Landless Workers' Movement

The Landless Workers’ Movement (Movimento dos Trabalhadores Rurais Sem Terra, or MST) began to build its power in Brazil during a period of military dictatorship. Though officially founded in 1984, the group’s formation began in the early 1980s, as the rural poor came together to fight back against displacement from their land by powerful landowners and the rampant human rights violations that came with it.

The tumultuous political landscape of Brazil following the 1964 military coup (backed by both the US government and the Catholic Church) paved the way for extreme concentration of wealth—in particular, by perpetuating the concentration of land ownership which had marked Brazil since colonial times. This made Brazil a frontier for the growth of global capitalism, growth that excluded, displaced, and further impoverished rural people. Modernization of agricultural practices through widespread mechanization put farmers out of work and prevented them from renting land or even participating in sharecropping. The rural poor, now landless, began organizing throughout southern states of Brazil to demonstrate their right to work on the land. They occupied lands that sat unused, building tents and cultivating crops and livestock. Eventually, through pressure and negotiation with the government, many of these occupations became “agrarian reform settlements” in which the peasant families received formal rights to remain on the land. As the occupations spread and participation grew, their power increased to assert the ideals of democracy and push against the military dictatorship.

Occupying unproductive land has become the MST’s trademark. Its efforts led to the amendment of the Brazilian constitution in 1988 to say that land must be used to fulfill a social function. This means that the land must not only be used for the private interest of its owners, but also for the public interest, including being reasonably productive, making fair use of natural resources, and observing labor laws. This gave the MST an historic and transformative legal basis for its occupations.

The movement’s structure enables the direct and collective participation of everyone involved. Through delegating tasks and encouraging participation in collective decision-making processes (which are open to all families in the MST), the movement ensures strong bonds among its members. MST activities also help shift agricultural production toward agroecology, which is practiced in many agrarian reform settlements secured by the movement; in fact, the movement has become the largest producer of organic rice in Latin America. The MST estimates that it has helped 450,000 families secure formal land rights in agrarian reform settlements. Hundreds of thousands of families have participated in its more than 2,500 occupations.

Despite legal protections, the MST’s land claims continue to be threatened. The mid- to late-90s and early 2000s were particularly violent. In Pará in 1996, military police killed 19 landless workers in the Eldorado dos Carajás Massacre. An additional 69 people were wounded, with two dying from their injuries. Later, between 2020 and 2022, Brazil hit new historic records of violence in rural areas. State violence against the movement is ongoing as the MST faces continued displacement and human rights violations.

The MST is not the only movement in Brazil with goals of land reform. Other groups such as the National Confederacy of Agrarian Workers held a similar vision but implemented different strategies in their approach, such as forming labor unions. The MST, though, is set apart by its on-the-ground mobilization of farmers. The MST’s ideology is based largely on the idea that participants’ struggles and experiences—not the concessions of governments— are the path to progress.

Though land reform is still the MST’s focus, the movement has expanded to include a wider range of activities. These include interventions in education, health, human rights, and international relations. Local chapters gain support from their communities through educational projects, selling farming goods they produce, and reporting on human rights violations. More recently, the MST started promoting the so-called “Agrarian Reform Markets,” which give peasant families a chance to showcase their products to large urban audiences who are encouraged to support the movement. The MST rejects the uncritical consumerism and exploitation of Brazil’s capitalist class, particularly the exclusion and oppression of rural people. The movement advocates for a new agricultural model that finds balance and harmony between the needs of the people and the need to protect the environment. It challenges big agribusiness and proposes replacing capitalism’s social, economic, and political failures with a model that better serves the needs of the people and of the earth.