the fulfil-ment of movement criteria for participation. These criteria are disseminated regu-larly to members during organized movement activities.

And people throughout Brazil have joined MST in search of somethingbetter, or at least something different, than what they have. The elements ofMST’s imagined community facilitate involvement in a movement that othersources, such as the national media, usually present as dangerous, radical andsubversive. And the frames themselves work to present a coherent criticism of‘politics as usual’. On the settlements, however, the test of MST’s community isnot whether it makes sense, whether it introduces an acceptable or appropriatephilosophy, but whether or not it works. Regardless of how committed settlersare to the ideas of MST’s imagined community, few would remain members ifthis meant total isolation from the State. In fact, most argue that they are gratefulto the movement for improving their access to the State. MST leaders have hadto work creatively to enable their alternative philosophy to be effective withinthe dominant economic, political and social system. This has involved persistentmediation between the State and their settler members.

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Documents

Producing Community: The MST and Land Reform Settlements in Brazil