|
Landless Workers' Movement ((ポルトガル語:Movimento dos Trabalhadores Sem Terra), or ''MST'') is a social movement in Brazil, being generally regarded as one of the largest〔Anders Corr, ''No trespassing!: squatting, rent strikes, and land struggles worldwide''. New York: South End Press, 1999, ISBN 0-89608-595-3, page 146〕 in Latin America with an estimated informal 1.5 million membership〔Herbert Girardet, ed. ''Surviving the century: facing climate chaos and other global challenges''. London, Earthscan, 2007, ISBN 978-1-84407-458-7, page 185〕 in 23 of Brazil's 26 states.〔Dave Hill & Ravi Kumar, eds., ''Global neoliberalism and education and its consequences''. New York: Routledge, 2009, ISBN 978-0-415-95774-8, page 146〕 According to the MST, its aims are: firstly, to fight for access to the land for poor workers in general, something to be carried out, secondly, through land reform in Brazil, and, thirdly, through activism around social issues impinging on the achievement of land possession, such as unequal income distribution, racism, sexism, and media monopolies.〔"Nossos objetivos". MST page, (). Retrieved September 1, 2012〕 In short, the MST strives to achieve a social covenant providing a self-sustainable way of life for the poor in rural areas. Following in the tracks of various messianic or partisan-inspired movements for land reform in Brazil, the MST differs from its previous counterparts in its being mostly a single-issue movement, treating land reform as a self-justifying cause. It claims its effort at land occupations are legally justified and rooted in the most recent Constitution of Brazil (1988), by interpreting a passage which states that land property should fulfill a social function. It also claims, based on 1996 census statistics, that just 3% of the population owns two-thirds of all arable land in the country.〔(About the MST ) on mstbrazil.org. Accessed September 9, 2006.〕 ==Historical antecedents (up to the enactment of the Brazilian 1988 Constitution)== The MST appeared late in the long history of the Brazilian land question, which had already been hotly debated (as well as actually fought) into the framework of previous Brazilian politics. During the mid-20th century, a consensus developed among Brazilian leftists that land reform was a necessary step for the democratization of property relations and for the actual exercising of political rights on a general basis, as opposed to the concentration of actual power in the hands of traditional elites.〔Michael Moran,Geraint Parry, eds., ''Democracy and Democratization''. London: Routledge, 1994, ISBN 0-415-09049-0, page 191; Arthur MacEwan, ''Neo-liberalism Or Democracy?: Economic Strategy, Markets, and Alternatives for the 21st Century''. London: Zed Books, 1999, ISBN 1-85649-724-0, page 148〕 Therefore, land reform was understood by many Brazilian Marxist activists and authors〔Armando Boito Jr., ''Estado, política e classes sociais''. São Paulo: UNESP, 2007, ISBN 978-85-7139-783-5, page 211; Delsy Gonçalves de Paula,Heloisa Maria Murgel Starling,Juarez Guimarães, eds., ''Sentimento de reforma agrária, sentimento de República''.Belo Horizonte: UFMG, 2006, pages 181 sqq; José de Souza Martins, ''Reforma agrária: o impossível diálogo''. São Paulo: EdUSP , 2000, ISBN 85-314-0591-2 , page 43〕 as a necessary part of a late process of Bourgeois Revolution.〔Christian Parenti, ''Tropic of Chaos: Climate Change and the New Geography of Violence''. New York: Nation Books, 2011, ISBN 978-1-56858-600-7, p. 161〕 However, the Brazilian ruling class and political elites never put a viable process of land reform on its feet - on the contrary, they mostly opposed actively any attempt at land reform as threatening their social and political power.〔Michael Lipton, ''Land Reform in Developing Countries: Property Rights and Property Wrongs'' London: Routledge, 2009, ISBN 978-0-415-09667-6, p. 275 ; Rodolfo Stavenhagen, ''Between Underdevelopment and Revolution: A Latin American Perspective''. New Delhi: Abhinav, 1981, p. 10; Carlos H. Waisman,Raanan Rein, eds., ''Spanish and Latin American Transitions to Democracy''. Brighton: Sussex Academic Press, 2006, ISBN 1-903900-73-5, pp. 156/157〕 Therefore, it was eventually felt by the political leadership of the rural poor that land reform should be achieved only ''from below'', by means of a grassroots movement. Therefore the fact that the novelty at the MST's emergence resided in its from the start playing the role of taking unto itself the task of achieving land reform ''on its own'', "breaking ... dependent relations with parties, governments, and other institutions",〔Bernardo Mançano Fernandes, "The MST and Agrarian Reform in Brazil". ''Socialism and Democracy online'', 51, Vol. 23, No.3, available at ()〕 at the same time dealing with the struggle for the land in purely political - instead of social, ethical and religious - terms. The first statute that regulated landed property in independent Brazil was the Landed Property Act (''Lei de Terras'') or Law number 601, enacted on September 18, 1850. Being drafted in a process of transition from a colonial administration based on Portuguese feudal law - in which property depended on both Crown's grants (''sesmarias'') and primogeniture (''morgadio'') - to a national bourgeois independent Brazilian state, the law established that the standard mode for acquiring landed property was to be by means of a money purchase - either from the State or a previous private owner. This strongly limited opportunities to exercise squatter's rights, favouring the historical concentration of landed property that became one of the hallmarks of modern Brazilian social history. Historically, the ''Lei de Terras'' followed a tendency from colonial times in favour of large landholdings by means of mammoth land grants to well-placed people, usually worked by slaves.〔Robert M. Levine, John Crocitti, eds., ''The Brazil Reader: History, Culture, Politics''. Duke University Press, 1999, ISBN 0-8223-2258-7, p. 264〕 In capitalist terms, the continuation of such a policy favoured economies of scale by means of land concentration, at the same time creating serious difficulties for small planters and peasants to have access to the land in order to practice subsistence agriculture as well as small-scale farming.〔Wendy Wolford, ''This Land Is Ours Now: Social Mobilization and the Meanings of Land in Brazil''. Duke University Press, 2010, ISBN 978-0-8223-4539-8, pages 38 sqq.〕 Since concentration of landed property was tied to the development of a capitalist Brazilian economy, opposition to the existing property structure by insurrectional means had, during the 19th and early 20th century, the character of a vindication of older property forms. This happened mostly by means of revitalizing ideologies〔Candace Slater, ''Trail of Miracles: Stories from a Pilgrimage in Northeast Brazil''. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986, ISBN 0-520-05306-0, p. 45〕 centered on a fabled, millenarian return an earlier, pre-bourgeois social order, expressed by movements led by rogue ("messianic") religious leaders outside the established Catholic hierarchy, seem as both "heretical" and "revolutionary" by surrounding society.〔Michael L. Conniff, Frank D. MacCann, eds., ''Modern Brazil: Elites and Masses in Historical Perspective''. The University of Nebraska Press, 1991, ISBN 0-8032-6348-1, page 133〕 Such was the case in the 1890s Canudos War and the 1910s Contestado War. Some leftist historians, following in the tracks of the groundbreaking 1963 work by journalist Rui Facó (''Cangaceiros e Fanáticos''), tended to amalgamate early 20th-century banditry in Northeastern Brazil (''cangaço'') with messianism as a kind of social banditry, and, therefore, as a kind of protest against social inequalities such as the existing distribution of landed property.〔Sarah R. Sarzynski, ''History, Identity and the Struggle for Land in Northeastern Brazil, 1955--1985''. ProQuest, 2008: page 284〕〔Candace Slater, ''Stories on a String: The Brazilian Literatura de Cordel''. University of California Press, 1982, ISBN 0-520-04154-2, page 210, footnote 10〕 This thesis, which developed independently in English-speaking academia around the 1959 work by Eric Hobsbawn , ''Primitive Rebels'', was criticized by the unspecific character of its notion of "social movement", being at the same time praised by its melding of political & religious movements, formerly studied separately〔Peter Burke, ''História e teoria social''. São Paulo: UNESP, 2002, ISBN 85-7139-380-X , page 125〕 - a combination that to be later at the basis of the MST's emergence. With the joint disappearance of both Messianism and ''cangaço ''during'' ''the late 1930s, there were, from the 1940s to the 1950s, various additional episodes of plain peasant resistance to evictions and land-grabbing by powerful ranchers (Teófilo Otoni, Minas Gerais, in 1948; Porecatu, Paraná, in 1951; South-west Paraná, in 1957; Trombas, Goiás, 1952–1958).〔Anthony L. Hall, ''Developing Amazonia: deforestation and social conflict in Brazil's Carajás Programme''. Manchester University Press: 1991, ISBN 978-0-7190-3550-0, pages 188/189〕 But these were mostly local affairs that were repressed or settled according to local conditions and didn't give rise to an alternative ideology to the view generally held by both policy makers and scholars across the whole political specter, that the demise of Brazilian rural society was an objective need, to be reached through mechanized agrobusiness and consequent forcible urbanization. However, the Left felt it was necessary, at least, to remove the obstacle posed to both economic modernization and political democratization by technologically backward, "feudal" latifundia.〔José Carlos Reis, ''As identidades do Brasil: de Varnhagen a FHC''. Rio de Janeiro: FGV, 2007, ISBN 978-85-225-0596-8, V.1, page 164〕 During the 1960s s, Brazilian society and politics had to cope with the appearance of various movements that aimed at attempting land reform by legal means, starting with the 1960s organization of peasant leagues (''Ligas Camponesas'') in Northeastern Brazil〔Sam Moyo & Paris Yeros, eds., ''Reclaiming the land: the resurgence of rural movements in Africa, Asia, and Latin America''. London, Zed Books, ISBN 1-84277-425-5, page 342〕 which opposed mostly eviction of peasants from rented plots and transformation of plantations into cattle ranches,〔Ronald H. Chilcote, ed. - ''Protest and resistance in Angola and Brazil: comparative studies''. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1972, ISBN 0-520-01878-8, page 191〕 Such movements would be shaped by a tendency to counter the existing landed property structure by means of a rational appeal to the allegedly social function of property. Nowadays, it is argued that undeniable contemporary development of a highly dynamic and economically well developed agricultural business was furthered at the price of extensive social exclusion of the rural poor.〔James F. Petras, Henry Veltmeyer, ''Cardoso's Brazil: a land for sale''. Lanham, Rowman & Littlefield, 2003, ISBN 0-7425-2631-3, page 17〕 According to MST's ideologues, the alleged efficiency gained by this arrangement was by no means general, as since 1850 Brazilian landed property management was tied to the particular interests of a single class - the rural bourgeoisie.〔Luiz Bezerra Neto, ''Sem-terra aprende e ensina: estudo sobre as práticas educativas do Movimento dos Trabalhadores Rurais''. Campinas, SP: Autores Associados, 1999, ISBN 85-85701-82-X, page 30〕 Although the MST explains its actions directly in socio-economic terms, it still points to Canudos (and its allegedly millenarism)〔Robert M. Levine, ''Vale of tears: revisiting the Canudos massacre in northeastern Brazil, 1893–1897''. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995, ISBN 0-520-20343-7, page 65〕 as a legitimizing episode, a way to justify its existence in an historical perspective,〔Angela Maria de Castro Gomes & others, ''A República no Brasil''. Rio de Janeiro: Nova Fronteira, 2002, ISBN 978-85-209-1264-5, page 118〕 as well as a means to develop a powerful mystique of its own.〔Ruth Reitan, ''Global Activism''. Abingdon: Routledge, 2007, ISBN 0-203-96605-8, page 154〕 As much of the driving force at the early organizing of the MST came from Catholic base communities,〔Edward L. Cleary, ''How Latin America Saved the Soul of the Catholic Church''. Mahwah, NJ, Paulist Press, 2009, ISBN 978-0-8091-4629-1, page 32; Angus Lindsay Wright & Wendy Wolford, ''To inherit the earth: the landless movement and the struggle for a new Brazil''. Oakland, Food First Books, 2003, ISBN 0-935028-90-0, page 74〕 much of the MST ideology and actual practice are rooted on the principle, taken from the social doctrine of the Catholic Church, that private property should serve a social function〔Petras & Veltmeyer, ''Cardoso's Brazil'', 18〕 - a principle developed during the 19th century,〔Sándor Agócs, ''The troubled origins of the Italian Catholic labor movement, 1878–1914''. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1988, ISBN 0-8143-1938-6, page 25; Scott Mainwaring, ''The Catholic Church and politics in Brazil, 1916–1985''. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1986, page 55〕 and made into Catholic official doctrine since Pope Leo XIII's ''Rerum novarum'' encyclical;〔Charles C. Geisler & Gail Daneker, eds. ''Property and values: alternatives to public and private ownership''. Washington DC: Island Press, 2000, ISBN 1-55963-766-8, page 31〕 on the eve of the 1964 military coup, that was the principle evoked by President João Goulart in his famous "Central rally" (a mammoth rally held in Rio de Janeiro, near to the city's greatest railroad station, where the president made a speech offering a blueprint for various political and social reforms) when proposing the expropriation of estates of more than 600 hectares in area situated at the vicinity of federal facilities (roads, railroads and reservoirs as well as sanitation works)- a move that triggered the strong conservative resistance leading to Goulart's downfall.〔Marieta de Moraes Ferreira, ed., ''João Goulart: entre a memória e a história'', Rio de Janeiro: FGV , 2006, ISBN 85-225-0578-0 , page 74〕 Nevertheless, this same principle would be formally acknowledged by the Brazilian Catholic hierarchy in 1980, when the National Conference of Brazilian Bishops (CNBB) would issue a document - ''Church and Land Problems'' - recognizing and pleading for public acknowledgement of communal rights to the land.〔José de Souza Martins, '' Reforma agrária: o impossível diálogo''. São Paulo: EDUSP, 2004, ISBN 85-314-0591-2, page 104〕 In Brazilian constitutional history, land reform – understood in terms of public management of natural resources〔Albert Breton, ed., ''Environmental governance and decentralisation''. Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar, 2007, ISBN 978-1-84720-398-4, page 52〕 - was first explicitly mentioned as a guiding principle for government action in the text of the Constitution of 1967 (Article 157, III), which wanted to institutionalize a political authoritarian consensus in the wake of the 1964 coup. It was the intention of the military dictatorship to use land reform as a policy tool in order to develop a layer of conservative small farmers as a buffer between ''latifundia'' owners and the rural proletariat.〔Peter Rosset, Raj Patel, Michael Courville, Land Research Action Network, eds. ''Promised land: competing visions of agrarian reform''. New York: Food First Books, ISBN 978-0-935028-28-7, page 266〕 Therefore the fact that in 1969, during the most repressive phase of the military dictatorship, the 1967 constitutional text was amended by a decree (''ato institucional'') of the military junta that held interim power during the last illness of the military President Arthur da Costa e Silva, in order to authorize government compensation for land expropriated for purposes of land reform to be made in government bonds, instead of cash, as had been formerly the only legally admitted practice (Art.157, § 1º, as amended by Institucional Act no.9, 1969).〔(For the text of the 1967 Constitution, see )〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Landless Workers' Movement」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
|