Understanding Struggles for Land by the Landless Rural Workers Movement (MST) in Brazil: An Anti-capitalist Alternative Targeted by Pro-Capitalist Violence


Kellen Cristina de Abreu, Federal University of Lavras / University of Guelph; Jasmin Hristov, University of Guelph

Violence has been a frequently relied upon instrument in the expropriation of land from indigenous peoples, peasant farmers, and other communities with collective land-use rights in the Global South. This has given rise to the revival of various rural movements. In Brazil, agrarian conflicts have been a constant feature of the rural landscape since colonial time. The Landless Rural Workers Movement (MST) has been one of the most important actors leading the struggle for land reform and challenging neoliberal rural restructuring in Brazil. It is also one of the main founders of the world’s largest social movement, La Vía Campesina. The MST represents an example of an alternative, horizontal, and collective organization of production and social life more broadly. Spearheading the struggle for agrarian reform in Brazil, the MST focuses on: 1) ensuring food autonomy and protecting its members from dependence on the market and 2) promoting agricultural practices informed by the principles of agroecology. As an anti-systemic social movement, the MST promotes spaces of equality in all spheres of social life, through its participatory structure where all families participate in all decision-making processes. The MST’s advances are evident around issues of women’s rights and environmental protection. In this paper, we employ Hristov’s (2012) theory of pro-capitalist violence and Cox and Nilsen’s (2014) theory of social movements from above and below to analyze the dialectic between the MST as a model of a concrete and viable alternative to the capitalist economy and the violence and repression employed against the movement. In particular, we examine patterns in: a) levels and type of violence; b) criminalization of MST members and activities; and c) vilification of the movement in dominant discourses. We argue that MST’s experiences of violence and repression must be understood in relation to the needs, fears, and ambitions of movements from above in Brazil, especially the rural capitalist and political elites (such as the owners of soybean, corn and sugarcane plantations, as well as logging and mining companies).

This paper will be presented at the following session: