XVII Congress of the Brazilian Studies Association

Two enemies to fight: An ethnographic journey with MST evangelicals in Pernambuco

• In Event: 40 years of Sem Terra: Ethnographic perspectives on the significance of the Landless Workers Movement's struggle

Abstract

Breaking with the usual narrative of evangelical affinity with Bolsonarism, this paper aims at presenting a few reflections on evangelical participation in MST camps. Based on fieldwork conducted between 2013 and 2018 in two former sugarcane plantations turned into agrarian reform settlements in 2017, with a special focus on the critical times of the institutional coup and consecutive rise of Bolsonaro, this study interrogates both the invisibility of these actors - yet sharing the same social background as other landless families - and their contribution to the fight for land and a more democratic Brazil. If evangelical participation in social struggle in the Northeast is documented since the Peasant leagues, it hardly appears in MST studies (Wolford, 2010 ; Carter, 2015), if only to deplore practices conflicting with MST leadership. While highlighting the heterogeneity of these evangelicals, from long-rooted rural classical Pentecostalism to recently-formed small autonomous urban churches, my presentation will show how the so-called « spiritual » struggle, with important ethical, spatial and temporal dimensions, allows them to overcome uncertainty in times of crisis.

Author

• David Simbsler, EHESS Paris