Date: Thu, 07 May 1998 09:34:31 -0700
From: Matt Davies <jmdavies-AT-ix.netcom.com>
Subject: Re: AUT: MST 


Paul Mattick wrote:
> 
> Matt Davies's post abt the MST is quite interesting; far from being simply
> a Third World tactic, supermarket looting has been a feature of the
> current
> unemployed movement in France. In fact, it became such a popular thing
> that the CGT-controlled unemployed association felt they had to take it
> up--though, ever mindful of law & order, they warned the supermarkets in
> advance (and on one occasion at least were met with preloaded shopping
> carts!)
> A question I have: how does the MST as a rural land-oriented movement
> connect with urban struggles? The supermarket actions are intriguing in
> this regard.
> Paul
> 
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Hi Paul,

My interest in Brazil is fairly recent, so I can't really offer any
analysis, only a bit of speculation. Maybe someone on the list closer to
Brazil can correct me or fill in the blanks.

MST is a fairly well developed and organized movement, with presence
throughout Brazil. Because land ownership is so concentrated in Brazil,
I suspect that many of their supporters live, or have spent some time,
in the favelas of both the primate cities (Rio, Sao Paulo) and it the
smaller, provincial towns. MST's prinicipal demands are, of course, for
agrarian reform, which they pursue both through tactics intended to
pressure the government and legislatures and through massive "squats" on
idle agricultural lands. But members and in particular leaders of the
movement are being assassinated at a shocking rate (MST says 132 have
been killed under Cardoso's government), which gives them an issue --
human rights and judicial impunity -- which connects them with a lot of
Brazil's social movements. Many of these murders have taken place in the
North and Northeast of Brazil, where the police collude with land owners
to repress the landless workers and where both police and land owners
enjoy impunity, thanks to collusion from the courts and inaction from
the federal government. 

Consequently, human rights groups, the liberation theology wing of the
Catholic Church, the PT, students, striking university professors,
support organizations for political prisoners, small agricultural
producers, and various trade unions joined the MST in demonstrations all
over Brazil last April 17 -- while Clinton was in Chile for the Summit
of the Americas -- to protest impunity and the neoliberal economic
policies.

Information on the MST can be found at <http://www.mst.org.br/>, which
is all in Portuguese. Sorry. I think that anyone on the list who can
read/speak Spanish or Italian can make their way through the Portuguese
text, and maybe French speakers as well.

This is reallllly speculation now: Class conflict appears to be fairly
intense in Brazil right now, especially in the rural areas. It looks to
me like the fact that the MST is a national movement has allowed them to
cooridinate their struggles with various other opposition movements.
Unlike the "sociedad civil" that emerged in Mexico after the earthquake,
which seemed to spend itself fairly quickly, or the EZLN, which seems to
me to have been resolutely local in its orientation and lacking strong
connections to other struggles in Mexico (like the independent union
organizing efforts in the North), the MST appears to typify the notion
of "circulation of struggles." If I am right about MST and Brazil (and I
readily accept that this is a very superficial account), then despite
its being a primarily rural movement for land reform, there could be
useful lessons to be gained in other (e.g., US or European, or
Australian?) contexts.

A deeper analysis of the MST would be helpful, and if someone else on
the list can provide it, I'd be obliged. If not, perhaps I can try to
put something together next week. I think that the kind of strategic
questions Dave Graham put up about the dockworkers in Australia are the
kinds of questions that need to be answered, but I just don't have the
information right now to do this justice.

Matt


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