Fostering sustainability in Brazilian agrarian reform: insights from assentamentos and ecovillages

3.4.2 | Phases of Assentamento: Occupation and Encampment

<<< 3.4.1 | Phases of Assentamento: Grassroot Engagement

Occupation and encampment are carried out under conditions that are frequently very harsh, in environments with non-existing infrastructure. Shanties or tents are built with wood, thick black plastic, and other materials gathered during the grassroots engagement phase or donated by third parties. In order to survive in these conditions, participants in encampments are divided into different ‘taskforces’ responsible for particular areas, such as building and maintaining the tents, managing the provision of water and other basic resources (such as gas cylinders), cooking food, and interacting with the police and other authorities [7:10].

The harshness of the conditions implies that already within the first few days, some of the participants quit:

“you can imagine all the rain and the wind [...] there were no trees here, no break for the wind and the wind would take the tents [...] so some quit and some went to another encampment and so we came to this number families here today” [15:17].

Conditions can be so precarious that in one of the assentamentos we visited, a young child sickened and died after drinking water polluted with “agrotoxics” which had been illegally stocked in a warehouse close by. In that case, although official investigations led to this conclusion, there have been no legal consequences for the farm-owner as a result of the death [31:116].


In addition to these environmental threats, MST occupations are frequently repressed with violence—especially in remote areas. In some cases, such violence may be carried out by the military police, which intervenes if the owner of the land requests an eviction in court on the basis of trespassing, and the judge grants it. One of the most dramatic cases of police violence occurred at Eldorado dos Carajás, in the northern state of Pará, where, in 1996, 19 MST activists were shot dead by the military police in the context of an occupation in which over 3,000 families were participating. Less deadly, but equally widely known cases of police violence have occurred in other regions, with media coverage that frequently ends up portraying MST in negative light (Fernandes & Ramalho, 2001) and the sole responsible for the violence.

Beyond repression by the police, mercenaries (so-called capangas), hired by landowners, may also attack MST encampments. Sometimes acampados even wake up at night to find their tents and surrounding fields on fire. An interviewee reported that this sort of attacks are more likely to occur when the land has been obtained through illegal processes of land grabbing (generically called grilagem in Brazil), because in these cases, if an expropriation eventually goes through, there is no compensation for the alleged owner [9:83]. Despite the risks, and especially after the  law amendments that took place under President Cardoso’s mandate, MST continues to occupy land for which there is outstanding evidence of grilagem or for which INCRA has already emitted a report indicating the suitability for land reform. In these cases, the probability to successfully establish an assentamento may be relatively higher.


As reported, shared hardships often experienced by participants in encampments lead to two kinds of relevant outcomes. First, the intensity of the experience contributes to the formation of strong feelings of trust, solidarity, and common identity as sem terra (landless). These are strengthened by the fact that, during this stage, one clear, shared goal becomes evident to all: to obtain land on which to live, work and sustain their livelihoods. As stated by an interviewee,

“So, the issue of the encampment, it ends up being… it’s that the mystic is very strong, right? Because the objective is one, to obtain the land, the worry is one, to obtain the land… and we end up doing things collectively. You do a gathering of food and it is collective; you organize a lunch in the encampment and it is for everyone. This fact of being close, right? The space in the tents…. because even though every family has its tent, they are very close, then life ends up being more collective. When someone gets sick everyone worries..." [15:34] 

The “collective character” of life in the encampment is further reinforced by a number of collective discussions and decisions that occur during this phase, corresponding to a high frequency of meetings in which everyone can participate [07:06]. These discussions and decisions deal with daily life in the encampment, but also go well beyond that. For instance, they decide on a name for the encampment (which usually is inherited to the assentamento, if the encampment is successful in its purpose). The name is usually regarded as a tribute. Examples of names include those of Brazilian academics who studied the question of land, such as Milton Santos (famous geographer); well-known church figures engaged with the landless movement, such as Dom Tomás Balduíno or Irmã Alberta; or names of those killed during the encampment, as in Pequeno William, named after a child who died after drinking polluted water on site.

Participants in the encampment also agree on a set of internal rules and commitments that allow for a basic level of peaceful coexistence. Interviewees reported that, following a strong tradition in the movement of seeking consensus when a decision needs to be taken, these rules are agreed upon by all [09:119; 23:60]. As described by another interviewee,

“Families put on paper what they wouldn't like to happen inside the assentamento, like a theft, or aggression to animals or humans, or to drink too much… these are things that are signed by all the families. And if one of those items of internal rules is broken, then automatically that family already knows that they are not able to live in community, in that community… what we call the “excluded from the excluded” [7:30].”

This indicates the second kind of important outcome of the encampment experience: an ongoing process of selection of those families who in the end might stay in the assentamento. Selection places a critical role in an assentamento creation process because, in principle, there are no closed doors for anyone, neither from the previous grassroots engagement phase nor during the occupation: ”the principle of MST is ‘the more people are there, the better’; our pressure comes because of the quantity of people, if we have 1,000 people, the pressure for expropriation will be larger than if we had just 100” [9:55]. Based on the descriptions provided by interviewees, selection seemingly occurs as a result of two distinct mechanisms:
 
  1. Self-induced selection: when participants decide to quit after realizing the extent of the hardships, or after learning that particular expectations cannot be satisfied. An example is the expectation of “getting land to sell it afterwards”, which as we have seen is impossible under legal constraints. Discussions in collective meetings apparently serve to clarify the actual possibilities and limitations of life as assentados—and to understand the dimension of the efforts needed to get there in the first place. This process leads to some families voluntarily deciding to leave—and the ones who stay experience an even stronger feeling of shared identity in a common struggle as sem terra. In the words of one interviewee, land is seen as something to be “conquered”, not “won” [07:32]; another interviewee distinguishes between those “really interested in staying in the land” and the “opportunists” [09:56].
  2. Other-induced selection: when it is brought about by problems related with living in community, as suggested in the quotation above (i.e., when mutually-agreed-upon rules are broken). There do not seem to be pre-established mechanisms to expel participants: each encampment seems to find a particular way, perhaps on a case-by-case basis, in ways that were described as “natural” [07:32]. To do this effectively, however, requires the development of a “strong organization” [09:56], capable of establishing such rules and implementing collective decisions. This is not always easily or quickly achieved.
Indeed, as reported by interviewees, the longer the phase of occupation and encampment, the stronger the two noted outcomes—building a “collective character” and developing a process of (self) selection. Both outcomes are, in turn, connected with the prospects for a successful assentamento. Interviewees expressed consistent views on this point:

“the longer that people remain in the encampment, the better the assentamento will be (laughing)” [9:57];

“[...] the shorter the struggle to obtain the land, the less politicized people get there, right? And the less supportive [solidarios] they become the moment they arrive to the land” [11:52].

It thus seems reasonable to hypothesize that the particular characteristics of a long encampment phase—constant hardships and threats experienced together in shared spaces; development of a common vision based on the goal of “conquering land”; collective discussion and clarification of expectations; and a concomitant process of (self-) selection—lead to strengthened trust and solidarity in a future assentamento.

The length of the occupation and encampment phase varies widely:

“while some last two months, there are other areas in which after fifteen years, the encampment was still not over” [9:58].

Part of the time may be spent moving between areas, undergoing continuous evictions, sometimes going back to occupy the same properties, until a place is found where the process for the assentamento establishment is allowed to continue [11:17]. One of the interviewees reported being part of a group of 450 families that experienced 9 different evictions until they were allowed to stay and the process of expropriation effectively began [15:6].


However, even after that happens, the remaining process of “legalizing” an assentamento is notoriously slow, with obstacles stemming from inefficient bureaucracy and lack of political will [31:11]. In one of the cases we visited (Pequeno William), people camped for five years in a location out of which they were eventually evicted, and then set a new encampment on land that belonged to the federal government and that had already been inspected by INCRA and declared suitable for agrarian reform; “but even with all that given, with no landowner trying to block our way, we had to wait for three more years to be recognized as an assentamento” [31:12]. As a result, the community spent a total of eight years in the occupation and encampment phase. 


>>> 3.4.3 | Phases of Assentamento: Establishment

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