Landless Workers' Movement - Ideology

Ideology

The MST is an ideologically eclectic rural movement of hundreds of thousands of landless peasants (and some who live in small cities) striving to achieve land reform in Brazil. The MST has been inspired since its inception by liberation theology, Marxism, the Cuban Revolution, and a variety of other leftist ideologies. That flexible mix of a discourse including "marxist concepts, popular religion, communal practices, citizenship principles and radical democracy", has increased the movement's power of attraction

The landless claim to have found institutional support in the Catholic Church through their teachings of social justice and equality, as embodied in the activities of Catholic Base Committees (Comissões Eclesiais de Base, or CEBs for short) which in general advocate liberation theology and more specifically anti-hierarchical social relations. This theology, as a radicalized re-reading of an already existing social doctrine of the Church (described above) became the basis of the MST’s founding ideologies and organizational structure. The loss of influence of progressives in the later Catholic Chrurch, however, has reduced the closeness of the relationship between the MST and the Church as such.

MST was further influenced to be a movement of anti-hierarchical stance through the teachings of Paulo Freire. After working with poor communities in the rural Brazilian state of Pernambuco, Freire observed that aspects of traditional classroom structures, such as teachers being more powerful than the students, were hindering the potential for success in adults participating in adult literacy programs. He determined that the students’ individual abilities to independently learn and absorb information were severely stalled due to their passive positions in the classroom. His teachings were used to encourage the activists to break passive dependence on oppressive social conditions and become engaged in active modes of behavior and condition. In the mid-1980s the MST created a new infrastructure for the movement directly guided by liberation theology and Freirian pedagogy. They did not elect leaders so as to not create hierarchies and to prevent corrupt leadership.

The MST has widened the scope of their movement by organizing more than just encampments and occupations of large farms. They have invaded the headquarters of public and multinational institutions. Their actions began to include fighting to eliminate fields of genetically modified crops and carrying out marches, hunger strikes and other political actions. The MST also cooperates with a number of rural worker movements and urban movements in other areas of Brazil. The MST also continues to remain in touch with broader international movements in other countries that embrace the same cause. The MST congregates not only landless workers strictu sensu - that is to say rural workers or people recently evicted from the land - but also urban jobless and homeless people who want to make a living by working in the land, therefore its affinity with movements concerned with urban and housing reform.