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NEWS & LETTERS, December 2004Brazil's Landless Workers MovementNew York—Vanderly Scarabeli and Wanusa Pereira dos Santos, leaders of the Brazilian Movimento dos Trabalhadores Rurais Sem Terra (MST) gave an open meeting on Nov. 11 at NYU Law School. The Landless Workers Movement, as the organization is known in English, celebrated its 20th year of occupying land and advocating for land reform in a country that, while possessing the ninth largest economy, ranks among the most unequal. A tiny landowning elite controls the vast majority of the land. The following day, also in New York, an all day meeting of the North American solidarity group Friends of the MST (www.mstbrazil.org) resolved to support the MST’s upcoming events. Scarabeli spoke about their concrete experiences in reorganizing agricultural production. They have helped organize 300,000 families, about 1.7 million people, on 15 million acres of once unproductive land. Additionally they have organized 103 agriculture co-operatives and over 400 associations, which help facilitate such things as equipment sharing. The MST faces questions about how to move forward in light of the hesitancy the administration of President Luis Inacio "Lula" da Silva has shown in enacting the meaningful land reform promised during its election campaign. Santos spoke about their political struggles within this new context. Within the very contradictory ruling Workers Party (PT), she said, there are progressive sectors which want to break with current conditions, and parts that want to preserve the status quo. The MST has been working for a national coordination of social movements, now that external pressure has somewhat subsided, to allow them to increase pressure on the government. There have been efforts to divide Lula and the PT from the MST, which included a media campaign excoriating the president for his support of the movement. However, Santos stressed, Lula is of the section of the PT that supports their aims and is someone who would not use the police to deal with landless workers. She asserted that Lula claims there is no money for land settlements because most of the government’s budget goes towards paying off international debt. The MST opposes paying this debt. To increase the pressure for land reform and the struggle against agribusiness, the MST plans to hold a 300 km (186 mile) march early next year, which, they hope, by adding 10,000 people per day, will finish in the capital 100,000 strong. They’re asking people outside Brazil for support, by financial donation, participating in the march, or planning acts of solidarity. To highlight the global nature of this struggle, Santos spoke about the international network of peasant and farmer organizations called Via Campesina (www.viacampesina.org), with member organizations in 76 countries, who hold their next congress in 2005. Over the years, many MST members have been killed during occupations of private lands. Five more members were murdered Nov. 21 in a conflict over land they claimed the state owned. Police arrested three men and have questioned a local landowner, who claims the disputed land for himself. For this supporter, the importance of this movement is that it goes beyond the issue of land use, important as that issue is. In their struggle to change the relations of production, they raise questions about what we should produce, what kind of labor we should perform, and what kind of human relations we should strive to create. The landless workers movement directly poses the question of whether an alternative to capitalism—not simply to neoliberal development—is possible. The premise of the presentation was that an alternative to neoliberal globalization is not only possible, but it exists in the Brazilian movement. Typical of how the Western Left often views such struggles, the American woman who introduced the talk made it seem that the MST has found the solution. Consequently there is never as much discussion as is needed about the deeper obstacles that the movement faces, especially the economic ones, which result from capital’s law of value. It would be interesting to hear whether those involved think the results of their struggle constitute a solution or just a stop-gap measure of achievable resistance within this society. Our movements here would do better to ask these theoretical questions, not simply resting on the possibility of another world, but asking how we can bring that other world into existence. Without facing the contradictions involved in creating an alternative to capitalism, without asking the questions that address the foundation of this global mode of production, and without engaging in dialogue with those struggling everywhere for a new world, thought about alternatives to capitalism will remain abstract and progress restricted. —Joshua Skolnik |
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