3 | Brazilian agrarian reform: historical developments
As mentioned in the introduction, land inequality has been present in Brazil since colonial implementation of a system known as capitanias hereditárias, under which the territory was divided into large stretches of land controlled by a relatively small number of wealthy families of the nobility (Faoro 1958).[1] That system was initially implemented in the coastal areas of Brazil’s Northeast—where large sugarcane plantations boomed with the systematic use of slave labor—and was eventually reproduced in other regions. The capitanias system led to the early development of a commodity-export economy based on the exploitation of natural resources (such as wood and gold) and agrarian production (mostly of sugarcane, coffee and rubber), carried out in extensive rural properties that came to be known as latifúndios.
After gaining independence in 1822, the rural elites retained or even increased their influence in politics, and the pattern of extreme land concentration remained (Ondetti, 2008). Slavery was abolished in 1888, but freed slaves were not granted rights over land, and they remained attached to a largely unchanged economic and social system. By the beginning of the twentieth century, most of Brazil’s workforce was still concentrated in rural areas and attached to the highly concentrated ownership structure of latifúndios.
Contemporary processes of agrarian reform first arose as part of the demands of organized rural workers in the early 1960s, both in the south and in the northeast of Brazil, where they were strongly repressed (Stedile, 1999, p. 17). The emergence of these demands occurred in a context of significant mobilization of Brazilian civil society, spurred by a variety of causes. The case for agrarian reform was set on the backdrop of the new Federal Constitution (1946), drafted in the redemocratization period following the fall of Vargas’s dictatorial regime, which stipulated that land had an inherent “social function”—the promotion of social well-being—and could be expropriated from private owners when it did not fulfill it.[2] This general principle reflected the conviction of some intellectuals that the unequal distribution of land represented an obstacle to Brazil’s economic and political modernization, but until the 1960s it remained “little more than words on a page” (Ondetti, 2008, p. 11) .The only relative exception was Brazil’s southernmost region, where authorities sought to stimulate European migration “mainly for the purpose of defending the country’s southern frontier, leading to the establishment of a substantial class of solid smallholders in the states of Rio Grande do Sul, Santa Catarina, and Paraná” (Ondetti, 2008, p. 10).
The Peasant Leagues, a seminal movement of poor farmers, initially supported by the Communist Party and the Catholic Church, became a nationally prominent voice that pressed for an equivalent treatment of rights of urban and rural workers and the need for a “radical” agrarian reform. Although the left-leaning president João Goulart supported these ideas, the political context was extremely polarized, with rural elites acting decisively against his proposed measures to empower rural workers. Goulart was able to approve the Rural Worker Statute (1963), which extended the right to unionize, but Congress blocked his initiative to pass an agrarian-reform bill. Goulart’s political agenda, which was promptly seen as a “socialist threat” in a cold-war polarized world, was ultimately overridden by conservative opposition, with undisputed support from the CIA, in the 1964 military coup d’etat.
Although the military regime aggressively reacted against grassroots rural activism, the first military President surprisingly embraced the claims for land reform and sponsored the approval of the Land Statute (Law 4.504/64). Enacted six months after the military took office, the Land Statute provided a legal framework for expropriation and redistribution of land. However, rural elites exerted a level of resistance that obstructed its implementation. The military authorities proceeded by promoting the technical modernization of agriculture and supporting commercial crop production, eroding popular access to land. Nonetheless, despite its initial failure in implementation, the Land Statute would later provide activists with a further justification to pressure for agrarian reform, as well as with legal instruments to make it practically viable — as was later the case, when changes in political will and context emerged (Ondetti, 2008, p. 13).
Meanwhile, the military dictatorship decided to establish rural settlements (assentamentos) as part of its agrarian policy, but they were intended more as means to occupy and defend territory in remote regions—in particular the Amazon—than to redistribute land and improve the lives of poor rural workers. The program received the slogan “A land without men for men without land”, and its implementation was assigned to INCRA (National Institute of Colonization and Land Reform), an agency created specifically for that purpose.
At the outset, INCRA’s main goal was to assist in this ‘colonization program’ (INCRA, 2015c). However, the program was cut down in the 1970s and replaced by state-subsidized private colonization in the Center-West of the country (Ondetti, 2008, p. 63). Once again, the concept of “agrarian reform” remained on paper.
In the late 70s and early 80s, occupations of land and other forms of protest for land reform intensified, as part of a larger wave of mobilization against the weakening dictatorship. In a surge of political activity, the Catholic Church began playing a crucial role through the Comissão Pastoral da Terra (CPT), an internal branch led by bishops, priests and pastoral agents who affiliated themselves with “Liberation Theology”—an ideological tendency that emphasized the social dimension of pastoral activity and incorporated Marxist understandings in its engagements. The CPT worked intensely to mobilize and coordinate grassroots activists and prevented the creation of separate factions, thereby contributing to the formation of a unified national-level movement (Stedile, 1999, p. 23). In addition, the CPT and other related organizations aided by mapping out strategies for dealing with authorities, the media, and other external actors; identifying and training potential leaders; engaging and organizing families in local municipalities; and raising awareness by publishing “easy-to-read booklets justifying, often in religious terms, the need for land reform and other social changes” (Ondetti, 2008, p. 73).
>>> 3.1 | The Landless Rural Workers Movement (MST)
[1] For an updated view on land distribution in Brazil, see DIEESE (2011). For more information about Brazil's rural GINI, see MDA (2001).
[2] Article 147 from the 1946 Federal Constitution stated: “property use will be conditioned to social well-being. The law can [...] promote the fair distribution of property, with fair opportunity for all” (authors’ translation).