Editing Landless Workers' Movement (section)

===Foundation===
[[Image:MonumentoMST.JPG|thumb|200px|Monument by [[Oscar Niemeyer]] dedicated to the MST.]]
The smashing of the [[peasant leagues (Brazil)|peasant leagues]] following the [[1964 Brazilian coup d'état|1964 coup]] opened the way for commercialized agriculture and concentration of land ownership throughout the period of the [[Brazilian military government|military dictatorship]], and an absolute decline in the rural population during the 1970s.<ref>Thomas William Merrick, Elza Berquó, National Research Council (U.S.). Committee on Population and Demography. Panel on Fertility Determinants: ''The determinants of Brazil's recent rapid decline in fertility''. Washington D.C.: National Academic Press, 1983, page 133</ref> In the mid-1980s, out of 370 million hectares of total farm land, 285 million hectares (77%) were held by [[latifundia]].<ref>Lee J. Alston, Gary D. Libecap, Bernardo Mueller, ''Titles, conflict, and land use: the development of property rights and land reform on the Brazilian Amazonian Frontier''. University of Michigan Press, 1999, {{ISBN|0-472-11006-3}}, pages 67/68</ref> The re-democratization process in the 1980s, however, allowed grassroots movements to pursue their own interests,<ref>Biorn Maybury-Lewis, ''The politics of the possible: the Brazilian rural workers' trade union movement, 1964–1985''. Philadelphia, Temple University Press, 1994, {{ISBN|1-56639-167-9}}, page 169</ref> rather than those of the state and the ruling classes. The emergence of the MST fits into this framework.

Between late 1980 and early 1981, over 6,000 landless families established an encampment on land located between three unproductive estates in Brazil's southernmost state of [[Rio Grande do Sul]]. These families included 600 households expropriated and dislocated in 1974 from nearby {{ILL|Passo Real|pt|Usina Hidrelétrica Passo Real}} to make way for construction of a [[hydroelectric]] dam.<ref>Local mobilization of peasants dislocated by dam constructions was one of the primary sources of grassroots rural mobilization in the 1980s in southern Brazil, which gave rise to a national organization, the ''Movimento dos Atingidos por Barragens'' (MAB), or "Dam-slighted people's Movement"; cf. Franklin Daniel Rothman and Pamela E. Oliver, "From Local to Global: The Anti-Dam Movement in Southern Brazil". ''Mobilization: An International Journal'', 1999, 4(1), available at [http://www.ssc.wisc.edu/~oliver/PROTESTS/ArticleCopies/RothmanOliver1999MobyFromLocaltoGlobal.pdf] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120404173105/http://www.ssc.wisc.edu/~oliver/PROTESTS/ArticleCopies/RothmanOliver1999MobyFromLocaltoGlobal.pdf|date=2012-04-04}}. Accessed 16 November 2011</ref> This first group was later joined by an additional 300 (or, according to other sources, over 1,000) households evicted by [[FUNAI]]{{who|date=July 2017}} from the [[Kaingang]] Indian reservation in Nonoai, where they had been renting plots since 1968.<ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.cesnur.org/2001/london2001/alcantara.htm|title=CESNUR 2001 - The Landless Movement (Alcantara)|website=www.cesnur.org|access-date=22 January 2019|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20181031005319/https://www.cesnur.org/2001/london2001/alcantara.htm|archive-date=31 October 2018|url-status=live}}</ref>{{better source needed|date=December 2019}} Local mobilization of the Passo Real and Nonoai people had already achieved some land distribution on non-Indian land, followed by demobilization. Those who had not received land under these claims, joined by others, and led by leaders from the existing regional movement, MASTER (Rio Grande do Sul landless farmers' movement), made up the 1980/1981 encampment.<ref>Michel Duquette and others, ''Collective action and radicalism in Brazil: women, urban housing, and rural movements''. University of Toronto Press, 2005, {{ISBN|0-8020-3907-3}}, pages 140/141</ref> The location became known as the Encruzilhada Natalino. With the support of civil society, including the progressive branch of the [[Catholic Church]], the families resisted a blockade imposed by military force. Enforcement of the blockade was entrusted by the government to Army colonel {{ILL|Sebastião Curió|pt}}, already notorious for his past counter-insurgency efforts against the [[Araguaia guerrilla]]s.

Curió enforced the blockade ruthlessly;<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.mst.org.br/revista/49/destaque |title=Da luta há 25 anos, o reencontro em Sarandi &#124; MST - Movimento dos Trabalhadores Sem Terra |access-date=2013-07-21 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130719014944/http://mst.org.br/revista/49/destaque |archive-date=2013-07-19 }}</ref> most of the landless refused his offer of resettlement on the Amazonian frontier, and eventually pressured the military government into expropriating nearby lands for agrarian reform.<ref>Gabriel A. Ondetti, ''Land, protest, and politics: the landless movement and the struggle for Agrarian Reform in Brazil''. Pennsylvania State University, 2008, {{ISBN|978-0-271-03353-2}}, pages 67/69</ref> The Encruzilhada Natalino episode set a pattern. Most of subsequent early development of the MST concerned exactly the areas of southern Brazil where, in the absence of an open frontier, an ideological appeal at an alternate foundation for access to the land—other than formal private property—was developed in response to the growing difficulties [[agribusiness]] posed for family farming.<ref>Hank Johnston, Paul Almeida, eds.: ''Latin American social movements: globalization, democratization, and Transnational Networks''. Lanham, MA: Rowman & Littlefield, 2006, {{ISBN|978-0-7425-5332-3}}, Chapter 10</ref> The MST also developed what became its chief ''[[modus operandi]]'': local organizing around the concrete struggles of a specific demographic group.<ref>Magda Zanoni, Hugues Lamarche, eds. ''Agriculture et ruralité au Bréil: un autre modèle de developpement'', Paris: Khartala, 2001, {{ISBN|2-84586-173-7}}, page 113</ref>

The MST was officially founded in January 1984, during a National Encounter of landless workers in [[Cascavel]], Paraná,<ref>Marlene Grade & Idaleto Malvezzi Aued, "A busca de uma nova forma do agir humano: o MST e seu ato teleológico", Paper presented at the XIth. Congress of Sociedade Brasileira de Economia Política, Vitória, 2006; published at ''Textos e Debates'' (UFRR), Federal University of Roraima, Boa Vista-RR, v. I, p. 16-35, 2005.</ref> as Brazil's [[military dictatorship]] drew to a close. Its founding was strongly connected to Catholic-based organizations, such as the [[Pastoral Land Commission]], which provided support and infrastructure.<ref>Mauricio Augusto Font, ''Transforming Brazil: a reform era in perspective''. Lanham, Ma: Rowman & Littlefield, 2003, {{ISBN|0-8476-8355-9}}, page 94</ref>

During much of the 1980s, the MST faced political competition from the National Confederacy of Agrarian Workers' (CONTAG), heir to the peasant leagues of the 1960s, who sought land reform strictly through legal means, by favoring [[trade union]]ism, and striving to wrestle concessions from bosses for rural workers. But the more aggressive tactics of the MST in striving for access to land gave a political legitimacy that soon outshone CONTAG, which limited itself to trade-unionism in the strictest sense, acting until today as a rural branch of the [[Central Única dos Trabalhadores]] (CUT).<ref>Cf. The description offered by the Trotskyist review ''International Viewpoint'', in the article by João Machado, "The two souls of the Lula government", March 2003 issue (IV348), available at [http://www.internationalviewpoint.org/spip.php?article246] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20111017101718/http://internationalviewpoint.org/spip.php?article246|date=2011-10-17}}</ref> MST eventually all but monopolized political attention as a spokesman for rural workers.<ref>Mauricio Augusto Font, ''Transforming Brazil'', 89</ref>

From the 1980s on, the MST has not maintained a monopoly of land occupations, many of which are carried out by a host of grassroots organizations (dissidents from the MST, trade unions, informal coalitions of land workers). However, the MST is by far the most organized group dealing in occupations, and has enough political leverage to turn occupations into formal expropriations for public purposes. In 1995, only 89 of 198 occupations (45%) were organized by the MST, but these included 20,500 (65%) out of the grand total of 31,400 families involved.<ref>Lee J. Alston, Gary D. Libecap, Bernardo Mueller, ''Titles, conflict, and land use'', pages 61/62</ref>