Brazil's landless movement and rights 'from below'

Abstract

Brazil's landless movement and rights 'from below' Recent literature has recognised the value of food sovereignty and human rights frameworks in agrarian struggles. Relatively little attention has gone toward how agrarian movements develop and apply their own rights discourses to further demands for social justice. This study considers Brazil's landless movement (MST) between 1984 and 1995, revealing three distinct rights discourses that recruited and mobilised protest by linking local issues to the movement's broader political project. The findings illustrate the value of rights, frames and ideology as analytical tools, shedding light on how movement-generated rights emerge through processes of reflexivity and in response to dynamic social-political contexts.

The right to water: Impact on the quality of life of rural workers in a settlement of the Landless Workers Movement, Brazil

“…Extreme poverty is associated with locations where access to water is uncertain; two-thirds of the world’s population with malnutrition live in rural regions and depend on self-subsistence agriculture for their own food production and income generation [ 13 ]. Thus, the impact of lacking access to water in rural communities can entail food insecurity [ 28 , 29 ].…”

“…Seen in this light, communities' inability to obtain access to water translates into their loss of autonomy, identity and freedom. In this sense, allowing these social groups access to water would enable them to fully exercise their capabilities, including those essential for their survival, besides transforming social and power relations [5,6,9,13,27,[36][37][38][39].…”

“…In addition, other authors have discussed the relationship between food sovereignty and the human rights framework with a view to committing governments, through binding legal mechanisms, to ensure the interests of the rural population and to attribute priority to their use of water. Doing so would ensure that people’s basic needs are covered and would avoid water allocation from being influenced by power relations [ 13 , 14 ]. In line with this discussion, Via Campesina pointed out that the right to water must be understood within the framework of food sovereignty, as food sovereignty is related to agroecological practices and small scale production, contributing to the protection and sustainable use of the water.…”

Transformative Justice in Practice: Reflections on the Pastoral Land Commission During Brazil’s Political Transition

“…With the state considered central to a comprehensive agrarian reform programme and for upholding human rights more broadly, rural activists came to share with other progressive activists and allies (political parties, organizations and movements) a conception of their rights-claiming as one that was pushing the state towards new public policies and institutions that would build towards a more inclusive, just and democratic society. Rural activists would claim for instance that 'without land there is no democracy' and that a programme of agrarian reform was paramount for 'democratising the land' and extending citizenship to marginalized populations (Hoddy and Ensor 2018).…”

“…The self-understandings which developed through popular education were steeped in Christian religious ideas, which it is important to note marked out the CPT's work as profoundly religious-rather than narrowly political-in orientation. For example, that landless workers had a right to land because God had gifted the land to everyone rather than a select few; and that claiming rights and occupying land was work which built towards a socially-just 'kingdom of God' (Hoddy and Ensor 2018). Through the CPT's work the notion of the will of God, is reinterpreted.…”