XVII Congress of the Brazilian Studies Association

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

Session Submission Type: Complete Panel

Abstract

Founded in 1984, Brazil's Landless Workers Movement (MST) has made incomparable gains for marginalized, rural peoples and remains a rallying point for international networks of solidarity. Like many progressive movements, the MST was obliged to retreat in the past years. Under the poisonous Bolsonaro government from 2019 to 2022, the movement lost 15% of its base in encampments across Brazil. The MST has endured however, and since Lula’s return to the presidency in 2023, has articulated the landless struggle with new vigor, building particularly on longstanding connections with urban movements to strengthen its presence in major cities. Progressive movements have come and gone but all the while the MST remains a constant presence. 40 years of the MST is a triumph to celebrate: 450,000 families settled; more than half a million people afforded the security of a house and land. And yet, inevitably, over such an extended timeframe, the movement has changed. From ethnographic perspectives, this panel examines the significance of a longitudinal activism. We focus on questions of resilience and seek insights that speak to a broader political project regarding emergent subjectivities. How can we understand the MST as both mass movement unified by collective identity, and yet also a set of autonomous rural communities? What do dimensions of sociality and affect made plain by fine-grained ethnography say about the way the movement experiences transformation as it seeks change in the world more broadly? What is the nature of the MST's struggle as a generational search for justice?

Sub Unit

• XVII Congress of the Brazilian Studies Association

Individual Presentations

• Struggle as temporal experience: Aesthetic and social dimensions of life in the MST - Alex Ungprateeb Flynn, UCLA

• Becoming Sem Terra: Political Rituals Among Brazil’s Landless Rural Workers’ Movement (MST) - Melinda Gurr, Lahore University of Management Sciences

• De místicas e bailes aos festivais: música e atualizações da memória no Movimento dos Trabalhadores Rurais Sem Terra - Janaina Moscal, No affiliation

• Two enemies to fight: An ethnographic journey with MST evangelicals in Pernambuco - David Simbsler, EHESS Paris

Chair

• Melinda Gurr, Lahore University of Management Sciences

Moderator

• Bryan Pitts, UCLA

Session Organizer

• Alex Ungprateeb Flynn, UCLA