Landless Workers' Movement - Organizational Structure

Organizational Structure

The MST is organized entirely, from the grassroots level up to the State and National Coordinating Bodies, into collective units that make decisions through discussion, reflection and consensus. This non-hierarchical pattern of orgazation, reflecting Liberation Theology & Freirean pedagogy influences, was also dictated by the actual need to avoid clear-cut leaderships that could be bought off or assassinated. The basic organizational unit, representing 10 to 15 families living in either an MST encampment or MST settlement ("encampment" standing for a non-legally recognized occupation, "settlement" for an already recognized one) is known as a 'Nucleo de Base' in Portuguese. A Nucleo de Base is responsible for addressing the issues faced by the member-families, and members elect two representatives, one woman and one man, to represent them at settlement/encampment meetings. These same elected representatives attend regional meetings, where they elect regional representatives who then vote for members of the State Coordinating Body of the MST. In total, there are 400 members of the MST's State Coordinating Bodies (around 20 per state) and 60 members of the MST's National Coordinating Body (around 2 per state). It is important to point out that every MST family participates in a Nucleo de Base, and that this represents roughly 475,000 families, or 1.5 million people. João Pedro Stédile, economist and author of several important texts on land reform in Brazil, is a member of the MST's National Coordinating Body.

The MST is not a political party and has no formal leadership other than a dispersed group of some 15 leaders, whose public appearances are scarce. This secretive mood allows for minimizing risks of arrest and also for preserving a grassroots, decentralized organizational model. This is an important strategy of the MST and serves to maintain an ongoing and direct flow of communication between member-families and their representatives. Coordinators are aware of the realities faced by member-families and are encouraged to discuss important issues with said families. This organizational blueprint seeks, in a way to empower people politically by having them acting "in the way they see fit, true to local context". To assist with communication between Coordinators and member-families, and as an attempt to democratize the media, the MST produces the Jornal Sem Terra and the MST Informa.