Abstract
This article examines Brazil’s experience in agrarian reform from 1985 to 2016. After more than three decades of agrarian reform, Brazil remains a country with highly skewed landownership. Peasant-led agrarian reform efforts have had limited impact in changing this situation. Agrarian reform remains an unfulfilled political promise, and this situation continues to create tensions and conflicts in the countryside. The main reason for the persistence of skewed land concentration is the State’s support of agribusiness. Successive post-1985 democratic governments have encouraged the opening of new agricultural frontiers by providing generous economic incentives. Land redistribution has been offset by further land possession; that is, the expansion of small-scale agricultural farming has been counterbalanced by the expansion of large-scale, capital intensive agriculture. Agribusiness has not only undermined agrarian reform efforts but has also generated a growing dependency on a socially and environmentally destructive monoculture agricultural economy. Moreover, Brazil’s current political and economic crisis has further undermined the struggle for agrarian reform.
Introduction
This article examines the interplay of forces that have shaped the Brazilian agrarian reform 1 experience from 1985 to 2016. The central argument of this article is the following: Brazil remains a country with high concentration of farmland in the hands of a few. Land redistribution has not changed this situation. Over the last three decades, land redistribution has been offset by further land possession; that is, the expansion of family farming has been counterbalanced by the expansion of corporate farming. The main reason for this is that the post-1985 democratic regime has been intent on making Brazil a global agricultural powerhouse by encouraging the expansion of capital-intensive agriculture and livestock—agronegócio or agribusiness. The main actor in the push for agrarian reform, the Movimento dos Trabalhadores Rurais Sem Terra or Landless Workers’ Movement, has courageously contested the status quo, but has limited capacity to further advance agrarian reform. This article concludes with the following premise: Brazilian landless rural worker movements need to reconfigure the agendas, strategies, and dynamics of rural popular protest. They also need to expand and strengthen their links with progressive urban-based social movements in order to re-energize the struggle for agrarian reform.
Background
Since colonial times, Brazil has been a country with a skewed concentration of farmland. Land inequality can be traced to the latifúndia system, or large estates, established by Portugal in the sixteenth century. Over the centuries, the latifúndia shaped the development of a hierarchical social structure. It became a powerful system very resistant to change, and the main source of intermittent land conflicts that persist even today (Caio Prado, 1971; Robles & Veltmeyer, 2015; Viotti da Costa, 2000).
Brazil’s political history is full of false promises of agrarian reform. Since the 1930s, successive governments of different ideological persuasions have promised agrarian reform, but they have never delivered, because the powerful landholding elite have consistently succeeded to block it (Reis, 1998; Robles, 2000). And those who seriously flirted with agrarian reform such as João Goulart (1961–1964) did not last long in office. “Jango,” as Goulart was popularly known as, favored a negotiated agrarian reform program as put forward by the US government under the Alliance for Progress. 2 Even so, the rural elite became alarmed about Goulart’s agrarian reform program and did not hesitate to conspire against him with the urban elite, who disliked Goulart’s “communist” tendencies. In 1964, Goulart was overthrown by the Brazilian military with the tacit support of the US government (Burbach, Fuentes, & Fox, 2013). With the military in power, calls for agrarian reform was severely repressed. Landless rural workers had to wait two decades to restart their struggle.
In 1985, Brazil saw the end of two decades of military rule. The military regime was forced to give up power because of its incapacity to deal with severe economic recession, mounting foreign debt, rampant inflation, and high unemployment. It was also facing intense political dissent from broad sectors of society, particularly from the Catholic Church, which was openly legitimizing political dissent. Eventually, Brazil’s deepening political and economic crisis opened the path toward democratic rule (Alves, 1985; Baer, 2013; Skidmore, 1993). In 1985, the military transferred power to a transitional civilian government led by José Sarney (1985–1990).
Landless rural workers welcome democracy with great confidence. After all, they had openly defied the military regime in the mid-1970s. The MST’s origins can be traced to this period, when peasants displaced by the construction of the gigantic Itaipú dam project in southern Brazil started occupying idle farmland. Ultimately, intense pressure from the Catholic and Lutheran churches, and other progressive sectors of Brazilian society, forced the military to settle the displaced peasants into the occupied land (Robles, 2000). Soon land occupation “fever” started to take hold of the landless rural workers nationwide. These early land occupations re-opened the struggle for agrarian reform. Landless rural workers learned that land occupation was the only means of gaining access to land; and for this to be successful, it had to be well organized and supported. In 1984, landless rural worker movements from over Brazil gathered together in the city of Cascavel, Paraná, to establish a national landless rural worker organization dedicated to the pursuit of agrarian reform. They established the MST, which adopted a collective leadership structure based on the principles of basismo, or grassroots democracy (Robles & Veltmeyer, 2015). The newly established Partido dos Trabalhadores, or Workers’ Party (PT), welcomed the MST’s called for agrarian reform. 3 After all, the PT and MST originated from the same popular movements, notably the Christian Base Communities 4 (CEBs), that had triggered concerted opposition to military rule.
The New Republic and the False Promise of Agrarian Reform
Sarney inherited a country with great socioeconomic inequalities. Two decades of rapid economic growth had radically transformed Brazil. The country had become a major economic power with a modernized agricultural, industrial, mining, and financial base. Brazil’s population had also increased and become more urbanized. In 1960, the total population was 71 million with 32 million, or 45 percent of the total population, living in urban areas. In 1980, the population was 121 million, with 82 million, or 67 percent, living in urban areas (Figure 1 and Table 1). However, Brazil’s socioeconomic transformation came at a great social cost. Millions of people lived in precarious conditions in informal urban settlements or favelas. Most of them made a living by working and earning low wages in the formal or informal economy. The military’s regressive labor and taxation policies had widened income inequalities. In 1960, the Gini index of income inequality was 50. In 1980, it was 60 (Figure 2). Brazil’s “economic miracle” had benefited the rich at the expense of the poor. 5
Population of Brazil, 1950–2010
Socioeconomic conditions had also deteriorated in rural areas. Based purely on economic considerations, the military dictatorship opened up the Brazilian Cerrado, or Savanna, 6 lands for agro-export crops and cattle ranching by providing subsided rural credit, price support mechanisms, technical assistance, and marketing and storage facilities (Chaddad, 2015). By 1985, the States of Mato Grosso, Mato Grosso do Sul, Goiás, Rondônia, and Pará had experienced a remarkable agricultural and livestock expansion. All of this, however, came at a great social and environmental cost: Indigenous peoples were displaced from their traditional lands, and monoculture and cattle ranching accelerated tropical deforestation (Andersen, Granger, Reis, Weinhold, & Wunder, 2003; Davis, 1977). In other regions of the countryside, notably the northeastern region, the military cracked down on radicalized rural labor movements. Eventually, the use of repression, imprisonment, torture, and murder successfully demobilized these movements (Alves, 1985; Reis, 1998; Robles & Veltmeyer, 2015). Despite pressure from the Catholic Church, the military paid scant attention to agrarian reform, because it was basically incompatible with its agricultural modernization project. By 1985, less than 1 percent of farms occupied almost 44 percent of Brazil’s total farmland (Table 2). This concentration of land was also reflected in the Gini index of land inequality, which was one of the highest in the world: 85.7 in 1985 (Figure 3).
Sarney’s Agrarian Reform, 1985–1989
Sarney was sworn into office on March 15, 1985. Soon after, he promised to tackle the agrarian question. Under intense pressure from the MST, The Confederação Nacional dos Trabalhadores na Agricultura (CONTAG) or National Confederation of Agricultural Workers, 7 PT, and the Catholic and Lutheran Churches, Sarney announced on October 10, 1985 (Decree No. 91.776) the Programa Nacional de Reforma Agrária (PNRA), or National Plan for Agrarian Reform. He also launched the Programa de Crédito Especial para Reforma Agrária (PROCERA), or Special Credit Program for Agrarian Reform. The objective of PROCERA was to encourage the insertion of settled peasants into the productive process by providing financing at low interest rates. The PNRA was an ambitious program that promised to settle 1.4 million landless peasants over four years. According to João Pedro Stédile, 8 the plan was written by technocrats from the newly established Ministério da Reforma e Desenvolvimento Agrário (MIRAD), or Ministry for Agrarian Reform and Development, and the Instituto Nacional de Colonização e Reforma Agrária (INCRA), or National Institute for Colonization and Agrarian Reform. The pro-agrarian forces welcome Sarney’s PNRA, including the Comissão Pastoral da Terra (CPT), or Catholic Church Commission on Agrarian Reform, Conselho Indigenista Missionário (CIMI), or Catholic Church Indigenous Missionary Council, MST, CONTAG, Associação Brasileira de Reforma Agrária (ABRA), or Brazilian Association for Agrarian Reform, and Instituto Brasileiro de Analises Sociais e Econômicas (IBASE), or Brazilian Institute for Social and Economic Research. All of these organizations joined forces and launched the Campanha nacional pela reforma agrária (CNRA), or National Campaign for Agrarian Reform.
Distribution of Agricultural Farmland in Brazil, 1985
The pro-agrarian forces presumed that the correlation of forces favored agrarian reform. After all, Brazilians from all social classes had not only successfully mobilized against the military regime but also to elect progressive members to the 1987 Assembleia Nacional Constituinte (ANC), or National Constituency Assembly, to write Brazil’s new constitution. Members of the PT, Partido Comunista Brasileiro (PCB), or Brazilian Communist Party; Partido Comunista do Brasil (PCdoB), or Communist Party of Brazil, 9 and other progressive political parties historically committed to agrarian reform had strong representation in the ANC. These constituent members were determined to enshrine agrarian reform in the new Brazilian constitution through a special amendment. Unfortunately, the amendment failed in the final vote. The powerful Sociedade Rural Brasileira (SRB), or Brazilian Rural Society, 10 Confederação da Agricultura e Pecuária do Brasil (CNA), or Confederation of Agriculture and Livestock of Brazil, 11 Associação Brasileira do Agronegócio (ABAG), or Brazilian Association of Agribusiness, Organização das Cooperativas Brasileiras (OCB), or Brazilian Cooperative Alliance, and the União Democrática Ruralista (UDR), or Ruralist Democratic Union, 12 joined forces with industrialists and financiers to successfully defeat the amendment. The final version of the Brazilian constitution merely reaffirmed previous constitutional principles as the basis for future agrarian reform programs. The anti-agrarian reform forces used their political influence within the ANC to undermine the implementation of the PNRA and underfund PROCERA (de Mendonça, 2010). Soon after, the pro-agrarian reform forces realized that Sarney had fooled them by promising the impossible. In response, the MST intensified land occupations, which in turn, intensified land conflicts with landowners. From 1985 to 1989, 767 landless peasants were murdered (Figure 4). In the end, Sarney’s agrarian reform promise went unfulfilled. The target of settling 1.4 million over four years never materialized: Sarney managed to settle less than 90,000 landless rural workers (Table 3).
The concerted opposition by the landholding elite not only defeated the agrarian reform constitutional amendment but it also undermined the implementation of the PNRA. There are three factors to understand this process. First, the CNRA had limited impact inside or outside the ANC. For one thing, the popular mobilization against the military regime started to lose its momentum for a variety of reasons during Sarney’s democratic transition period (1985–1989), and this weakened the pro-agrarian reform forces. By this time, the middle and lower classes were very much concerned with matters of socioeconomic survival; notably, recession, inflation and unemployment. Moreover, the 1986 general election for the ANC allowed popular movements to bring their representatives and their varied agendas into the national debate. The opening of institutional channels of political participation slowly deflated popular mobilization. Within this context, the CNRA became a mere political lobbying exercise. Despite pressure from the pro-agrarian reform forces, neither the agrarian reform amendment nor the implementation of the PNRA gathered the required support within the ANC. Second, Sarney’s main policy priority was not agrarian reform but Brazil’s economic situation (Skidmore, 2009). Once in office, Sarney faced mounting budget deficits, high inflation, and economic recession. The only healthy sector in the Brazilian economy was agribusiness, which had maintained steady growth since the 1960s (Baer, 2013). As such, Sarney was unwilling to disrupt agribusiness interests by introducing radical changes in the land tenure system. He also needed the anti-agrarian reform votes in the ANC to pass his urgent economic reform plan—Plano Cruzado, or Cruzado Plan. Moreover, Sarney disbanded INCRA in 1987 and MIRAD in early 1989. 13 He then transferred the responsibility for agrarian reform to the Ministry of Agriculture, which had no previous experience in handling agrarian reform projects. All of this created bureaucratic chaos, which eventually undermined the implementation of the PNRA and PROCERA. Finally, the forces unleashed by agricultural modernization during military rule started to rapidly converge during the democratic transition period. Agribusiness stimulated the convergence of powerful landholding, industrial, and financial interests. Fallow farmland became capitalized, corporatized, and cultivated. In response to the re-emergence of rural mobilization for radical agrarian reform, the old and new landholding class joined forces to defend their interests by strengthening the anti-agrarian reform forces inside and outside the ANC, in particular the vociferous UDR. Ultimately, the UDR became a powerful political machine capable of effectively stalling agrarian reform (Bruno, 2003).
Official Brazilian Government Numbers of Agrarian Reform Beneficiaries, 1964–2013
Contribution of Agribusiness in Brazil’s Total Exports, 1990–2012
Collor–Franco’s Agrarian Reform, 1990–1994
After Sarney’s PNRA failure, the MST mobilized its forces to intensify political pressure. The National Constituent Assembly approved the new Constitution of Brazil on October 5, 1988 and set November 16, 1989 for the presidential election. The new constitution gave millions of illiterates the right to vote. The MST benefited from this measure. 14 After the first electoral round, two main presidential candidates emerged: Fernando Affonso Collor de Mello from the Partido da Reconstrução Nacional (PRN) [National Reconstruction Party], and Luís Inácio “Lula” da Silva from the PT. The former was a young, energetic, right-wing politician from a privileged background. The latter was a middle-aged, forceful, Left-wing union leader from an underprivileged background. Despite their sharp class and ideological differences, both candidates campaigned on progressive policies in order to appeal to middle- and lower-class voters.
Collor promised to accelerate the implementation of the PNRA, whereas “Lula” da Silva promised radical agrarian reform. The MST unconditionally supported “Lula” da Silva. The final 1989 election round became basically a political contest of “the rich man against the poor man.” In the end, the poor man lost the electoral contest by a margin of only 6 percent. Afraid of a “radical socialist” coming to power, Brazil’s elite threw all their support behind Collor. With this support, Collor’s political machinery ran an effective media campaign against “Lula” da Silva by fragmenting his political support within middle- and lower-class voters (Robles & Veltmeyer, 2015).
Once in office, Collor changed his rhetoric on agrarian reform. He was a neoliberal politician interested in transitioning Brazil from State-led to market-led development. This required re-structuring the economy by implementing fiscal and monetary discipline, privatizing publically owned corporations, liberalizing trade and investment, deregulating the economy, reducing government intervention in the economy, and enforcing private property rights. Within this framework, distributive land policy measures were considered anachronistic solutions to social inequities (Robles, 2000). Like Sarney, Collor was afraid of creating uncertainties in the agro-export sector of the economy 15 and alienating the anti-agrarian forces in Congress. After all, he needed the political support from these forces to move forward with his neoliberal economic reforms. With this in mind, Collor removed agrarian reform altogether from his political agenda. Instead, he concentrated on addressing urgent economic problems inherited from the previous administration: massive foreign debt, severe economic depression, high rates of inflation, and chronic unemployment.
Unfortunately, Collor’s fiscal and monetary policy measures—Plano Brasil Novo or New Brazil Plan—failed to solve these problems. 16 Moreover, Collor’s political troubles aggravated the economic crisis. While the country was facing a severe economic crisis, he and his friends were draining the public coffer. In 1992, in response to massive public pressure, the Brazilian Congress voted overwhelmingly to impeach Collor for corruption. Collor resigned and was succeeded by Itamar Franco. During the Collor–Franco administration, less than 61,000 landless peasants were settled (Table 3). The lack of progress with the PNRA forced the landless rural worker movements to intensify land occupations nationwide. Altogether, they carried out a total of 454 land occupations from 1990 to 1994 (Figure 5).
After a decade of false promises, Brazil’s landless rural workers were deeply disappointed. It had become evident that agrarian reform was not a policy priority for the newly established democratic regime. Agrarian reform requires short-term and long-term investments from the State in order to make a positive impact on agrarian reform beneficiaries. Unfortunately, Brazil’s democratic regime was not committed to providing adequate funding for agrarian reform. From 1985 to 1994, the Brazilian government spent an average of US$184 million per year on agrarian reform (Figure 6). Most of this money was used to compensate landowners for the expropriation of their land. Considering the magnitude of chronic landlessness in Brazil, the funding was inadequate to address the problem. Neoliberal economic restructuring had restricted the capacity of the Brazilian State to address “old” and “new” social problems (Giannotti, 2007; Robles, 2000). Furthermore, the ideology and policy orientation of the neoliberal democratic regime reinforced agribusiness interests. In 1994, agribusiness’ contribution to the Brazilian economy was already significant: its share of Brazil’s total GDP was 26 percent (Figure 7). Agribusiness was also well represented in the Chamber of Deputies. In 1995, the Bancada Ruralista (BR), or Ruralist Block, controlled 117 seats, or 23 percent, of the total seats in the Chamber of Deputies (Figure 8). 17 The BR effectively defended agribusiness interests and vehemently opposed agrarian reform.
By the early 1990s, the MST had emerged as “the” main force pushing for agrarian reform. It had demonstrated a great capacity to organize and mobilize the destitute and powerless. The MST forcefully defended the view that without agrarian reform, there could not be genuine democracy in Brazil (Fernandes, 2000; Robles, 2000). Despite its intense efforts, however, the MST confronted serious difficulties pursuing its main objective. Basically, the correlation of forces inside and outside the institutional political arena did not favor the MST. This was due to two main factors: the MST’s limited strength in urban areas and its outsourcing of political representation to the PT.
First, the introduction of neoliberalism generated popular resistance right from the early 1990s. It awakened “old”—labor, peasant, student, and Indigenous—and “new”—feminist, environmental, African–Brazilian, gay, and lesbian—movements from political inertia and myopia, and forced them to re-evaluate their agendas and strategies. These movements understood that resisting neoliberalism required intense political mobilization. They also understood that assistencialism (i.e., self-help community projects) and reformism (i.e., gradual change through existing institutions) were neither viable nor effective in dealing with large-scale socioeconomic dislocation. Unfortunately, resistance to neoliberalism became dispersed, localized, and discontinued. Likewise, old and new social movements did not follow a unified and coherent political mobilization strategy. This was understandable because these movements promoted different ideologies, agendas, and strategies. Some of these movements were anti-systemic movements, while others were issue-oriented or reformist. The dispersed and fragmented nature of popular resistance to neoliberalism weakened the MST’s efforts to strengthen its political support in urban areas. Stédile once said: “The fight for agrarian reform takes place in the countryside but will be won in the cities” (cited in Linhares & da Silva, 1999, p. 232). Regrettably, the cities were not ready yet to embrace the fight for agrarian reform.
Second, the MST’s disdain for competitive electoral politics hindered its struggle. This position was understandable. Brazil’s democracy, like the rest in Latin America and elsewhere, is a conflictive and manipulative process. Political parties are always shifting their agendas strategies, and allegiances. The MST was convinced that agrarian reform could not come from the “inside,” conventional politics, but from the “outside,” unconventional politics. It forcefully defended this perspective during its First National Congress in Curitiba, Paraná in 1985. During this gathering, the MST discussed with key Left-wing political players, the agrarian reform issue. CONTAG, Central Única dos Trabalhadores (CUT) or Unified Workers’ Organization, 18 CPT, PCB, PCdoB, and PT attended the gathering. These organizations favored widening the electoral base to allow the Left to gain a significant share of power, and thus influence agrarian reform. With the exception of the CPT, these players were critical of the MST’s land occupation strategy. They saw this as an unnecessarily contentious approach. The MST responded that land occupation was vital to advance agrarian reform (Robles, 2007). As expected, the MST decided not to enter electoral politics and forged a political coalition with the PT. Unlike the BR, however, the PT had broad social concerns to address, and the agrarian question was of secondary importance. Also, the vast majority of PT representatives in Congress were from urban areas, with little experience in agrarian issues. Unlike BR representatives, PT politicians did not have the same commitment and passion to advocate agrarian reform in Congress.
Cardoso’s Agrarian Reform, 1995–2002
In 1994, the PT had another opportunity to come to power. Inopportunely, this time the Left’s electoral base was split between Leonel Brizola’s “old” Left and “Lula” da Silva’s “new” Left. The MST openly supported the latter. In the end, “Lula” da Silva was defeated by Fernando Henrique Cardoso of the Partido da Social Democracia Brasileira (PSDB), or Brazilian Social Democratic Party. Cardoso was a renowned academic and former Minister of Foreign Affairs and Minister of Finance during the last two years of the Collor–Franco administration. Cardoso became a highly praised public figure during that time for the success of his Plano Real, or Real Plan, which brought economic and fiscal stability to Brazil. This plan tamed hyperinflation, ended recession, restrained government spending, and renegotiated the foreign debt. Brazilians were pleased that the economic nightmare of the previous decade was finally over. Consequently, they did not hesitate to reward Cardoso with their votes during the 1994 presidential election. Cardoso went on to win the election outright on the first round with 54 percent of the total votes. “Lula” da Silva came a distant second with 27 percent. Cardoso came to power with a strong public mandate, but without a clear majority in Congress. Therefore, Cardoso compromised with conservative political parties—Partido da Frente Liberal (PEL), or Liberal Front Party, and the Partido Trabalhista Brasileiro (PTB), or Brazilian Labour Party—in order to move forward with his ambitious neoliberal economic project. He also courted the support of the 117 members of the BR in Congress.
Cardoso had a clear vision of inserting Brazil into the global economy within the framework of the Washington Consensus. 19 Under Cardoso, Brazil’s transition from State-led to market-led development rapidly accelerated. The international political and economic context favored Cardoso. Politically, the United States’ government enthusiastically greeted Cardoso’s rise to power, and encouraged the global financial community to invest in Brazil. Economically, Asia’s growing demand for agricultural and livestock commodities opened new export markets for Brazil.
Once in office, Cardoso moved quickly to pursue his economic agenda. This was both his strength and weakness. Cardoso reinforced exchange rates 20 as “the” key policy instrument to maintain price stability, control government spending, attract foreign investment, and encourage exports (Baer, 2013). Cardoso framed his social policy agenda within the boundaries of his economic stability program. He established social programs—educational, health, job training, housing—that stressed “innovation,” “efficiency,” “partnership,” and “creativity” in order to help people to break out of the cycle of poverty.
Cardoso was very cautious regarding agrarian reform because it required significant public investment. He understood the frustration of the landless rural workers with the slow pace of the PNRA, and promised to accelerate its implementation. However, by the time he took office in 1995, the countryside was already in turmoil. Led by the MST, landless rural workers had intensified occupation of unproductive latifúndia. The MST was better prepared to practice the politics of land occupation: It had consolidated its internal structure, trained its militants, diversified its tactics, and enhanced its solidarity network. Notably, the MST was active in 21 of Brazil’s 26 States.
In 1995, the Instituto Brasileiro de Geografia e Estatística (IBGE) or Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics 21 conducted the Agrarian Census and confirmed the prevalence of land inequality: Only 1 percent of landowners controlled 45 percent of Brazil’s total farmland (Table 5). The Gini index of land inequality remained virtually unchanged from 1985: 85.6 (Figure 3). More worrisome was the decline in family farmers: from 3 million in 1985 to 2.4 million in 1995; that is, 600,000 family farmers had left the countryside. At the same time, the historically unresolved issue of Indigenous land demarcation and registration required urgent attention. The expansion of agronegócio was displacing Indigenous peoples from their traditional homeland with increasing violence. In 1996, the situation was aggravated by Cardoso’s ambiguous Lei de Terras Indígenas, or Indigenous Land Law (Decree No. 1.775), which landowners interpreted as a legitimate legislative tool to acquire or contest Indigenous land rights. Ultimately, growing tensions between landless rural workers and Indigenous peoples on the one side, and rich farmers and ranchers on the other side, erupted into open confrontation.
The Brazilian military police’s massacre of 19 MST activists in 1996 at Eldorado dos Carajás—on the order of Pará State authorities—illustrated the volatile state of affairs in the Brazilian countryside. This tragic accident shocked Brazil and deeply affected Cardoso (Hammond, 2009; Robles, 2007). Facing mounting pressure from constituencies at home and abroad, Cardoso was eventually forced to act. He launched his own agrarian reform program without proper consultation with landless rural worker organizations. Ironically, the program was titled: Reforma Agrária Compromisso de todos, or Agrarian Reform is Everyone’s Commitment. Everyone was called to embrace agrarian reform, but not everyone was called to provide their input into agrarian reform. Cardoso also launched two important programs, the Programa Nacional de Fortalecimento da Agricultura Familiar (PRONAF), or National Program for Strengthening Family Farming, which replaced the poorly implemented PROCERA, and the Programa de Cooperativismo e Associativismo Rural (PCAR), or Cooperativism and Rural Association Program. Cardoso also established the Cédula da Terra, or Land Title, and Banco da Terra, or Land Bank, projects with funding from the World Bank. 22 In 1999, Cardoso established the Ministério do Desenvolvimento Agrário (MDA), or Ministry of Agrarian Development to better coordinate settlement and post-settlement agrarian reform projects.
Distribution of Agricultural Farmland in Brazil, 1995
During Cardoso’s eight years in office—he was re-elected in 1998 by defeating “Lula” da Silva again—agrarian reform gained new momentum. Land occupations accelerated. From 1995 to 2002, the MST, and other landless rural movements, carried out a total of 3,845 land occupations nationwide—an average of 480 per year (Figure 5). These occupations forced Cardoso to use 20 million hectares of land to settle 540,704 landless peasant families—an average of 67,588 per year (Table 3). He also created a total of 4,310 agrarian reform settlements—an average of 539 per year (Figure 9). The human cost was also high: 271 landless peasants were murdered, with an average of 39 per year (Figure 4). By the end of his mandate, Cardoso claimed to have carried out a reforma agrária mais grande do mundo, or the world’s biggest agrarian reform program (Cardoso & Winter, 2007). However, Cardoso’s ideologically driven and top-down approach to agrarian reform was marred with both numerical and nonnumerical controversies. Moreover, Cardoso’s contradictory use of negotiation, intimidation, and repression when dealing with pro-agrarian reform forces, notably the MST, seriously undermined both agrarian reform and State-peasant relations (Ondetti, 2008; Robles, 2007).
Measuring Agrarian Reform
During Cardoso’s two terms in office, INCRA became basically a public relations tool for the government (Robles, 2007). The use and misuse of INCRA data on the number of agrarian reform beneficiaries served purely political purposes. That is, the data was used to praise the Cardoso administration’s efforts to tackle chronic landlessness in Brazil. International organizations such as FAO, which rely on official government figures to conduct research and inform data trends, used INCRA-tweaked data and produced favorable views on Cardoso’s rural development policies (Teofilo & Garcia, 2003). Even American academics such as Pereira (2003) was fooled by INCRA data. Early on, the misuse of INCRA data raised suspicions within the Brazilian academic community. They started evaluating raw INCRA data and noticed some inconsistencies: INCRA’s yearly settlement targets were incorrectly reported as achieved settlements; dozens of settlements were counted twice during different years; and posseiros, or peasants occupying land without legal title, were counted as settled landless peasants. DATALUTA emerged out of this confusion. 23 A simple comparison between INCRA and DATALUTA figures clearly shows sharp differences on agrarian reform beneficiaries. Despite these irregularities, Cardoso did settle many more landless rural families than any of the previous governments (Table 6).
The Ideology of Agrarian Reform
Cardoso dismissed the agrarian question as an historical anachronism (Robles & Veltmeyer, 2015). Cardoso’s view reflected the view of the main exponents of the “death of the peasantry” thesis such as Lehmann (1978) and Hobsbawm (1994). In any case, Cardoso promoted his agrarian reform program based on a narrow objective: poverty reduction. The best way to achieve this objective was to incorporate family farmers into Brazil’s expanding capitalist agriculture by providing them with the necessary resources to enhance their productive potential. Cardoso summarized his view of agrarian reform in a policy document issued in 1999: “Agricultura familiar, reforma agrária e desenvolvimento local para um novo mundo rural,” or “Family Agriculture, Agrarian Reform, and Local Development toward a New Rural World.” This policy document integrated previously loose policies and practices with a clear market-oriented ideological direction. Ultimately, Cardoso’s “top-down” approach undermined the effectiveness of his agrarian reform project. PRONAF, PCAR, and Cédula da Terra did not perform as expected because were programs poorly designed and implemented.
Comparison of Number of Agrarian Reform Beneficiaries, 1995–2013
The Criminalization of Land Occupation
Historically, landless peasants in Latin America and elsewhere have resorted to land occupations as the only means of gaining access to land. Land occupations are acts of rebellion against structures of power that subvert principles of equality, fairness, and justice. Since the early 1980s, land occupations in Brazil have functioned as both a catalyst for progressive rural change and a form of a healthy therapy for a dysfunctional political system. Land occupations have changed, and continue to change, rural Brazil: they have empowered the poor and powerless, revitalized rural communities, and questioned Brazil’s commitment to democratic consolidation. Like his predecessors, Cardoso resented the MST’s politics of land occupation. He was joined in this by the Brazilian political and economic elite, who also resented the MST’s occupation of government buildings, banks, and agribusiness research centers. Land occupation was viewed as a gross violation of property rights (Robles, 2007). Under pressure from the anti-agrarian reform forces, Cardoso moved to enact executive orders that basically criminalized and penalized landless rural workers involved in land occupation. They were removed from settlement programs and were liable to prosecution. The MST leadership was harshly targeted: Judges had the power to imprison leaders as a “preventive” measure to discourage unlawful potential land occupations. They were also constantly called to court to respond to unsubstantiated charges, including “inciting violence,” “disrupting peace and order,” “ideological deviation,” “trespassing of private property,” and “disorderly conduct.” Cardoso’s actions irreparably damaged his relationship with the MST in particular. This sad state of affairs eventually undermined Cardoso’s own agrarian reform program. Without the inclusive and constructive participation of the main beneficiaries, Cardoso’s settlement and post-settlement programs became an autocratic and bureaucratic policy exercise absent of real content. He had established thousands of agrarian reform settlements without proper infrastructure in housing, potable water, sewage treatment, electricity, health, education, and social services (Sparovek, 2003). By the late 1990s, Cardoso’s neoliberal policies generated a severe economic crisis. He successfully transitioned Brazil from State-led to market-led development by opening the economy to global market competition and foreign investment. Regrettably, the forces released by neoliberal globalization, particularly the flow of unregulated and speculative short-term financial investment, eventually derailed Cardoso’s neoliberal economic project. He was forced to seek IMF financial assistance to save his project. The severity of the crisis paved the way for “Lula” da Silva, the “eternal” PT candidate, to win the 2002 presidential election. Brazilian voters were exhausted with neoliberalism, and gave the Left an opportunity to provide an alternative. The MST supported “Lula” da Silva’s PT. After all, the PT was historically committed to agrarian reform, or at least the MST thought so. Sadly, the MST soon found that they were grossly mistaken.
“Lula” da Silva and Rousseff’s Agrarian Reform, 2003–2016
“Lula” da Silva ruled Brazil from January 1, 2003 to January 1, 2011. During “Lula” da Silva’s eight years in office—he was re-elected in 2006—Brazil again missed a great opportunity to make agrarian reform a reality. This was a totally unexpected outcome: He had promised during his campaign to carry out a comprehensive agrarian reform program with active participation of landless peasant organizations. In fact, soon after taking office, “Lula” da Silva’s Minister for Agrarian Reform, Miguel Rossetto, asked several academics with close ties to the MST, CPT, and ABRA to work together and elaborate a policy program for agrarian reform. 24 In 2003, after extensive consultation with landless rural worker organizations, advocacy groups, and government experts, these academics submitted their final report: Proposta de Programa Nacional de Reforma Agrária, or A Proposal for a National Plan for Agrarian Reform. “Lula” da Silva used this report to launch his Programa Nacional de Reforma Agrária II (PNRA II), or National Plan for Agrarian Reform, which set the goals of settling 400,000 landless rural workers, granting land titles to 500,000 posseiros, and providing PRONAF funding for 127,000 settled family farmers over four years.
The MST, CONTAG, and CPT welcomed the PNRA II. However, they soon became disillusioned with its slow implementation, and started questioning “Lula” da Silva’s commitment to agrarian reform. Their suspicions were well founded: “Lula” da Silva had other policy agenda priorities in mind. It may have been “Lula” da Silva’s concern with the overall cost of his agrarian reform program, or the BR’s strong opposition to agrarian reform, which “Lula” da Silva could not dismiss, or perhaps because of a combination of these and other factors, he decided to follow Cardoso’s ‘ad hoc’ program of agrarian reform. “Lula” da Silva redistributed land under pressure only and mostly in public lands, which were located far away from main economic centers. Despite land redistribution, land inequality remained unchanged from the previous decades. In 2006, Brazil conducted another Agrarian Census and reported that 1 percent of landowners controlled 45 percent of Brazil’s total farmland (Table 7). The Gini coefficient of land inequality remained high: 87.2 (Figure 3).
“Lula” da Silva, and his eventual PT successor Dilma Rousseff—elected in 2010 and re-elected in 2014—were committed to agribusiness. Indeed, they intensified Cardoso’s agribusiness policies. Their bet on agribusiness paid off: growing global demand for soybean, wheat, sugarcane, citrus, and beef made Brazil a new agricultural powerhouse. “Lula” da Silva and Rousseff used the income generated from agricultural exports to fund conditional cash-transfer social programs such as the Bolsa Família, or Family Allowance (Robles & Veltmeyer, 2015). This program became an integral part of the “Lula” da Silva and Rousseff administrations. The Bolsa Família became a very advantageous policy tool for three main reasons. First, the Bolsa Família reduced absolute poverty at a low cost (0.4 percent of Brazil’s GDP). Second, the program transformed the destitute into a new class of low-end consumers, which stimulated the Brazilian economy. Third, the Bolsa Família built a solid PT nationwide electoral base among the destitute. Over time, even “Lula” da Silva’s and Rousseff’s critics came to appreciate the immediate benefits of cash transfer social programs. The WB and IMF praised the Bolsa Família as the best tool to reduce absolute poverty and recommended that other governments implement the program. In 2014, 14 million Brazilian families were enrolled in the program (Robles & Veltmeyer, 2015).
Distribution of Agricultural Farmland in Brazil, 2006
The Bolsa Família distracted the government from moving forward with the PNRA II. Land redistribution stagnated and the demarcation of traditional Indigenous lands remained unresolved. That is, the success of the Bolsa Família came at the expense of the agrarian and Indigenous questions. This situation strained MST–PT relations. “Lula” da Silva and Rousseff rejected the MST’s criticism that overcoming structural poverty and inequality required more than conditional cash transfer programs. Despite the ongoing tension, the governments of “Lula” da Silva and Rousseff made some concessions to the MST. They increased significantly PRONAF’s budget from R$2.3 billion in 2002 to R$24 billion in 2014 (Figure 10). “Lula” da Silva and Rousseff also established several programs to better support peasant farmers. Some of these programs included the Programa Nacional de Crédito Fundiário (PNCF), or National Program for Land Credit, Consolidação da Agricultura Familiar (CAF), or Family Farming Support Program, Programa de Aquisição de Alimentos (PAA), or Food Acquisition Program, and Plano Safra da Agricultura Familiar (PSAF), or Safra Family Agriculture Plan. However, these programs did not have the necessary financial resources to correct the serious infrastructure deficiencies facing thousands of family farming communities. “Lula” da Silva dropped Cardoso’s controversial Cédula da Terra and the criminalization of land occupation. However, the latter did not stop the persecution of landless rural workers by State governments, particularly in Mato Grosso, Mato Grosso do Sul, Rondônia, and Pará. From 2003 to 2013, a total of 380 landless peasants and Indigenous activists were murdered (Figure 4).
Measuring Agrarian Reform
Official INCRA data indicated that from 2003 to 2013, “Lula” da Silva and Rousseff settled 689,423 landless peasant families, with an average of 75,346 per year. DATALUTA disputed this figure and reported that only 445,150 landless peasant families were settled during this period (Table 6). “Lula” da Silva and Rousseff used the same statistical tricks as Cardoso to inflate their achievements. Frustrated by the slow pace of the PNRA II, the MST, and other rural movements, responded by carrying out a total of 4,540 land occupations from 2003 to 2013, with an average of 413 per year (Figure 5). During Rousseff’s first three years in office (2011–2013), land occupations drastically declined to 92. Also, it is important to note that almost three quarters of the land redistributed by “Lula” da Silva and Rousseff has been in the ecologically fragile regions of the Brazilian Amazon, Caatinga, and Cerrado (Robles & Veltmeyer, 2015).
Neo-extractivism and Agrarian Reform
While Cardoso transitioned Brazil from State-led to market-led development, “Lula” da Silva and Rousseff not only reinforced this process but also reoriented the State toward neoextractivism. 25 With active encouragement from Brazil’s economic elite, “Lula” da Silva and Rousseff aggressively promoted neoextractive development projects, particularly in the Amazon, Caatinga, and Cerrado regions of Brazil. Neoextractivism has transformed natural capital into financial capital at an impressive rate.
Agribusiness is an integral part of the neoextractivism system (Petras & Veltmeyer, 2014; Robles & Veltmeyer, 2015). It is also a soybean-led expansion process. In 1985, the total soybean planted area was 10 million hectares. In 2013, it was 30 million hectares (Figure 11). The aggressive expansion of agribusiness has fundamentally changed the conceptualization and dynamics of agrarian change in Brazil. Agribusiness has reinforced the power of the corporate landholding class and inverted the old “agrarian question” into a question of “family farming.” 26
Although extractivism is not a new phenomenon in Brazil, and in Latin America in general, the recent intensity of the neoextractivism process has compounded human suffering and environmental degradation. Specifically, neoextractivism has put into peril the survival of Indigenous peoples. Notably, neoextractivism has also “empowered” political corruption. Competition for land grants, mining contracts, and enormous infrastructure projects has encouraged illegal pay-offs to government officials and political parties. During the last 11 years, Brazil has faced several cases of highly publicized corruption investigations that have drastically tarnished the PT’s standing with the Brazilian citizenry. Specifically, the recent case of corruption related to State-controlled Petrobras—Operação Lava Jato, or Car Wash Operation—has highlighted the complex nature of illegal pay-offs (Kamm, 2015, pp. 1–6). This case has also brought into question the ability of Brazilian political parties to govern without “extractive” and “redistributive” corruption practices that benefits a small minority at the expense of the vast majority.
The Politics of Co-optation
While Cardoso prosecuted landless rural worker activists, “Lula” da Silva and Rousseff co-opted them. This was an inevitable consequence of a grassroots Left-wing political party coming to power for the first time. Since the 1980s, the PT had built a solid political infrastructure based on the active participation of “old” and “new” social movements. It had also gained governance experience at the municipal and State levels. However, the PT had never been in power at the national level. “Lula” da Silva’s coming to power confronted the PT with the realities of exercising power. Specifically, the PT faced the problem of controlling and managing Brazil’s complex State bureaucracies. Brazil’s elite bureaucratic class—senior technocrats, managers, and advisors—have always favored the ruling class. Traditionally, Brazilian political parties that came to power used political patronage to fill key government positions. The PT was no exception. “Lula” da Silva filled his government with thousands of political appointees. 27 The practice has continued under Roussef. “Lula” da Silva’s and Rousseff’s appointees came from academic circles and popular movements that traditionally supported the PT. Academics and activists connected to rural workers’ organizations, including many from the MST, were appointed to key posts in the INCRA, MDA, and CONAB’s bureaucracies. Whether intentionally or not, “Lula” da Silva’s and Rousseff’s use of political patronage paved the way for leadership co-optation of popular movements. By bringing academics and social activists into their governments, “Lula” da Silva and Rousseff weakened many popular movements, including the MST. They also disempowered the main national labor unions, CUT and CONTAG, by co-opting their leadership. Many of them became ministers or high officials in the “Lula” da Silva and Rousseff administrations. As a result, CUT and CONTAG basically became political arms and agencies of the government. Notably, CONTAG’s role shifted from promoting radical agrarian reform to pursuing rural development (Robles & Veltmeyer, 2015). However, the MST firmly resisted co-optation. Failure to do so could have spelled the end of the movement. Ultimately, the targeting and eventual absorption of agrarian reform academics and activists into the “Lula” da Silva and Rousseff administrative bureaucracies fragmented rural movements. Many rural movements simply ceased to exist. In 2003, there were 38 major rural movements actively pursuing agrarian reform. In 2013, there were only 26 (Figure 12). The MST remained the main force for agrarian reform. However, its voice within the “Lula” da Silva’s and Rousseff’s administrations had little resonance.
Conclusion
First, after three decades of agrarian reform, Brazil remains a country with a very high level of land inequality. Over 1.3 million (INCRA figures), or 1 million (DATALUTA figures), landless peasants were settled during this period, mostly in public lands, far away from main economic hubs. Moreover, the expansion of family farming was accompanied by the expansion of corporate farming. The upcoming 2017 Agrarian Census is likely to reaffirm the ongoing high level of land inequality in Brazil. Second, the MST remains the main landless rural worker movement for agrarian reform. It has demonstrated a great capacity to effectively contest the power of the “old” and “new” landholding class. It has also developed new visions and practices of political and economic democracy in the countryside. Despite their courageous efforts, however, the MST does not have the political clout to overcome the well-entrenched resistance to agrarian reform deeply rooted in Brazil’s power structures. The MST has suffered from the fragmentation and decline of the pro-agrarian reform forces. The politics of criminalization of land occupation—instituted under the Cardoso administration—and the politics of leadership co-optation of rural movements—practiced under the “Lula” da Silva and Rousseff administrations—have taken their tolls on the pro-agrarian reform forces. Third, Brazil has unapologetically embraced agribusiness as an “effective” tool to advance socioeconomic development. The agribusiness boom has forged a new triple alliance of “old” and “new” big landowners, chemical–agricultural transnationals, and the national government. Agribusiness has become an integral part of a broader neoextractivism development project eagerly pursued by Brazil’s national government. Neoextractivism has fostered within the Brazilian political and economic elite, the old and false vision of grandeza, or greatness, to pursue a long-term economic prosperity project. As in previous centuries, neoextractivism in Brazil is displacing Indigenous peoples, creating enclave economies, lowering labor standards, destroying the ecosystem, concentrating income, and opening Brazil’s economy to the volatility of global commodity prices. Neoextractivism will not promote a more inclusive and just Brazilian society. Finally, Indigenous and landless rural worker movements cannot, by themselves, defend and advance their interests within the present socioeconomic context. The correlations of political forces are not in their favor. Therefore, these movements need to rethink, reshape, and reorient their visions, strategies, and objectives to reinvigorate the struggle for the defense of their cultures and livelihoods. Certainly, this requires building more organic links with urban-based movements. Perhaps, a more organized and concerted rural–urban political alliance—built on a strong class consciousness, identity, and solidarity—would be capable of advancing far-reaching structural changes in the Brazilian countryside. Without radical agrarian reform, Brazil is likely to remain one of the most unequal societies in the world.