Box 1-1. The MST and land tenure in Brazil

Since the early 1980s more than one million people in Brazil have transformed their lives by gaining access to land. This has been possible thanks to a strategy of organizing and peaceful protest that has forced the government to redistribute more than eight million ha of cropland to some 350,000 families and help them develop new ways of life. These families belong to what many call the largest social movement in Latin America and the Caribbean, the Movement of Landless Rural Workers (MST: Movimento dos Trabalhadores Rurais Sem Terra).

          The MST’s strategy is based on forcing the government to enforce the law. For almost five centuries Brazil has been plagued by major economic inequality, in particular with respect to land tenure. Large estate owners have controlled vast rural areas with impunity, in some cases by falsifying documents and in others by recourse to violence (see figure). Much of this land is not used efficiently and has resulted in stagnant development in rural areas. To combat this problem, since the early 19th century successive governments promoted the idea that to claim legal title to property, an owner
must show that the land is serving a “social function.” Today this concept has been incorporated into the Brazilian Constitution.

          Brazil is an emerging economy, and also the eighth largest economy in the world. Nonetheless, most Brazilians live in poverty. It has the most stark economic inequality in the world, as well as very unequal land distribution (the Gini coefficient for land distribution was 0.85 in 1994). For example, 3% of the landowners hold two-thirds of the country’s arable lands. The highest levels of poverty and illiteracy are in rural areas, where the main problem is land tenure.

The MST has 1.5 million members in 23 of Brazil’s 27 states. Today, there are 2,000 MST settlements and more than 80,000 additional people are currently living in camps awaiting government recognition. Cooperative farms, houses, schools for children and adults, and clinics have been built in these settlements.

           According to the MST, its success is based on its ability to organize
and educate. The members gain access to land, and therefore to food security for their families; in addition, many of them continue to participate in the design of a sustainable socioeconomic development model that offers specific alternatives to the model of neoliberal globalization. Some of the results of the organizational efforts of the MST with respect to production and marketing include:

•    400 associations of small-scale producers in the areas of production,       marketing, and services. These include:

— 49 farming and ranching cooperatives

— 32 service cooperatives

— 2 regional cooperatives for marketing

— 3 credit unions
•    96 small- and medium-scale cooperatives for processing fruits, vegetables, dairy products, coffee, cereal grains, meat, and sugar. These economic enterprises of the MST generate employment and salaries that directly or indirectly benefit 700 small towns in the Brazilian interior.

           The leaders of the MST argue that production cannot be considered in isolation from education; accordingly, many of its programs are geared to educating its members. Results of the MST’s organizing efforts with respect to education include:

•    160,000 children are studying in grades 1 through 4 in public schools       located in MST settlements
•    3,900 educators paid by the local (municipal) governments are       developing teaching methods specifically tailored to the MST’s rural       schools
•    In collaboration with UNESCO and some 50 universities, the MST is       developing literacy programs for some 19,000 adolescents and adults in       the settlements
•    In collaboration with several Brazilian universities, training is being       provided to teachers, administrators of settlements and cooperatives, and       nurses
•    In collaboration with the government of Cuba, 48 members of the MST are       studying medicine in Cuba

The MST is also promoting sustainable development. For example:
•    In 1999, members of the MST developed Bionatur seeds for organic       production.
•    Several settlements are involved in the production of medicinal plants.
•    In Pontal do Paranepanema, families from the settlements work together       with environmental organizations to conserve the forest.
The MST is not free of controversy. Its critics assert that the members are mainly people from cities who ended up in worse living conditions than the urban areas they left. It is also argued that the establishment of settlements in the Amazon region has contributed to deforestation. Nonetheless, a recent survey (cited by The Economist, 2007) revealed that 94% of those living in settlements have prior agricultural experience, and 79% stated that their lives had improved as a result of having obtained land and joining the MST. The MST argues that its activities in the Amazon region are mainly in areas already deforested, particularly relatively unproductive cattle ranches.

          Independent of the controversy that surrounds the MST, one cannot question the impact that this social movement has had in Brazil, or its influence on the rest of Latin America and the Caribbean. The successes and failures of this massive movement may serve as an example for the governments and social movements of the other countries of the region as they seek to solve the problems associated with the stark inequalities in land tenure in LAC.