The landless rural workers movement (MST) in Brazil

Pro-Poor Land Reform : A Critique

“…Around the mid-1990s, however, a confl uence of events occurred to bring land reform back onto the policy agendas. Various sporadic but dramatic land-based political confl icts, such as that in Brazil (Petras, 1997(Petras, , 1998Petras and Veltmeyer, 2001;Veltmeyer, 2005aVeltmeyer, , 2005bDeere, 2003;Wright and Wolford, 2003;Robles 2001;Branford and Rocha, 2002;Meszaros, 2000aMeszaros, , 2000b, Zimbabwe (Worby, 2001;Moyo, 2000;Palmer, 2000b;Waeterloos and Rutherford 2004), and Chiapas in Mexico (Harvey, 1998;Bobrow-Strain, 2004) contributed to this policy revival (see also Pons-Vignon and Lecomte, 2004). Also responsible was the realization by promarket scholars that neoliberal policy reforms had diffi culty taking off in most developing countries, which are saddled with the problem of highly skewed land ownership in which most of the rural poor cannot actively participate in the market, or when land markets were distorted by state regulation.…”

“…7 For interesting and relevant debates and discussions about these issues in the context of Latin America, refer to the edited volume by Tom Brass (2003a). 8 See, e.g., Petras (1997, Veltmeyer (1997), Desmarais (2003Desmarais ( , 2001), Rosset (2006Rosset ( , 2001, Robles (2001), Wright and Wolford (2003), Harvey (1998), Ghimire (2005), Brass (1994Brass ( , 2000, Borras (2004), and McMichael (2006a). 9 However, as Carmen Diana Deere and Magdalena León (2001: 350) explain, "Agriculture is no longer the main source of wealth in most countries, as evidenced by the dramatic fall in the share of agriculture in GDP.…”

Processus de radicalisation et radicalité au quotidien : discours et pratiques des communautés rurales au Brésil

“…La structure pyramidale qui s'étend du local (y compris au sein du noyau familial) au national est combinée à une décentralisation qui promeut la participation et l'engagement des militants au quotidien. Certains analystes et participants du MST y décèlent un endoctrinement et une imposition de règles par le haut, à travers les multiples réunions, marches et formations ; d'autres y voient au contraire une forme de politisation qui favorise l'émancipation, l'autonomie et l'engagement citoyen (Robles, 2001 ;Wittman, 2009 ;Loera Rangel, 2010 . Les cadres du MST usent de leurs réseaux afin d'obtenir des appuis et de l'information de certains bureaucrates sympathisants par exemple, tout en s'appropriant des outils de l'appareil judiciaire (fonction sociale de la terre, titres de propriété et/ou acquisition frauduleuse de la terre) comme tactiques afin de promouvoir la réforme agraire et d'obtenir un titre légal de propriété au profit des sans-terre 10 .…”

The Difference Ethnography Can Make: Understanding Social Mobilization and Development in the Brazilian Northeast

“…The movement's ideology reflected its leadership's roots in the peasant culture of southern Brazil, and also brought together an eclectic mix of leftist radicals such as Karl Marx, Antonio Gramsci, Paulo Freire, Mao Tse-Tung and Mahatma Ghandi. Formed in southern Brazil in 1984 to fight for agrarian reform, movement leaders considered mobilization in the country's poverty-stricken Northeast to be a particularly important step to transforming the regional movement into a national one (see Branford & Rocha, 2002, p. 21; also see Fernandes, 1999;Navarro, 2000;Petras, 1997;Robles, 2001;Stedile & Fernandes, 1999;Wright & Wolford, 2003).…”