The Brazilian MST — Movimento dos Trabalhadores Rurais Sem Terra (Landless Workers’ Movement) — fights for agrarian reform. It organizes occupations of unproductive land with hundreds of rural, working families; then pressures the state to expropriate that land from their wealthy owners, and give it to the workers. Since its foundation in 1984, the MST organized more than 2500 occupations, resulting in the redistribution of around 7.5 million hectares of land, and the settlement of around half a million families. Currently around 60,000 families reside in camps, waiting for legal recognition. Unsurprisingly, they often face fierce repression. Landowners have responded to occupations with violence, either by leveraging local police to evict or massacre occupiers, or by hiring private militias. The 1996 Eldorado dos Carajás massacre, in which 19 MST militants were murdered by the police in Pará state, remains one of the most infamous episodes. Yet the movement persists and continues to grow. The fact that the MST even exists, let alone succeeds, in a country like Brazil, is quite amazing. It gives me hope.

Origins and Tactics

Unlike the USA, Brazil never had a real land redistribution program. Very large estates are owned by a handful of wealthy families while millions of impoverished workers have no means of acquiring land. Many of these estates have belonged to the same families since colonial times, dating all the way back to the 1500s. Brazil’s economy was built on the latifundium, a feudal-like estate system rooted in plantation slavery. Sugar, coffee, and later soy and cattle, were produced not for internal consumption but for export. The majority of the population was systematically dispossessed and forced into labor by the ruling elites. Even after the formal abolition of slavery in 1888, Brazil’s agrarian oligarchy maintained its grip. Land reform was repeatedly promised but never delivered, and so the country entered the 20th century as one of the world’s most unequal societies. To this day, about 1% of landowners control nearly half of Brazil’s arable land. This is what the MST works diligently to transform. 

The movement was inspired by an unexpected combo: Socialism and Christianity. In the early 1980s, Brazilian Socialist organizations had started to resurface after 2 decades of violent repression by the military regime. At the same time, liberation theology – a Christian movement born within the Catholic church – was spreading through Latin America, spearheaded by progressive priests who argued for social engagement in favor of the poor and the dispossessed. As the dictatorship approached its end, Socialists and Christians joined forces and started organizing peasants, rural laborers and displaced urban workers by the thousands, around a simple and radical demand: land for those who work it. 

As Brazil transitioned into a new democratic period, a National Constituent Assembly was formed. By 1988 the country had a new constitution, which allowed the MST to move on to the next level by legally claiming occupied land. According to the new constitution, the right of private property of land is not absolute; arable land must fulfill a social function, thus unproductive land is illegal. This enabled the core strategy of the MST: identify unproductive land, occupy it with working class families, make it productive through farming and food production, and legally claim it for those working families. 

The process of expropriating land from their wealthy owners takes at least 2 years, a period of struggle in which occupiers face intimidation, harassment and violence. Landowners use their economic power to mobilize the local state apparatus, as well as mercenaries, to try and end the occupations. Occupiers must hold their ground, sometimes at the cost of lives, until the transference of property is formalized. Once this happens the campsite becomes a settlement that continues to operate as a farm. Most importantly, the reclaimed land is not sliced into smaller, individual properties for each family; instead, they continue to manage it co-operatively.

Building Identity and Culture

After 40 years of continuous activity, the MST has produced its own culture, identity and aesthetics. Each camp or settlement is collectively managed, with local committees making decisions through assemblies. This creates a culture of direct democratic participation and instills a strong sense of responsibility and belonging in each member of the community. Besides organizing occupations and farming collectives, the MST also has schools, artist cooperatives and cultural programs. Their schools teach literacy, law, agroecology and history, producing a new generation of rural intellectuals and organizers.

Hundreds of thousands of young Brazilians were raised in MST settlements, immersed in the movement’s values and ideas. This generation, now in their 20s and 30s, are impacting Brazilian culture in many ways; they champion fights against racism, sexism and queerphobia in the countryside; they practice and promote agroecology, rejecting agribusiness monocultures in favor of food sovereignty and ecological balance; some are running for elected office, and winning. They synthesize class struggle and environmental stewardship, challenging both the exploitation of labor and the environmental devastation that is inherent to agriculture under capitalism.

Within the rich culture created by the MST I highlight a practice known as mística, or mystique. While the word is also used to describe a feeling - a kind of energy that animates the movement’s events and activities - it more commonly refers to a material practice that involves theater, installation, music and poetry. In my research and residencies at Escola Nacional Florestan Fernandes– one of the MST schools, in São Paulo - I witnessed the creation and presentation of many místicas. These performances are not created to be displayed publicly, as a form of propaganda for the movement. Instead, working in small groups, they create and present místicas for each other on a regular basis. Every school day, every meeting and every activity begins with a mística. The roots of this practice can be traced back to the Catholic church, brought in by Communist priests in the 1970s and 80s. It points to the seldom explored intersection of spirituality and socialism, which the MST proves to be fruitful, despite it being taboo in many Marxist organizations.

Lessons for Socialist Cowboys, Cowgirls and Nonbinary Cowfolk

For socialists in the USA, the MST can be inspiring in many ways. It demonstrates once again that class struggle does not unfold only in factories or urban centers; it challenges the dogmas of social democracy; it pursues a dual power strategy: building autonomous institutions of popular power, while pressuring the state to recognize land rights. Its alliances with labor unions, urban housing collectives and feminist and POC organizations help create a broad, anti-capitalist front that resonates with the demands of the 21st century. 

It is worth noticing the work of the MST takes place outside partisan and electoral politics. The movement is a great example of how political engagement is so much more than voting from time to time, supporting a political party or rooting for candidates. This insight is especially valuable in the USA, when the spectrum of partisan politics narrows and the electoral game feels hopeless. Transformative action is possible, but it may take place outside the spectacle of liberal, bourgeois elections. There are other ways. 

As the USA confronts its own crises, the MST may serve as a mirror and a model. In Brazil it found a successful formula for social transformation: organize, occupy, resist, produce. What would it mean to reclaim the commons from private ownership, here? What are the steps? How to organize, not around individual grievances and ideological demands, but around collective emancipation and material needs? How to build socialism here, not as a distant utopia but as a practical project, rooted in everyday life?

Zé Kielwagen is a Brazilian artist, teacher, and activist who works at the Studio Art Department of Oberlin College.

Cover artwork by Caroline Acker. Includes photography by Anton Marcos Kammerer.