Another Realm is Possible
Published by TEHELKA
"Power’s fence of war closes in on the rebels, for whom humanity is always grateful...But fences are broken. The rebels search each other out…They find each other and together break other fences..."(Zapatista leader, Subcomandante Marcos, Chiapas, Mexico)
In some way, we are all fenced in. Enclosed within different fences. Fences that restrict, impede, ruin. But the struggle for justice, for equality, for change, is about breaking fences. Always. Everywhere.
Breaking fences resolutely, passionately, strategically. That’s what Brazil’s Rural Landless Workers’ Movement (Movimento dos Trabalhadores Rurais Sem Terra or MST) is about. Breaking four major fences, as João Pedro Stedile, a senior member, articulates. Breaking the fence of the latifúndio (large estate); the fence of capital; the fence of ignorance; and the fence of inimical technology that promotes transgenic crops while annihilating local livelihoods.
MST is one of Latin America’s largest and most innovative mass democratic movements. Celebrating its twenty-first anniversary this year, MST is a movement in movement. It’s more than a movement. It’s a way of life. It’s the life of two million Brazilians working to build a more just, less poor rural society. The life of those who dream of land, food, education, employment, and healthcare. The life of those who don’t just dream, but organize, engage, struggle, sacrifice, and take risks to effect that dream.
With 50 per cent of land being held by one per cent of the population in individual holdings, the largest being the size of Belgium, Brazil has the world’s worst inequality in land ownership. While five million families do not have access to land, an estimated 60 per cent of the country’s farmland is permanently idle. Frustrated with government apathy and the tyranny of landowners, MST organized advance agrarian reforms as a principal theme on the national political agenda. Agrarian reform consists not just land redistribution and democratization of access to land, but involves fundamental socio-economic-political change that sustains cooperative means of production, promotes social welfare, and consolidates the rights of citizens. Rooted in the belief that only mass struggle will bring about agrarian reform, MST has thereby emancipated itself from the State. Its organizing principles include: collective leadership; discipline; study; and, a strong grassroots base.
A key MST strategy to dismantle land hegemony is the ‘occupation’ of idle land. The premise of such occupation is Article 184 of the Brazilian Constitution, which stipulates that rural land not meeting its ‘social function’ can be expropriated for agrarian reform.
One of the most powerful experiences of my life was participating in such an occupation. I reached the designated meeting point to find women, men, children, the young, and the elderly, patiently waiting for the bus. They had been told where to assemble, but not where they were headed. They knew they were participating in something that would change their lives, but they didn’t know how. Most of them had limited interaction with the movement, since they’d been recently mobilized. Yet they had faith in the young militantes (MST organizers) who were orchestrating this turning point in their lives.
The occupation site is chosen after careful research. It must be on unutilized but fertile land close to a water source. The operation is clandestine. As soon as we reached the site, the militantes put up the red MST flag and spoke about what the occupation meant. This was a new home, a new life on an acampamento (encampment).
People may not have known one another before, but now were one family of comrades united in struggle. As depicted on the flag, the role of women in the movement is indispensable. On the acampamento too, women and men would work together, lead together. Compromises would have to be made, challenges would have to be faced. But hopefully, in the end, it would all prove worthwhile. When the land would be theirs.
Soon, people would form groups and start working on different sections of the land. With barely anything, they transformed the entire area into a new home for themselves. They cut a few trees, cleared some land, installed wooden poles, placed plastic sheets over them for protection from the rain, and hung hammocks to sleep in. Everyone giving what they had, doing what they could. In just two hours, a shelter and a hot meal were ready. Incredible.
The occupation is a moment of praxis. A moment of personal and collective revolution. A life-altering moment of compromisso (commitment). A moment that transforms politically passive peasants into powerful social actors. A moment of heightened class struggle. A dialectical moment. A moment that breaks and makes a historical process.
The word ‘occupation’ in this context is a positive one: As an act of resistance, of opposition, of victory; against the bourgeoisie, against inequality, against injustice. It is an occupation. Not an ‘invasion’ as the media terms it. But an occupation of land that is held unconstitutionally. An occupation of unused land that thousands can use. An occupation of hope.
Each acampamento is divided into groups, the focus being on collective work. Each group has a male and female coordinator in charge of health, security, education, food and discipline. Every evening meetings are held to discuss camp issues, movement philosophy, and organisational, political and didactic strategies. Meetings always begin and end with songs. Songs that lift your spirit. Songs that affirm an ideology. Songs that make you believe this is worth it. That the sacrifice will bring results. That a better world is possible. That there is hope. There is.
Life on an acampamento is hard. Living conditions are makeshift. Food is often scarce. Natural elements, often harsh. Human elements, even more brutal. Police, landowners, and the armed militia—generally working together—invade the camps and attack occupants. Landless people in Brazil, tragically, have been victims of sustained violence, forced evictions, arbitrary detentions, and cold-blooded murder. These are people who put their lives on the line, in the hope of getting some land, some day.
There is no saying how long the stay on an acampamento might last. It could be a year, could be five years. It all depends on how negotiations with INCRA (National Agency for Colonisation and Agrarian Reform) proceed, and when it finally allocates land to the people.
For MST, occupation is the only way to take on the land bourgeoisie and the indifferent State. The only way to prove legitimately that hectares of land are lying vacant. It’s just the first step of a long struggle — as reflected in their slogan ‘occupy, resist, produce’. It’s an arduous process. But they do it with a lot of fortitude. They don’t give up. And mística (mysticism) keeps their spirit alive.
Ah, mística. It’s a sem terra (landless) ethic. An emotional bond with the cause, with land, with other comrades, and with the divine. A collective demonstration of feeling. The unified embodiment of essential MST values like humility, honesty, perseverance, sacrifice, solidarity, conviction, community, gratitude, responsibility, discipline, and love. Mística breathes in symbols like the MST flag and hymn; manifests in moving plays and songs; inspires with the lives of revolutionaries like Rosa Luxemburg, Salvador Allende, Che Guevara; and grieves in the collective memory for the loss of martyred comrades. “Without the fire of mística,” says Ademar Bogo, “what happens in each heart would not be a revolution.”
Once the government allocates land to families on an acampamento, they create assentamentos (settlements) that provide housing along with opportunities for collective farming, education, and livelihood development. Over the last 20 years, MST has ‘settled’ around 300,000 families. Work on each settlement is divided into agricultural production, cooperation and environment, education, human rights, health, gender, and culture — all of them articulated at the federal and national level. Since the MST matrix is horizontal, each level of decision-making enjoys relative autonomy.
The greatest strength of the movement lies in its ability to organize, its operative vision, its revolutionary pedagogy, its unflinching commitment to a core philosophy, and its capacity for critical reflection and self-evaluation. Deeply influenced by Paulo Freire’s pedagogy of the oppressed, MST believes in creating its own educators and organic intellectuals. It runs over 1,800 schools, conducts militante training and adult education programmes, and collaborates with 42 Brazilian universities on developing courses in tandem with its ideology. It further engages in the process of conscientização (consciousness awakening) through radio programmes, and publishes its own newspaper and magazine.
'Sem terrinhas': The children of the movement who study in MST schools
Think MST and you think of not one but hundreds of names. You hear not one but a million voices breaking the silence with cries like “reforma agrária—a luta de tudo (agrarian reform—everyone’s struggle)!” You see two million fists raised in unison, avowing victory.
It’s not just about the liberation of land. It’s about the liberation of minds. About tearing down walls of hegemony. About asserting subaltern identity. About autonomy. About constructing alternative forms of embodied political praxis.
MST. It’s a phenomenon that needs to be multiplied. There are many lessons to be learned from this great movement in Brazil, from its radical pedagogy of resistance, reimagination, and reconstruction.
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For more information on MST see:
www.mst.org.br (Official website in Portuguese)
https://mstbrazil.org/ (English website managed by Friends of the MST)
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