Landless with land
The Landless Rural Workers Movement MST and Agrarian Reform Settlers in Ceará state, Brazil

Master Thesis presented by Jakob Rupert Friederichsen, Stuttgart-Hohenheim January 2002

M. Sc. Program Agricultural Sciences, Food Security and Natural Resource Management in the Tropics and Subtropics
University of Hohenheim

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Abstract
After several land occupations were organised in the South of Brazil, the Brazilian Landless Rural Workers Movement (MST) was founded in 1984. Today MST is present all over the nation and Agrarian Reform beneficiaries make up an increasing share of MST's members. The empirical study described in this thesis was executed in the Northeastern state Ceará and focused on MST's interaction with Agrarian Reform beneficiaries. Literature review, semi-structured interviews and participant observations provided the base for the qualitative analysis. The study revealed that the collective identity of MST members and MST's ideology, are key concepts to understand the relations between MST and the Agrarian Reform beneficiaries. By providing access to land through land occupations, by fetching back a sense of dignity and through shared values, a strong collective identity is created among MST members. The notion of ideology, understood as a value system, is crucial because it helps to explain MST's ability to mobilise masses, external support and strong commitment of members. MST has an important bearing on the settlement communities through teaching activities, literacy education and political awareness creation by movement activists. This results in institutions for collective production and social organisation. MST's anti-capitalist stance can be explained by historical experiences. Yet the role of ideology, in the sense of a political worldview, is problematic. With regard to problem solving in the settlements, it exerts a limiting effect on the identification and analysis of problems as well as on the making out of possible solutions. With regard to the strongly normative and one-sided teaching and related group pressure, ideology is seen as a threat to MST's goal of liberation. In the future, a further radicalization of the movement's political position may have a negative impact on the settlements as a consequence of increasingly conflictive relations with political instances at the various administrative levels.

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Comments welcome: rupert@friederichsen.net

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