Constructing legitimacy? Agroecology within and beyond the Brazilian Landless Workers' Movement (MST)

Internationalism as Political Praxis: Everyday Actions and Transnational Solidarity Building in the Brazilian Landless Rural Workers’ Movement

“…Brigade members' lives at the school revolve around the presence of groups from all over Brazil and Latin America (and more recently Africa and Asia) as cohorts come and go, attending political training courses for a few days or a few months according to the concept of pedagogia da alternância, a model whereby courses are organized in periods of a few weeks or months at a training center alternating with periods in the community of origin (Pahnke, 2014;Caldart, 2004;Lagier, 2020). All militant students must take part in the daily maintenance of the school in a spirit of self-management, care, and mutual aid.…”

“…the esCola latIno amerICana de agroeCologIa , on the margins of the World Social Forum, in an MST settlement located in Tapes, Rio Grande do Sul, representatives of the state government of Paraná, the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela (including Hugo Chávez himself), the Venezuelan state of Yaracuy, La Via Campesina International, and then-president of the Federal University of Paraná Carlos Augusto Moreira Júnior signed an agreement that oversaw the creation of a university-level course on agroecology based on food sovereignty to be held in Brazil and Venezuela (Lagier, 2020). Under very precarious material conditions, the Escola Latino Americana de Agroecologia (Latin American School of Agroecology-ELAA) was built and received its first cohort in 2005.…”

“…Her 2019 Ph.D. dissertation in environmental humanities at the Ludwig Maximilian University Munich explored agroecological transitions in the Brazilian Landless Movement. 1116813L APXXX10.1177/0094582X221116813Latin American PerspectivesFurukawa Marques and Lagier/Internationalism and the Landless Movement research-article2022 Ernandez, and Rosa, 2010;Rangel Loera, 2010), the creation and evolution of the MST (Stédile and Fernandes, 2012;Fernandes, 2000;Branford and Rocha, 2002;Wright and Wolford, 2003;Ondetti, 2008), its agroecological aspects (Meek, 2014;Lagier, 2020), and its numerous educational and health projects (Tarlau, 2019). However, although "internationalist solidarity" has always been a cornerstone of the movement-which played an important role in the transnational alterglobalization network and is a key actor in La Via Campesina 1 (see Agarwal, 2014;Desmarais, 2007)-the international relations of the MST have received little scholarly attention.…”