The Rural Landless Workers Movement of Brazil
The MST, or the Movimento dos Trabalhadores Rurais Sem Terra ( the Rural Landless Workers Movement) is the largest social movement in South America, with about 5000,000 supporters (Epstein 2). Under the slogan of "Ocupar, Resistir, Produzir" ("Occupy, Resist, Produce"), the MST uses non-violent civil disobedience to pressure the government to speed up agrarian reform and close the gap between the rich and the poor. The goal of the MST is to provide land to the millions of landless peasants who can cultivate and subsist on what appears to be a highly disproportionate amount of unproductive and under utilized land. The current economic crisis in Brazil could translate to more support for the MST movement and signal a change in the percentage of land use and landless workers as they currently stand.
The tradition of Brazil's unequal distribution of land dates back to early colonial times. Between 1534 and 1536, the king of Portugal set up a system of land distribution through which he divided the territory of Brazil into 12 captaincies drawn from the coastline of Brazil to the line established by the Treaty of Tordesillas that separated Spanish from Portuguese land claims. The captaincies were given to those who were in favor of the crown and who agreed to send back one sixth of any accrued revenue to the crown. This was in response to a perceived need to occupy the territory to prevent French and Dutch from occupying the land and claiming it for their countries. This was the beginning of the tradition of single owners possessing large tracts of land, sometimes as large as small European countries, and this tradition continues in modern Brazil.
The MST carries out its no...
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... a Marxist background with full support of the Brazilian Communist party in his early days, he has come full circle to his center-right position of today, so the MST can persuade those in desperation in the center and elsewhere to climb out of the pockets of banks, business and foreign interest to create a new Brazil in the hands of the Brazilian worker.
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Chávez’s leadership was based on an unshakable commitment to nonviolence, personal sacrifice and a strict work ethic. He emphasized the necessity of adhering to nonviolence, even when faced with violence from employers and growers, because he knew if the strikers used violence to further their goals, the growers and police would not hesitate to respond with even greater vehemence. Despite his commitment to nonviolence, many of the movement’s ‘enemies’, so to speak, made efforts to paint the mo...
Mexico, once home to ancient cultures like the Maya and Aztec which ruled vast territory expanding from present day South America all the way up north to present day western United States now reduced to roughly half its size. The cause of this dramatic loss of land was contributed to the expansion of the United States and secession of southern provinces, now Central America. The loss of land not only affected Mexico’s presence of power but also affected hundreds of thousands of native people. This was just the beginning of what would come to be known as the land struggle and the fight for land grants, something the United States government would not acknowledge nor recognize.
Because of the vast amount of Brazil’s resources, its history is veiled in European powers struggling to colonize the country. The last few centuries have been filled with the Portuguese, Spanish and Dutch fighting over the control of the land. However in the early 1700 the threat of outside European powers vanished and the colonization of the Portuguese was prominent. However, it wasn’t until the early 1800s that would lead to the nation of Brazil. As Napoeleon’s power spread across Europe, the Portu...
By that point in time the Brazilian music scene was split into two. One side consisted of the traditionalists who were supported by both the conservative establishment as well as the leftist opposition, led by intellectuals, the cultural elite and students. They opposed all foreign influences on Brazilian music. Most artists at the time either supported or followed the “rules” set by the traditionalists. The other side were those who were fans of English and American music (Perrone, Dunn 96-97).
Like many Latin American countries, Brazil was originally inhabited by over two thousand distinct Native American tribes who’s history goes back over 10,000 years. However, they left scarce written records, hence little is know about them. Even so, today, Brazil is home to the largest population of un-contacted people in the world. During the age of colonization, Portugal flourished as it expanded its territories in both Africa and India. Yet, competition among colonizers increased as Portugal continued to zero-sum vie for territory against Spain. Pope Alexander VI fearing trade wars between two Catholic countries, declared in the Treaty of Tordesillas that newly discovered land, outside of Europe, to the west of the antemeridian* line to be considered Spanish and east Portuguese. Yet, unbeknownst to Pope Alexander VI, Brazil jettisoned into the Atlantic well beyond the antemeridian. In 1500 CE Portuguese’s explorers made first contact in Brazil and claimed it for Portugal.
...he notion of hegemony to alert the proletariat of their oppression, he did not view hegemony as fundamentally negative. The rise of the proletariat in Brazil requires a new hegemony that may indeed have positive social effects.
De Lourdes Rollemberg Mollo, Maria and Alfredo Saad-Filho. "Neoliberal Economic Policies in Brazil (1994 – 2005): Cardoso, Lula and the Need for a Democratic Alternative." New Political Economy March 2006: 99-123.
Brazil is a vast country in South America that has experienced extreme wealth and income disparities since its independence in 1822. The uneven income distribution, combined with several other factors, is what accounts for millions of civilians living in impoverished conditions. The Northeast is the country’s most afflicted region, with an estimated 58% of the population living in poverty and earing less than $2 a day. The systemic inequality as well as lack of development and modernization has generated chronic poverty that has had detrimental effects on society in northeast and ultimately weakens Brazil.
Brazilian Journal of Political Economy, Vol. 24, No. 4 (96), Pp. 489-497 Sherman, H., 1995. Democracy and Capitalism. Reinventing Marxism, JohnsHopkins University Press, pp.
First of all, Chavez emphasizes the power of nonviolence by directly contrasting it to violence through the use of a juxtaposition. In Chavez’s piece, he insinuates that violence leads to death and the demoralization of protesters, while nonviolence will attract people’s support. Chavez presents this contrast in order to illuminate the workers and allow them to understand the benefits of searching for a nonviolent resolution. Chavez intends to lead a powerful and peaceful movement. He exemplifies that nonviolence will allow the
In trying to implement this program, laws were created that allowed the government of Guatemala to “expropriate private and government-owned land,” that was then allowed to be divided among farmers and peasants who had no land of their own. This land reform program was created after looking at a land consensus in 1950, the consensus showed that “2.2% of all landowners possess 75% of all land privately owned, and 76% of them own only 10% among them.” This meant that most of the land were owned almost entirely by 2% of the population while the majority of the population only owned 10% communally. This program called for the “Guatemalan government’s “seizure” of more than 200,000 acres of the company’s land on the west coast of Guatemala.” After having dispersed this land among the peasants, the United Fruit Co. appealed to the Guatemalan government to give back the land. The company argued that since the land was theirs, the government had no right to distribute the land, especially because that land would help for emergencies… Arbenz denied this appeal and United Fruit Co. later moved to appeal to the Guatemalan Supreme
“A formal public commitment to legal racial equality, for example, had been the price of mass support for Latin American’s independence movements. In the generation following independence, the various mixed-race classifications typical of the caste system were optimistically banished from census forms and parish record keeping.” This was meant to make all slaves citizens, equal to all other citizens. Slavery receded in Latin America, except in non-republican Brazil, Cuba, and Puerto Rico. However, Brazil’s pursuit of independence was the least violent and provoked the least amount of change. The case of Brazil suggests that retention of colonial institutions such as monarchies lent to stability. “Brazil had retained a European dynasty; a nobility of dukes, counts, and barons sporting coats of arms; a tight relationship between church and state; and a full commitment to the institution of chattel slavery, in which some people worked others to death.”
For decades, women around the world have looked to each other for support and help in empowering the gender overall. In Brazil, for example, women have been making themselves heard and seen in the public arena since the early 1970’s. Brazilian feminism is a political action in which both theory and practice are incorporated. Moreover, it centers on women as agents effecting change in their conditions. They seek to create opportunities for women’s political participation, demand better conditions in women’s daily live and “address issues stemming from women’s socially defined reproduction roles.”
Pinheiro P. S., 2002, The Paradox of Democracy in Brazil vol. III, issue 1, University of Sao Paulo