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91-865: Nabhan is a surname. Notable people with the surname include: Nabhan Garcia (born 1958), Brazilian politician and farmer, secretary of the Bolsonaro government Gary Paul Nabhan (born 1952), American agricultural ecologist, ethnobotanist, Ecumenical Franciscan Brother and author Jassim Al-Nabhan (born 1944), Kuwaiti actor Saleh Ali Saleh Nabhan (1979–2009), Kenyan born leader of al-Qaeda in Somalia Walid Nabhan (born 1966), Maltese writer and translator of Palestinian-Jordanian origin Lara Nabhan (born 1989), Lebanese journalist Omar Nabhan (died 2013), Kenyan mass murderer and terrorist, one of four perpetrators of

182-541: A World Bank US$ 90 million loan, was addressed to individuals who had experience in farming, and a yearly income of up to US$ 15,000; they were granted a loan of up to US$ 40,000 if they could associate with other rural producers in order to buy land from a willing landholder. Thus, this programme catered primarily to substantial small farmers, not to the MST's traditional constituency—the rural poor. Cardoso's project, Cédula da Terra ("landcard"), did offer previously landless people

273-593: A human rights organization co-founded by Darci Frigo , the 2001 Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Human Rights Award Laureate. The courts might eventually issue a warrant for eviction, requiring the occupier families to leave, or they might deny the landowner's petition, and allow the families to stay provisionally, and engage in subsistence farming until the federal agency responsible for agrarian reform, Brazil's National Institute for Colonization and Agrarian Reform (INCRA), determines whether occupied property had indeed been unproductive. The MST's legal activity bases itself on

364-652: A hydroelectric dam. This first group was later joined by an additional 300 (or, according to other sources, over 1,000) households evicted by FUNAI from the Kaingang Indian reservation in Nonoai, where they had been renting plots since 1968. 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

455-582: A National Encounter of landless workers in Cascavel , Paraná, 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. During much of the 1980s, the MST faced political competition from the National Confederacy of Agrarian Workers' (CONTAG), heir to

546-482: A bench that has 305 parliamentarians?”, He said. In the end, he ended the interview sharply, upset with questions about the lack of a government agenda for indigenous organizations and movements that fight for land. Pública sent new questions about the reaction of the military who left Incra and their participation in the conflicts in Pontal do Paranapanema, but the secretary did not respond. In August, Nabhan Garcia suffered

637-532: A bill presented to the Chamber of Deputies in 2006 by Congressman Abelardo Lupion ( Democrats - Paraná), proposed making "invading others' property with the end of pressuring the government" a terrorist action, and therefore, a heinous crime. A "heinous" crime in Brazilian law is a felony, designated as such in a 1990 Brazilian law, and those accused of committing them are ineligible for pretrial release . In April 2006,

728-649: A bitter defeat in the STF with the removal of the prerogative to interfere in crucial issues for the ruralist caucus, such as the identification and demarcation of indigenous lands. The attribution was linked to the Agriculture portfolio, but the STF sent it back to the Ministry of Justice along with the Funai structure. That is, legally, Nabhan Garcia cannot interfere in demarcation. The comings and goings of Funai by ministries are seen by

819-487: A buffer of conservative small farmers between latifundia owners and the rural proletariat. In 1969, at the most repressive point of the dictatorship, the 1967 constitution was amended via a decree ( ato institucional ) by a junta that held interim power during the final illness of president Arthur da Costa e Silva , and authorized government compensation for property expropriated for land reform. This compensation would be made in government bonds rather than cash, previously

910-502: A clear stance, and so one could argue either for or against the MST without leaving the framework of the Constitution. The lack of clear government commitment to land reform precludes the MST engaging in public-interest litigation , so concrete proceedings for land reform are left to the initiative of the groups concerned, through onerous and time-consuming legal proceedings. Given "the highly problematic and ideologically driven nature of

1001-490: A highly dynamic and robust agricultural business sector at the price of extensive dislocation of the rural poor. MST questioned the scope of the benefits from the alleged efficiency of the change, given that since 1850, Brazilian land development had been concerned with the interests of a single class — the rural bourgeoisie. While the MST frames its policies in socio-economic terms, it still points to Canudos and its alleged millenarism to legitimize its existence, and to develop

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1092-578: A message via the WhatsApp application, addressed to a small group of friends and trusted servants, General Jesus Corrêa said that he was leaving Incra just as he was starting the most complex work, attacking the 30 superintendencies, “wherever there are, in some of them , real criminal organizations installed”. He mentioned the superintendencies of Mato Grosso and Rondônia as the most problematic and said why he thinks it fell: “As we were going against interests and acting with ethics and honesty, we became

1183-642: A move publicly condemned by Lula , then-leader of the leftist opposition, and other prominent members of the PT. The farm was damaged and looted in the occupation, and a combine harvester , tractor, and several pieces of furniture were destroyed. MST members also drank all the alcohol at the farm. Later, 16 MST leaders were charged with theft, vandalism, trespassing, kidnapping, and resisting arrest. In 2005, two undercover police officers investigating cargo truck robberies near an MST homestead in Pernambuco were attacked. One

1274-438: A new way of life." The shift had been developing since the movement's 2000 national congress, which focused mainly on the perceived threat of transnational corporations, whether Brazilian or foreign, to both small property in general, and to Brazilian national food sovereignty , especially in the area of intellectual property . In July 2000, this principle was the impetus for MST to mobilize and lead farmers in an attack against

1365-464: A powerful mystique of its own. A great deal of the early organizing in the MST came from Catholic communities. Much of MST ideology and practice come from a social doctrine of the Catholic Church : that private property should serve a social function. This principle developed during the 19th century, and became Catholic doctrine with Pope Leo XIII 's Rerum novarum encyclical, promulgated on

1456-597: A relationship between the MST and various terrorist groups. The MST is regarded as a source of "civil unrest." In late 2005, a parliamentary inquiry commission, where landowner-friendly congressmen held a majority, classified the MST's activities as terrorism, and the MST itself as a criminal organization. However, its report met no support from the PT members of the commission, and a senator ripped it up before TV cameras, saying that those who voted for it were "accomplices of murder, people who use slave labor, [and] who embezzle land illegally." Nevertheless, based on this report,

1547-454: A second wave of occupations starting in 2003. However, the Lula government's increasingly conservative positions, including its low profile on land reform, (actually somewhat less than achieved by Cardoso in his first term ) impelled the movement to change its stance as early as early 2004, when it again began to occupy public buildings and Banco do Brasil agencies. In June 2003, the MST occupied

1638-496: A ship loaded with GM maize from Argentina that was docked in Recife . Since 2000, much of the movement's activism consisted in symbolic acts in opposition of multinational corporations, as "a symbol of the intervention politics of the big monopolies operating in Brazil." A possible reason contributing to the change in strategy might have been the perceived shift in government stances in

1729-589: A struggle for land reform, but a wider struggle against the capitalist system. Therefore, Cardoso's administration tried to initiate tamer social movements for land reform on purely negotiated terms, such as the Movement of Landless Producers ( Movimento dos Agricultores Sem Terra , or MAST), organized on a local basis in the São Paulo State , around the trade union central Syndical Social Democracy (SDS). By contrast, MST leaders emphasized that their practical activity

1820-480: A thorn in the side”, he said. More explicitly, Colonel Marco Antônio dos Santos, who occupied the Board of Management of Incra, told Crusoé magazine that the group was fired, not for delay in regularization, as the secretary argued, but for going against its interests. “We fell because we bothered Nabhan Garcia and his group, which is a small segment of the ruralist caucus. They thought that we were not complying with

1911-429: Is a self-justifying cause. The organization maintains that it is legally justified in occupying unproductive land, pointing to the most recent Constitution of Brazil (1988), which contains a passage saying that land must fulfill a social function (Article 5, XXIII). The MST also notes, based on 1996 census statistics, that a mere 3% of the population owns two-thirds of all arable land in Brazil. In 1991, MST received

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2002-666: Is different from Wikidata All set index articles Nabhan Garcia On his mother's side, Nabhan is a descendant of one of the first Lebanese and Syrian immigrants in Brazil , as a grandson of Amin Jahjah Nabhan and Chames Nabhan. Nabhan Garcia is a rancher and farmer, with farms in São Paulo and Mato Grosso do Sul , he became known for his clashes with the landless in Pontal do Paranapanema, in western São Paulo , between 1990 and 2010. The secretary became known for preaching

2093-510: The Araguaia guerrillas . Curió enforced the blockade ruthlessly; 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. The Encruzilhada Natalino episode set a pattern. Most of subsequent early development of the MST concerned exactly the areas of southern Brazil where, in

2184-530: The Canudos War in the 1890s, and the Contestado War in the 1910s) idealized older forms of property, and revitalized ideologies centered on a fabled millenarian return to an earlier, pre-bourgeois social order. Advocated by groups led by rogue messianic religious leaders outside the established Catholic hierarchy, these ideologies seemed heretical and revolutionary. Some leftist historians, following

2275-648: The Central Única dos Trabalhadores (CUT). MST eventually all but monopolized political attention as a spokesman for rural workers. 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

2366-672: The Landless Workers' Movement – says that Nabhan’s stance as president of the UDR and the positions he has adopted in the Bolsonaro government do not help in the solution the demands of the field. The CAR model, with 6 million areas registered in the last seven years, according to the engineer, has a very low validation rate because, like the Federal Revenue Service, it does not have an intelligence structure that allows verification, which, instead of solving can exacerbate tensions. In

2457-647: The R&;D farm of the Monsanto Company in the state of Goiás . On March 7, 2008, a similar action by women activists at another Monsanto facility in Santa Cruz das Palmeiras , São Paulo , destroyed a nursery and an experimental patch of genetically modified maize , slowing ongoing scientific research. MST said they destroyed the facility to protest government support for the extensive use of GMOs supplied by transnational corporations in agriculture. In 2003, Lula authorized

2548-577: The Right Livelihood Award "for winning land for landless families, and helping them to farm it sustainably." Land reform has a long history in Brazil, and the concept predates the MST. In the mid-20th century, Brazilian leftists reached a consensus that the democratization and widespread actual exercise of political rights would require land reform. Brazilian political elites actively opposed land reform initiatives, which they felt threatened their social and political status. Political leaders of

2639-631: The Westgate shopping mall attack See also [ edit ] Sawadiya - Nabhan , a Syrian village [REDACTED] Surname list This page lists people with the surname Nabhan . If an internal link intending to refer to a specific person led you to this page, you may wish to change that link by adding the person's given name (s) to the link. Retrieved from " https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Nabhan&oldid=1249408374 " Category : Surnames Hidden categories: Articles with short description Short description

2730-427: The peasant leagues ( Ligas Camponesas ) in northeastern Brazil, which opposed the evictions of tenant farmers land, and the transformation of plantations into cattle ranches . These groups questioned the existing distribution of land ownership through a rational appeal to the social function of property. Despite the efforts of these groups, land ownership continued to concentrate, and Brazil to this day has had

2821-405: The peasant leagues following the 1964 coup opened the way for commercialized agriculture and concentration of land ownership throughout the period of the military dictatorship , and an absolute decline in the rural population during the 1970s. In the mid-1980s, out of 370 million hectares of total farm land, 285 million hectares (77%) were held by latifundia . The re-democratization process in

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2912-537: The 1980s, however, allowed grassroots movements to pursue their own interests, 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 Passo Real  [ pt ] to make way for construction of

3003-510: The Brazilian Catholic hierarchy formally acknowledged the principle in 1980. In Brazilian constitutional history, land reform — understood in terms of public management of natural resources — was first explicitly mentioned as a guiding principle of government in the 1967 constitution , which sought to institutionalize an authoritarian consensus after the 1964 coup. The military dictatorship intended to use land reform policy to develop

3094-409: The Brazilian justice system," all parties have an incentive to resort to more informal methods: "while the large landowners try to evacuate squatters from their land, squatters might use violence to force institutional intervention favoring them with the land expropriation afterwards [...] violence is mandatory for both sides to achieve their goals." These tactics raise controversy about the legality of

3185-475: The Lula government to allow Syngenta to continue GMO research), the premises were transferred to the Paraná state government, and converted into an agroecology research center. After an exchange of barbs between Lula and Stedile over what Lula saw as an unnecessary radicalization of the movement's demands, the MST decided to call a huge national demonstration. In May 2005, after a two-week, 200-odd kilometer march from

3276-493: The MST as terrorists, his Minister of Agricultural Development did, and even hypothesized that the MST invaded Argentina from the north in order to blackmail the Brazilian government into action. In July 1997, Senior General Alberto Cardoso, Cardoso's Chief of Military Household ( Chefe da Casa Militar , among other things, a general comptroller over all issues regarding the military and police forces as armed civil servants), expressed concern about participation of MST activists in

3367-416: The MST declared the farm to be government property that was illegally embezzled by Cutrale, and that the occupation was intended to protest this, while the destruction was done by provocateurs. Such questioning of the legality of existing private property by denouncing landowners as holding land in adverse possession was one of the movement's main political tools. The Cutrale plantation, Fazenda S. Henrique,

3458-554: The MST took over the farm of Suzano Papel e Celulose , a large maker of paper products, in the state of Bahia , because it had more than six square kilometres devoted to eucalyptus growth. Eucalyptus, a non-native plant, has been blamed for environmental degradation in northeastern Brazil, as well as reducing the availability of land for small agricultural production, called by some as "cornering" producers ( encurralados pelo eucalipto ). In 2011, Veja described such activities as plain theft of eucalyptus wood, quoting an estimate from

3549-474: The MST was concerned, the greatest gain it received from the Lula government was the non-criminalization of the movement itself; the tough, anti-occupation measures taken by the Cardoso government were left in abeyance, and not enforced. Attempts to officially define the MST as a "terrorist organization" were also opposed by Workers' Party congresspersons. Nevertheless, the Lula government never acted in tandem with

3640-515: The MST with reserve: in February 2009, for instance, the then-president of the Brazilian Supreme Court (STF), Gilmar Mendes , declared the MST engaged in "illicit" activities, opposed granting it public monies, and supported an "adequate" judicial response towards land occupation. The MST leadership has, in turn on various occasions, charged that the STF as a whole is consistently hostile to

3731-485: The MST's actions as felonies. In May 2005, Veja accused the MST of helping the Primeiro Comando da Capital (PCC), the most powerful prison-gang criminal organization in São Paulo . A police phone tap recording of a conversation between PCC leaders mentioned the MST; one of them said he had "just talked with the leaders of the MST," who would "give instructions" to the gang about the best ways to stage what became

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3822-463: The MST's actions, since it tries to ensure social justice unilaterally. The MST identifies rural land it believes to be unproductive and that does not meet its social function, then occupies the land, only afterwards moving to ascertain the legality of the occupation. The MST is represented in these activities by public interest legal counsel, including their own lawyers, sons and daughters of MST families, and organizations, such as Terra de Direitos ,

3913-459: The MST, according to a general pattern of keeping organized social movements outside the fostering of the government's agenda. However, as stated by a German author, the Lula government year after year proposed a blueprint for land reform that was regularly blocked by regional agrarian elites. Lula's election to the presidency raised the possibility of active government support for land reform, so conservative media increased their efforts to brand

4004-424: The MST, as far as class politics is concerned, is mostly a semi proletarian movement, consisting of congregations of people trying to eke out a living in the absence of formal wage employment, out of a range of activities across a whole section of the social divisions of labour. MST somewhat filled the void left by the decline of the organized labor movement in the wake of Cardoso's neoliberal policies. Therefore,

4095-424: The MST, but these included 20,500 (65%) out of the grand total of 31,400 families involved. Brazil has long history of violent land conflict. During the 1990s, the MST emerged as the most prominent land reform movement in Brazil, and in 1995–1999, led a first wave of occupations which resulted in violence. The MST, landowners, and the government accused each other of the killings, maimings, and property damage. In

4186-488: 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. The MST also developed what became its chief modus operandi : local organizing around the concrete struggles of a specific demographic group. The MST was officially founded in January 1984, during

4277-767: The activists' right to vote be withdrawn by striking them from the voter registry. Declarations issued at the same time by the State Association of Military Policy Commissioned Officers, in an open Red Scare vein, declared the MST "an organized movement, striving at instituting a totalitarian state in our country." Between September 27 and October 7, 2009, the MST occupied an orange plantation in Borebi , State of São Paulo, owned by orange juice multinational Cutrale . The corporation claimed to have lost R$ 1.2 million (roughly US$ 603,000) in damaged equipment, missing pesticide, destroyed crops, and trees cut by MST activists. In response,

4368-399: The aim of regularizing illegal possessions. "We've already seen this: they say it's for the small and then they pass it on to the landowners." For the entities, Nabhan Garcia as an agrarian manager and indigenist is, at the very least, a sign of the government's complacency with the backward segment of agribusiness and of retrogression in the rights of traditional peoples. “It's like

4459-442: The city of Goiânia , nearly 13,000 landless workers arrived in their nation's capital, Brasilia . The MST march targeted the U.S. embassy and Brazilian Finance Ministry, rather than President Lula. While thousands of landless carried banners and scythes through the streets, a delegation of 50 held a three-hour meeting with Lula, who donned an MST cap for the cameras. During this session, Lula recommitted to settling 430,000 families by

4550-667: The coordinator of the Organization of Indigenous Peoples of Rondônia , Northwest of Mato Grosso and South of Amazonas (Opiroma), José Luiz Kassupá, as a sign that the government may try to return the autarchy to the command of Nabhan Garcia through a new provisional measure. “He [Nabhan Garcia] sees us as an obstacle to development. He stopped the demarcations at a time when several peoples were asking for areas that were left out of previously approved processes. Meanwhile, in Congress there are more than one hundred projects that withdraw

4641-422: The early 1990s, some believe it persists in informal regional ties between landowners. UDR lobbying over the constitutional text is believed to have watered down concrete enforcement of the "social interest" principle. One Brazilian law handbook argues that land reform, as understood in the 1988 Constitution, is a concept made up of various "compromises," on which constitutional law has consistently evaded taking

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4732-685: The enabling myths of the neoliberal discourse." Cardoso offered lip service to agrarian reform in general, but also described the movement as "a threat to democracy." He compared the MST's demands for subsidized credit, which led to the 1998 occupation of various banks in Paraná , to bank robbery. In a memoir written after he left office, Cardoso expressed sympathy for land reform, stating, "were I not President, I would probably be out marching with them," but also countering, "the image of mobs taking over privately-owned farms would chase away investment, both local and foreign." Although Cardoso himself never branded

4823-402: The end of 2006, and to allocating the human and financial resources to accomplish this. He also committed to a range of related reforms, including an increase in the pool of land available for redistribution [Ramos, 2005]. Later, the Lula government would claim to have resettled 381,419 families between 2002 and 2006—a claim disputed by the MST. The movement argued the numbers had been doctored by

4914-514: The eve of the 1964 military coup ( golpe militar ). This doctrine was evoked by President João Goulart at a rally in Rio de Janeiro , at which he offered a blueprint for political and social reforms, and proposed expropriation of estates larger than 600 hectares in areas near federal facilities, such as roads, railroads, reservoirs, and sanitation works; these ideas triggered a strong conservative backlash, and led to Goulart's loss of power. Nevertheless,

5005-578: The exclusive use of the Armed Forces, cattle rancher Manoel Domingues Paes Neto reported to the Federal Police (PF) that Nabhan, with a ninja cap covering his face, sunglasses and a cap, was standing between farmers and security guards. who allowed themselves to be photographed carrying large-caliber weapons by the newspaper O Estado de São Paulo , “to scare the Landless Workers' Movement and inhibit land invasions in Pontal do Paranapanema”. This statement

5096-578: The existing regional movement, MASTER (Rio Grande do Sul landless farmers' movement), made up the 1980/1981 encampment. 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 Sebastião Curió  [ pt ] , already notorious for his past counter-insurgency efforts against

5187-438: The following requirements: Since the criteria are vague and not objectively defined, the social interest principle was seen as a mixed blessing, but accepted in general. Landowners have lobbied against the principle since 1985 through the landowners' organization, União Democrática Ruralista (Democratic Union of Rural People, or UDR), whose rise and organization parallels that of the MST. Although it avowedly dissolved itself in

5278-508: The fox guarding the henhouse,” says Oliveira. Landless Workers%27 Movement The Landless Workers' Movement ( Portuguese : Movimento dos Trabalhadores Rurais Sem Terra , MST ) is a social movement in Brazil aimed at land reform . Inspired by Marxism , it is the largest such movement in Latin America , with an estimated informal membership of 1.5 million across 23 of Brazil's 26 states. MST defines its goals as access to

5369-410: The ground. MST president João Pedro Stédile commented that MST should oppose not only landowners, but also agrobusinesses that partook in "the project of organization of agriculture by transnational capital allied to capitalist farming"—a model he deemed socially backwards and environmentally harmful. In the words of an anonymous activist: "our struggle is not only to win the land ... we are building

5460-637: The idea that property rights are in a continuous process of social construction, so litigation and seeking to strike sympathy among the judiciary is essential to MST's legitimacy. Traditionally, Brazilian courts side with landowners, and file charges against MST members some call "frivolous and bizarre." For instance, in a 2004 land occupation in Pernambuco , a judge issued arrest warrants for MST members, and described them as highly dangerous criminals. Nevertheless, many individual judges have shown themselves sympathetic. Brazilian higher courts have usually regarded

5551-444: The inclusion of people already living in areas (national forests and other managed areas of environmental protection, as well as other already existing settlements) where their presence had only been legally acknowledged by the government. The MST also criticised Lula's administration to call mere land redistribution by means of handing out of small plots land as "reform," when it was simply a form of welfarism ( assistencialismo ) that

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5642-516: The independent Brazilian state, the default means of acquiring land was through purchase, from either the state or a previous private owner. This law strongly limited squatter's rights , and favoured the historic concentration of land ownership , which became a hallmark of modern Brazilian social history . The Lei de Terras left in place the colonial practice of favoring of large landholdings created by mammoth land grants to well-placed people, which were usually worked by enslaved people. Continuing

5733-403: The land for poor workers through land reform in Brazil, and activism around social issues that make land ownership more difficult to achieve, such as unequal income distribution , racism , sexism , and media monopolies. MST strives to achieve a self-sustainable way of life for the rural poor. The MST differs from previous land reform movements in its single-issue focus; land reform for them

5824-447: The land titles that he asked for. Title over his group. He always wanted me to title farms etc. I never said to title people settled in an agrarian reform program,” he said, according to the magazine. In the 40-minute interview with Pública, made before the crisis that overthrew General Jesus Corrêa, Nabhan Garcia got irritated several times, especially when asked about the strong influence of the ruralist group on Funai. “How can you ignore

5915-460: The largest protest by prisoners' relatives in Brazilian history. On April 18, 2005, some 3,000 relatives protested prevailing conditions in São Paulo's correctional facilities. The MST "leaders" were not named. No MST activist, real or alleged, took part in the taped conversations. The MST denied any link in a formal written statement, calling the supposed evidence hearsay, and an attempt to criminalize

6006-484: The late 1990s and early 2000s. The Cardoso government declared that Brazil "had no need" for land reform, that small farms were not competitive, and were unlikely to increase personal incomes in rural areas. He believed that it would be better to create skilled jobs, which would cause the land reform issue to recede into the background. Cardoso denounced the MST's actions as aiming for a return to an archaic, agrarian past, and therefore, in conflict with "modernity"—"one of

6097-454: The leaders said they still regarded Lula as an ally, but demanded that he accelerate his promised land reforms. However, in September of that year, João Pedro Stedile declared that, in terms of land reform, Lula's government was "finished." By the end of Lula's first term, it was clear that the MST had decided to act again as a separate movement, irrespective of the government's agenda. As far as

6188-476: The movement took steps to ally with urban struggles, especially those connected to housing. João Pedro Stedile stated that the struggle for land reform would unfold in the countryside, but would be decided in the city, where "political power for structural change" resided. The Lula government was seen by the MST as a leftist and therefore friendly government, so MST decided to shun occupations of public buildings in favor of actions against private landed states , in

6279-444: The movement's politics, one had to keep in mind "that there are a great many lumpens in the country areas." In Stedile's view, the existence of the large underclass should not be held against the working class character of the movement, because many rural working class had been "absorbed" into the periphery of the urban proletariat. Such a view is shared by some academic authors, who argue that, behind its avowedly "peasant" character,

6370-523: The movement. In the wake of 9/11 , Brazilian media tended to describe the MST as "terrorists," lumping it together loosely with various historical and mediatic happenings in keeping with an international post-9/11 trends of relegating any political movement against existing globalization to beyond the pale, and outside the boundaries of permissible political discourse. The MST assumes its activities are continuously surveilled by military intelligence. Various intelligence organs, Brazilian and foreign, assume

6461-467: The movement. In late 2013, it described the court as "lackeying to the ruling class," and "working for years against the working class and social movements." This fraught relationship came to a head on February 12, 2014, when a court session was suspended after an attempted invasion of the court building in Brasilia by MST activists, who were met by police firing rubber bullets and tear gas. The smashing of

6552-525: The notorious Eldorado de Carajás massacre in 1996, nineteen MST members were gunned down, and another 69 were wounded by police as they blocked a state road in Pará . In 1997 alone, similar confrontations with police and landowners' security details accounted for two dozen internationally acknowledged deaths. In 2002, the MST occupied the family farm of then-president Fernando Henrique Cardoso in Minas Gerais ,

6643-434: The only legal practice (Art. 157, §1, as amended by Institutional Act No. 9, 1969). The Constitution passed in 1988 required that "property shall serve its social function," and that the government should "expropriate for the purpose of agrarian reform , rural property that is not performing its social function." Under Article 186 of the Constitution, a social function is performed when rural property simultaneously meets

6734-421: The opportunity to buy land from landowners, but in a negotiated process. In the words of an American scholar, despite its efforts in resettlement, the Cardoso government did not confront the prevailing mode of agricultural production: concentrated, mechanized, latifundia-friendly commodity production—and the resulting injustices. In his own words, what Cardoso could not accept about the MST was what he saw not as

6825-415: The peasant leagues of the 1960s, who sought land reform strictly through legal means, by favoring trade unionism , 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

6916-552: The police with "excessive use of force." The group of attorneys made public a previously classified report by the Council of Public Attorneys of Rio Grande do Sul, and asked the state to ban the MST by declaring it an illegal organization. The report declared further investigation pointless, "as it was public knowledge that the movement and its leadership were guilty of engaging in organized criminality." The report also proposed that where MST activists could "cause electoral disequilibrium,"

7007-430: The policy favored economies of scale , given the limited number of landowners, but simultaneously made it difficult for small planters and peasants to obtain the land needed to practice subsistence agriculture and small-scale farming. The consolidation of land ownership into just a few hands had ties to the advent of capitalism in Brazil, and opposition and insurrection in the 19th and early 20th century (for example,

7098-424: The political spectrum believed that it was an objective economic necessity to permit the end of Brazilian rural society through mechanized agrobusiness and forced urbanization . The left, in particular, felt that the technologically backward, feudal latifundia impeded both economic modernization and democratization. During the 1960s, various groups attempted land reform through the legal system, beginning with

7189-423: The radicalism that resulted in several conflicts in Pontal do Paranapanema in the mid-1990s, during the government of Fernando Henrique Cardoso . Later, already at the head of the movement to refound the UDR, in 2003 his name was involved in a rumored arrest of a farmer accused of illegal possession and smuggling of weapons, affiliated with the entity. Accused in flagrante delicto with nine large caliber weapons for

7280-513: The rights of the indigenous people under debate to reduce lands and open them up for exploitation”, says Kassupá. According to him, there are reports that even old villages occupied by isolated groups are destroyed with the purpose of de-characterizing areas of traditional indigenous use and, thus, reducing the indigenous territory to legalize invasions. And he claims that Incra has been carrying out surveys in places occupied by small squatters within indigenous territories and protected forest areas with

7371-702: The rural poor then attempted to achieve land reform from below, through grassroots action. MST broke new ground by tackling land reform itself, by "breaking...dependent relations with parties, governments, and other institutions," and framing the issue in purely political terms, rather than social, ethical, or religious ones. The first statute to regulate land ownership in Brazil after its independence , Law 601 or Lei de Terras (Landed Property Act), took effect September 18, 1850. A colonial administration , based on Portuguese feudal law , had previously considered property ownership to stem from royal grants ( sesmarias ), and were passed through primogeniture ( morgadio ). In

7462-512: The sale and use of GM soybeans, which led MST's Stedile to call him a " transgenic politician." The dominance of transnationals over Brazilian seed production was summed by the fact that the Brazilian hybrid seed industry in the early 2000s was already 82% Monsanto-owned, which the MST saw as detrimental to the development of organic agriculture in spite of the economic benefits, and enabling possible future health hazards similar to intensive use of pesticides . Stedile later called Monsanto one of

7553-474: The state's military police that 3,000 people earned a living in Southern Bahia from theft of wood. In 2008, a group of public attorneys from Rio Grande do Sul who were working with the state's military police issued a report, charging the MST with collusion with international terrorist groups. The report was used in state courts, according to Amnesty International , to justify eviction orders carried out by

7644-474: The ten transnational companies that controlled virtually all international agrarian production and commodity trading. Similarly, in 2006, the MST occupied a research station in Paraná owned by Swiss corporation Syngenta , which had produced GMO contamination near the Iguaçu National Park . After a bitter confrontation over the existence of the station (which included easing of previous restrictions by

7735-498: The then-ongoing police officers' strikes, as a plot to "destabilize" the military. In terms of concrete measures, Cardoso's government's approach to land reform was divided: while the administration simultaneously acquired land for settlement and increased taxes on unused land, it also forbade public inspection of invaded land—thereby precluding future expropriation, and the disbursement of public funds to people involved in such invasions. Cardoso's main land reform project, supported by

7826-525: The tracks of the groundbreaking 1963 work by journalist Rui Facó  [ pt ; fr ] ( Cangaceiros e Fanáticos ), tend to conflate early 20th-century banditry in northeastern Brazil ( cangaço ) with messianism as a kind of social banditry , a protest against such social inequalities as the uneven distribution of land assets. This theory developed independently in English-speaking academia around Eric Hobsbawn 's 1959 work Primitive Rebels . It

7917-401: Was a response to the poverty of so many people who had little prospects of productive, continuous work in conventional labor markets. This reality was admitted by President Cardoso in a 1996 interview: "I'm not going to say that my government will be of the excluded, for that it cannot be ... I don't know how many excluded there will be." In 2002, João Pedro Stedile admitted that in plotting

8008-543: Was criticized for its unspecific definition of "social movement," but also praised for melding political and religious movements, previously separately examined. This blend was later the basis for the MST's emergence. Both messianism and cangaço disappeared in the late 1930s, but in the 1940s and '50s, additional peasant resistance broke out to evictions and land grabbing by powerful ranchers: These local affairs, however, were repressed or settled locally, and did not give rise to an ideology. Policy makers and scholars across

8099-550: Was read by the former CPMI (Mixed Parliamentary Commission of Inquiry) rapporteur on Land, João Alfredo (Psol-CE), who concluded that there are “strong indications that Nabhan Garcia and other rural landowners in Pontal do Paranapanema encourage the organization of private militias. That report ended up defeated and became a separate vote, with the parallel report by Deputy Alberto Lupion (DEM-PR) prevailing. FHC’s Minister of Agrarian Reform, in whose role he served in Pontal do Paranapanema, Raul Jungmann – who has always been critical of

8190-535: Was shot dead, and the other tortured; MST was suspected to be involved. Throughout the early 2000s, the MST occupied functioning facilities owned by large corporations, whose activities it considered at odds with the social function of property. On March 8, 2005, the MST invaded a nursery and a research center in Barra do Ribeiro , 56 km (34.8 mi) from Porto Alegre , both owned by Aracruz Celulose . The MST members held local guards captive while they ripped plants from

8281-544: Was unable to change the productive system. The march was held to demand, among other things, that President Lula implement his own limited agrarian reform plan, rather than spend the project's budget on servicing the national debt [Ramos, 2005]. Several MST leaders met with President Lula da Silva on May 18, 2005—a meeting that had been resisted by Lula since his taking of office. The leaders presented Lula with 16 demands, including economic reform, greater public spending, and public housing. In interviews with Reuters , many of

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