Rural Brazil during the Lula Administrations: Agreements with Agribusiness and Disputes in Agrarian Policies

Abstract

and holds a research scholarship from the Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico. Frutuoso Santana is a translator living in New York City. Eva Hershaw, a Fulbright researcher at the Universidade de Brasília, reviewed the translation and translated some material added to update the text.

The political economy of land struggle in Brazil under Workers' Party governments

“…These systematic failures over 13 years of PT rule also reveal the extent to which presidential policies remained tied to interests that were inimical to redistributive reforms (Sauer, 2017).…”

“…Although these figures are contested by some (NERA, ), the major criticism is that the settlement projects were mostly located in economically less dynamic regions, especially in the Amazon (Mattei, ). More controversial still was the relation of Cardoso's government with social movements, particularly with regard to the issue of land occupations (Sauer, ). The increase in occupations led the government to issue various legal measures designed to restrict the struggle for land.…”

“…President Lula's failure to update the indices, despite his repeated promises to do so, along with the unwillingness of President Dilma Rousseff to move this issue forward, highlight the state of paralysis in which land reform fell well before Temer took the helm. These systematic failures over 13 years of PT rule also reveal the extent to which presidential policies remained tied to interests that were inimical to redistributive reforms (Sauer, ).…”

“…Lula was a bit more efficient in settling landless families-over 614,000 in 48 million hectares of land, during his 8-year term-than Cardoso was in his two terms. However, parallels between these two administrations include 11 According to more critical researchers, between 120,000 and 250,000 families were beneficiaries of land expropriation during Lula's administrations (NERA, 2012), since all the other figures are part of different programmes such as land titling and regularization, land acquisition (not expropriated), recognition or legalization of territorial rights, and so on (see Fernandes, 2015;Sauer, 2017).…”

“…The settlement policy of conflict mitigation was complemented by the implementation of "market based agrarian reform"; that is, the commodification (purchase instead of expropriation) of land through the creation of World Bank-funded credit lines for the landless families to buy plots themselves (Sauer, 2009 (NERA, 2012), the major criticism is that the settlement projects were mostly located in economically less dynamic regions, especially in the Amazon (Mattei, 2012). More controversial still was the relation of Cardoso's government with social movements, particularly with regard to the issue of land occupations (Sauer, 2017). The increase in occupations led the government to issue various legal measures designed to restrict the struggle for land.…”