Received: 8 March 2016 Revised: 20 November 2016 Accepted: 21 November 2016

DOI: 10.1111/joac.12206

ORIGINAL ARTICLE

The political economy of land struggle in Brazil

under Workers’ Party governments
Sérgio Sauer1 | George Mészáros2

1
University of Brasília (UnB) Postgraduate
Programme in Environment and Rural Abstract
Development (MADER), Campus de Planaltina, This paper analyses the agrarian policies of the governments of
Área Universitária, 01, Vila Nossa Senhora de Presidents Lula (2003–2010) and Dilma Rousseff (2011–2016) in
Fátima—Planaltina, Brasília, —DF 73345‐010,
Brazil
the light of the contradiction between the historical support for land
2 reform and agrarian social movements by the Workers’ Party (PT)
School of Law, University of Warwick, Library
Rd, Coventry CV4 7AL, UK on the one hand, and the PT’s more recent electoral and political
Correspondence alliances with agribusiness on the other. After more than a decade
Sérgio Sauer, University of Brasilia (UnB), of progressive administrations, key government programmes have
Campus de Planaltina, Área Universitária, 01,
only accounted for marginal gains and in some cases setbacks, sym-
Vila Nossa Senhora de Fátima—Planaltina,
Brasília—DF, 73345‐010, Brazil. bolized by the failure to expand the expropriation of new land and
Email: sauer@unb.br; sauer.sergio@gmail.com settle landless families on an adequate scale. The collapse of those
alliances and 2016’s impeachment process of President Rousseff
marks the end of that cycle, highlighting strategic and policy failures.
The paper examines government actions, the historical causes and
roots of land conflicts, and struggles for land and territory, as well
as the difficulties of mobilization. The paper focuses upon political
disputes, particularly new processes of criminalization, economic
disputes, surrounding the role of agribusiness, and the challenges
related to struggles for land and territorial rights in a situation ruled
by a progressive party and governments.

KEYWORDS

agrarian social movements, Brazil, land struggle, progressive

government, Workers’ Party

1 | I N T RO DU CT I O N

A broad alliance of the Workers’ Party (PT) with not only left but also centre and even right‐wing political parties made
it possible for Luís Inácio Lula da Silva and the PT to finally win the presidency in 2002 after nearly 20 years of trying.
Their victory revived hopes for land reform in Brazil, especially because, since its foundation in 1980, the PT had been
advocating the democratization of landownership (PT, 1989).
Despite further electoral victories, the political alliances with the centre and right stymied both the prospects
for progressive economic development and major changes to the agrarian structure. These alliances and associated
political choices, based on a “coalition government”, prevented more significant changes, especially in the

J Agrar Change. 2017;17:397–414. wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/joac © 2017 John Wiley & Sons Ltd. 397
398 SAUER AND MÉSZÁROS

formulation and implementation of economic policies, resulting in “a weak neo‐developmentalism” (Boito, 2015, p.
2). However, although this coalition with sectors of the national elite in 2002 resulted in a continuation of some
neoliberal policies (the PT described it as a “post‐liberal position”—Sader, 2003), Lula was able to maintain his
election commitment to ensure a recovery in the “capacity of public investment [that is] so vital to stimulating
economic growth” (Silva, 2002).
The PT’s alliance included sectors of national elite (who longed to recover profit rates and had been promised “tax
reform, which exempts production”—Silva, 2002) but also many social movements and trade unions. The latter groups
were the main subjects of land struggles (Fernandes, 2015) and demanded political and economic changes.
There is little doubt that after three full PT terms in office, land reform as a project fell way down the state’s polit-
ical agenda. This was well before the emergence of president Michel Temer’s far‐right administration and its effort to
bury land reform altogether by abolishing the Ministry of Agrarian Development and weakening the powers and
finances of the National Institute of Colonization and Agrarian Reform (INCRA). The fact remains, however, that under
successive PT administrations, the overall picture had been one of increasing political fragility of social movements,
including an inability to pressure the government into implementing agrarian policies. Some political gains and
advances in public policies did occur, but the negative trend was clear. After 2010, there was a marked decline of land
occupations alongside a drastic fall in the implementation of land reform programmes and recognition of territorial
rights by the federal government.
An important question is how and why that happened. While acknowledging weaknesses and difficulties
confronting popular mobilizations, it is necessary to overcome simplistic understandings of “partisanship” of social
struggles and interpretations that reduce land struggle to a simple demand for state‐led land reform (Martins,
2002). Nor can the political problem be reduced to one of co‐optation, institutionalization, and diminishing autonomy
that often accompanies the evolution from “movement to organisation” (Foweraker, 2001; Levy, 2012). The shift can-
not be explained simply in terms of a “change from grassroots movement to non‐governmental organisation”
(Foweraker, 2001, p. 864), or the corresponding idea that NGOs “have gained much more importance” in representing
popular demands and struggles (Gohn, 2010, p. 343).
Other external political changes, especially new processes of criminalization of social movements (Sauer &
Souza, 2014), and an “agrarian pax” (Porto‐Gonçalves & Cuin, 2014), forged in supporting agribusiness and public
investments in certain types of rural development, must be acknowledged. According to these authors, “by prior-
itizing the policy of exporting commodities, on the one hand, and of income transfer policies, on the other”, a pax
was built that resulted in the loss of “much of the convening power” of social movements (Porto‐Gonçalves &
Cuin, 2014, p. 19).
Analyses of recent land struggles and agrarian policies, especially those of President Lula’s (2003–2010) and
Dilma’s (2011–2016) governments, must take on board the profound impact of so‐called “agribusiness economics”
(Delgado, 2013). Also part of a kind of neo‐developmentalism (Boito & Berringer, 2014), this has been underpinned
by political narratives that offered a particular version of modernization and “sustainable development”. As a
discourse, however, this neo‐developmentalist model, or “agribusiness economics”, has effectively sidelined the role
played by peasants and landless workers themselves, strengthening the role of agribusiness and a neoliberal economic
logic in Brazil (Frayssinet, 2011).
This paper begins by briefly setting out the background to land distribution in Brazil and the economic rise and
political impact of the agribusiness sector, as well as the rise and demands of rural social movements themselves prior
to the election of the PT governments. It then examines the strategic and tactical compromises of successive PT
administrations with agribusiness, symbolized by the continued stranglehold exercised by the Ministry of Agriculture
(MAPA) over land reform. The paper argues that amid the intensification of fiscal incentives for this sector, agrarian
policy was severely prejudiced. The record of successive PT governments on land reform was contradictory. We
acknowledge major steps forward by these governments in their rejection of the criminalization of rural social move-
ments, but also discuss the tactical response of powerful landowner interests within Congress that intensified the use
of more varied forms of criminalization with considerable success. Overall, we conclude that although family farming
SAUER AND MÉSZÁROS 399

benefited from massive rises in investment, land reform as a whole was marginalized altogether along with the polit-
ical influence of those sectors struggling for land reform.

2 | A G R I C U L T U R A L A N D A G R A R I A N PO L I C I E S A N D S O C I A L M OV E M E N T
R E S P O N S E S P R I O R T O P T G O V E R N M E N T , 1 9 6 4– 2 0 02

Petras and Veltmeyer (2001, p. 83) have argued that as a rule agrarian policy should acknowledge that “... peasant and
landless workers’ movements in Latin America are not anachronistic but dynamic modern classes”, which have been
involved in the global struggle against transnational agribusiness (Vergara‐Camus, 2013). In Brazil, that dynamism
was certainly evident in the mobilizations and popular struggles for democratization in the late 1970s and mid‐
1980s, in which agrarian movements and rural organizations directly participated.
One factor stimulating the intensification of rural struggles was the military dictatorship’s (1964–1985) agricul-
tural modernization policy and its consequences (Stédile & Fernandes, 1999). According to Vergara‐Camus (2009,
p. 368), “it is not the expansion of capitalist relations per se, but rather the nature of the restructuring of agriculture that
explains the re‐emergence of the struggles for land in Brazil”. The implementation of Green Revolution technologies
(e.g. the adoption of intensive mechanization, chemical fertilizers, and selected seeds) promoted great increases in
production and modernization of large properties (Martins, 1994). However, they neither resulted in significant shifts
away from the expansionary logic of agricultural frontiers nor altered land concentration (Sauer, 2010).
On the contrary, subsidized credit and other incentives (especially tax exemptions for industries and financial
companies to buy land) for private investments and colonization projects in the Amazon (Hecht, 2005) reinforced
the dominance of large properties. Projects aimed at occupying the Centre West and Amazon regions in order to pro-
mote economic growth and modernization did so without any kind of land redistribution (Martins, 1994). The histor-
ical concentration of land worsened. The 2006 Agricultural and Livestock Census of IBGE, the latest census available,
reveals the inequality of land distribution in Brazil (see Table 1).
Besides land concentration, the country experienced the displacement of millions of families, especially from the
north‐east and the south, towards the Centre West and northern regions. These displacements were actively
encouraged by official narratives advocating the use of “unoccupied” or “insufficiently occupied” lands (Hecht,
2005), while demonstrating a complete disregard for the use of the land by the traditional local populations. The
low cost of the land—combined with governmental investments in infrastructure (especially roads) and tax incen-
tives—turned the purchase of large land areas into a profitable activity, giving rise to what Martins (1994) terms a
“rural conservative modernization” based upon a “military–landlord alliance”, increasing productivity without any land
redistribution (Martins, 1997).
In sharp contrast, and despite repression (persecution, illegal arrests, killings, threats, etc.), agrarian social move-
ments kept the struggle for land reform on the political agenda, demanding land and public policies for the countryside
(Deere & de Medeiros, 2008). These forms of resistance and struggle were fundamental for the creation of new polit-
ical parties, such as the Workers’ Party (PT) in 1980, as well as the Unified Workers’ Central (CUT) in 1983. As well as

TABLE 1 The number and area of agricultural and livestock estates by groups of total area (Brazil, 2006)
Groups of total area Number of farms (units) % Area of the farms (hectares) %

Less than 10 hectares 2,477,071 47.86 7,798,607 2.36

10 to less than 100 hectares 1,971,577 38.09 62,893,091 19.06
100 to less than 1,000 hectares 424,906 8.21 112,696,478 34.16
1,000 to 2,500 hectares 31,899 0.62 48,072,546 14.57
2,500 and larger 15,012 0.29 98,480,672 29.85
Total 4,920,465 329,941,393

Source: 2006 Agricultural and Livestock Census (IBGE, 2009).

400 SAUER AND MÉSZÁROS

influencing the agendas of social mobilization involving land reform and political democracy, these struggles witnessed
the creation of the MST (Stédile & Fernandes, 1999; Vergara‐Camus, 2014) and the consolidation of a new way of
struggling through encampments and land occupations (Martins, 1997).
In the 1990s, the agricultural policies of Fernando Henrique Cardoso’s administration (1995–2002), especially
his first term, were marked by a policy of trade liberalization, deregulation, and the dismantling of agricultural
policy instruments—particularly the reduction of agricultural credit, formerly used by the military regime.
Agriculture would now be used as “the Real’s anchor”; that is, low agricultural prices to curb inflation and stabilize
the newly created currency (Delgado, 2010). Under the aegis of neoliberalism and the minimal state (reduction of
public spending), there was a drastic reduction in the volume of resources applied to agricultural policies as well as
a reduction of food import tariffs. This combination resulted in a decline of 30% in the real income of the
agricultural sector in 1995 and a significant increase in imports during the 1990s (Delgado, 2010). According to
Delgado (2010, p. 47), “the total value of agricultural imports rose from US$2.4 billion in 1990 to $5 billion in
1994 and $6.8 billion in 1996, an unprecedented situation in modern history of the Brazilian economy”, with a
consequent rise in the sector’s indebtedness.
From 1999, Cardoso’s second term, the government went back to encouraging agricultural exports, causing a
“veritable re‐launching of agribusiness” (Delgado, 2010, p. 32). This policy would ultimately be retained and enhanced
by the Lula government. Beyond the significant increase in resources for agricultural credit, Cardoso’s government
launched the Moderfrota programme to fund the purchase of agricultural machinery and tools, thereby encouraging
investments in the expansion of grain production. Among other reasons, the devaluation of the exchange rate turned
agribusiness into a competitive exporter, helping to stimulate an increase of almost 50% in exports, from ‘... US$20.6
billion in 2000, to $30.6 billion in 2003″ (Delgado, 2010, p. 49).
The production and export of soybeans grew rapidly, rising (along with corn) to account for 80% of national
production of grains. Domestic production was “... 38 million tonnes in 2001, 42 million in 2002 and 52 million in
2003”. Agribusiness exhibited growth rates of 4.6% per year, well above the 1.8% in the industrial sector, between
2000 and 2003 (Delgado, 2010, p. 49), which led to the incorporation of territorial spaces and expansion of
agricultural frontiers (Hecht, 2005).
Parallel to the incentives given to agribusiness, land struggle and social movements’ demands increased
significantly over the course of the 1990s. The increase in land occupations—from 50 in 1990, to 186 in 1995, and
450 in 1996, peaking at 856 in 1999 (Fernandes, 2015; NERA, 2012)—combined with an increase in violence in rural
areas, mobilized public opinion in support of land reform. These forced Cardoso’s government to respond by creating
the Ministry of Agrarian Development (MDA) and establishing new settlement goals (Mattei, 2012).
In its second term (1999–2002), Cardoso’s government launched the “New Rural World” programme (1999).
Following the guidance of the World Bank, the logic was to give access to land in order to relieve rural poverty and
mitigate conflicts. This resulted in individualized responses to the demands and pressures of agrarian social move-
ments by creating settlements. The settlement policy of conflict mitigation was complemented by the implementation
of “market based agrarian reform”; that is, the commodification (purchase instead of expropriation) of land through the
creation of World Bank–funded credit lines for the landless families to buy plots themselves (Sauer, 2009).
According to official data from the National Institute for Colonization and Agrarian Reform (INCRA, 2009),
Cardoso’s government settled around 500,000 families between 1995 and 2002. Although these figures are
contested by some (NERA, 2012), the major criticism is that the settlement projects were mostly located in econom-
ically less dynamic regions, especially in the Amazon (Mattei, 2012). More controversial still was the relation of
Cardoso’s government with social movements, particularly with regard to the issue of land occupations (Sauer,
2017). The increase in occupations led the government to issue various legal measures designed to restrict the strug-
gle for land. A Provisional Measure (MP), colloquially known as the “anti‐invasion” law, was issued first in 1997 and
renewed on subsequent occasions. It prohibited rural property that had been the “object of forced possession or inva-
sion motivated by agrarian conflict of a collective character” from being inspected by INCRA (Sauer & Souza, 2014).
Given that inspections were an essential first step or prerequisite to any process of expropriation (a compulsory
SAUER AND MÉSZÁROS 401

takeover by the state through INCRA for land reform, but with due economic compensation1), it effectively stymied
reform.
The main result of the legal measures was a huge decrease in land occupations, from over 800 in 1999 to less than
400 in 2000, and only 194 occupations in 2001 (CPT, 2015; Fernandes, 2015). A knock‐on effect was a delay in the
implementation of new settlements, especially after 1999 (Sauer & Souza, 2014). The Provisional Measure, combined
with the criminalization of land occupations, and an emphasis upon so‐called “market‐based land reform” (Sauer,
2009), effectively constrained the demands for land and were among the chief causes of friction between the Cardoso
government and social movements (Fernandes, 2015).

3 | T HE OV E R R I D I N G I N F L U E N C E OF T H E M I NI S T R Y O F A G R I C U L T U R E
U P O N T H E P O L I T I C A L E C O N O M Y OF L A N D R E F O R M

According to Tarso Genro, a Minister of Education (2004–2005) in Lula’s first administration, given the demands and
political pressures for a more socially inclusive economy, the challenge of the newly elected president would be to build
alternatives capable of reducing external vulnerability and allowing social investments. Given a globalized society with
open markets, the main problem in the construction of alternatives would be to deal with the challenge of speculative
capital. Consequently, the path should be to deploy a productivist‐model that, with economic growth and a positive
trade balance, would allow government investment programmes, greater income redistribution and social inclusion
(Genro, 2004). This has been called “neo‐developmentalism” (Boito & Berringer, 2014), or the “post‐neoliberal” model
(Sader, 2003),2 which boils down to stimulating economic growth with state public investments and fiscal control.
The Growth Acceleration Programme (PAC), the government’s main policy response, was the foremost example of
Brazil’s neo‐developmentalist model. Begun under President Lula’s administration after 2007 and retained by President
Dilma, it combined large‐scale public investments in infrastructure (roads, ports, hydroelectric dams, etc.) with resources
from the BNDES (National Bank for Economic and Social Development) to promote private enterprises and economic
growth (Ministério do Planejamento, 2015). As well as broadening and deepening internal markets, its aim was to fur-
ther integrate Brazil in global markets and cement its role as an agricultural export superpower. While it had positive
implications for Brazil’s balance of payments, international creditworthiness, and fiscal control,3 it gave greater political
importance to the Ministry of Agriculture (MAPA) and increased economic relevance of agribusiness. It also led to an
increasing influence of Brazilian agrarian capital in other parts of Latin America (Vergara‐Camus & Kay, 2017).
Linked to the above policy choices, the government, through MAPA, invested heavily in incentives for agribusiness
(Delgado, 2010), thus taking advantage of the growing demand for agricultural commodities in international markets in
order to generate surpluses in Brazil’s trade balance. After 2001, Brazil ran regular trade surpluses in which agricultural
exports figured prominently, supporting narratives of the importance of agribusiness and the MAPA. These exports
accounted for around 42% of total exports—and only around 7% of imports—from 1999 to 2010. Gross agricultural
exports of US$96.75 billion in 2014 (and a corresponding net surplus of US$80.13 billion) yet again broke all records.
Soy exports were responsible for 23.2%, and soy feed for 8.8% of these total agricultural exports in 2013. There were
also significant exports of sugar (13.3%), poultry (9.6%), and beef (7.6%) in the same year (Valor Econômico, 2015).

1
In the section dealing with land reform, the 1988 constitutional mandated financial compensation of expropriated land, establishing
that such expropriation must be compensated partly in cash (the value of the infrastructural improvements) and treasury bonds (the
value of the land) at market prices.
2
This definition is highly controversial, with criticism from both right and left. No less controversial, Fernandes (2015, p. 161) proposed
this distinction: “the neoliberals direct their policies to the capitalist system. The post‐neoliberals do the same, but accept the creation
of policies outside the capitalist system.” We believe it to be more complex.
3
The primary surplus—designed to pay public debt interest—target (the balance of revenues and non‐debt‐related expenditures) was
even raised from 3.75% to 4.25% of GDP in Lula’s first year (later exceeding this target). Tight targets were also set for monetary pol-
icy, inflation, and international trade (Delgado, 2010).
402 SAUER AND MÉSZÁROS

In combination with private investment and modernization, governmental programmes and incentives buttressed
“an economic model rooted in the intensified exploitation of natural and agricultural resources” (Baletti, 2014, p. 6).
Besides generating foreign investments and balancing international trade accounts (Kingston, 2012), government
incentives towards the production and export of agricultural commodities fostered an economic process of deindus-
trialization and the development of what Delgado (2013) terms the “agribusiness economy”. This economy is rooted
“in the capture and overexploitation of natural comparative advantages” (Delgado, 2013, p. 64), or in the appropriation
of “ground rent” (Vergara‐Camus & Kay, 2017). Territorial clashes and de facto struggles for territory would be one
consequence.4
Clearly, Brazil’s trade balance has depended heavily upon agribusiness and mining exports. However, unprocessed or
semi‐processed primary products (mainly agricultural commodities and minerals) are exported virtually tax free because
of the Kandir Law passed in 1996. Kingston (2012) was one of many commentators who suggested that Brazil’s “success
has relied heavily—even excessively—on commodity exports, mostly destined for China. Exports have grown to $256
billion, up from $118 billion in 2005, and … account for 14 per cent of GDP (compared to 6 per cent in the 1990s)”.
According to Delgado (2013, p. 62), the “agribusiness economy” builds an “ideological hegemony from the top,
bringing together large landholdings, agro‐industrial chains closely linked to foreign sectors”, while enjoying state
support mainly through MAPA’s support and policies. This power pact enables “the accumulation of capital under
the scope of these sectors melded by public money” based on a discourse of “environmental governance”. This
economy is “the condition that makes neo‐extractivism possible” (Baletti, 2014, p. 7) and/or a sort of neoliberal
neo‐developmentalism (Boito & Berringer, 2014). This power pact employs a set of political and ideological devices
that include an active agribusiness voting bloc in the National Congress (the Ruralist Bloc, a group of over 200
agribusiness representatives in the Chamber of Deputies and Senate); state support, especially by expanding public
credit; and the Ministry of Agriculture (MAPA), which is occupied by leading agribusiness representatives.
The vast agricultural export surpluses generated by the commodities export boom simultaneously led to a boom
in both demand for land and land prices. As a consequence, the state’s financial margin of action for land reform was
substantially diminished, since market price was the basis upon which the compensation value of expropriated land
was determined. According to recent data, the price of agricultural land increased 227% in 10 years, almost double
the rate of inflation in Brazil. When compared with other investments between 2008 and 2012, such as the dollar,
stocks, government bonds, and gold, rural land proved to be the most profitable (Sauer & Leite, 2012).5 These were
extremely adverse conditions under which to acquire land for resettlement, leading to what one former head of
INCRA called a critical “bottle neck”.6
Other apparently extraneous but nevertheless powerful factors continue to influence the political economy of
land reform. Brazil’s judiciary has also contributed to land price inflation.7 Although legally entrusted with a purely
adjudicative role in land expropriations (where these are opposed by landowners), judges, who are more attuned to
propertied interests, have multiplied compensation rates several times above prevailing market rates. Provided that
landowners can pay the lawyer’s fees and do not need to sell up, it is in their economic interests to litigate in the
courts. That pattern has led some supporters of land reform to conclude reluctantly that an increased role for the
market through state purchases is necessary because it bypasses distortions associated with the judiciary’s price

4
The appropriation‐logic aims at extraction and mining activities—that is, the expropriation of natural resources with extremely low
social benefits and deep environmental impacts (Sauer, 2010)—despite development discourses on poverty reduction (Baletti,
2014) that mask strategies to expand agribusiness and agricultural frontiers (Delgado, 2013).
5
Based on a 2010 World Bank report, it is suggested that foreign investors bought over 20 million hectares in 2009–2010 as part of
the global phenomenon known as land grabbing (for further discussion, see Borras et al., 2011; with reference to Brazil, see Sauer &
Leite, 2012).
6
Celso Lisboa de Lacerda, head of INCRA from April 2011 to July 2012, interview, Brasília, December 2011.
7
For a discussion of this and the wider negative impacts of Brazil’s legal system upon social movements and land reform, see Mészáros
(2013).
SAUER AND MÉSZÁROS 403

multiplier effect, as well as the administrative delays and costs of litigation itself.8 Sadly, this represents yet another
subversion of what in theory should be an effective legal procedure (Mészáros, 2013).
By far the most powerful political force hindering progress is the Ministry of Agriculture (MAPA), not just through its
championing of large‐scale agribusiness interests and their associated export model, but also through interventions
designed to deprive land reform of one of its most valuable tools—an accurate index upon which to calculate land pro-
ductivity—the “rational and appropriate use” of land (Sauer & França, 2012). These indices directly determine how much
land the state can legally expropriate. By law, the less productive land is, the more vulnerable it is to expropriation. Con-
versely, according to the 1988 constitution, the more productive land is, the more immune it is from expropriation
(assuming that it is meeting its wider “social function”, which includes environmental and labour standards as well as
rational and adequate use). However, the indices are woefully outdated—unchanged since the mid‐1970s despite mas-
sive advances in technology and productivity. This anachronism means that whole swathes of land have been designated
“productive” when the state could—and by law should—expropriate them for land reform (Mészáros, 2013; Sauer, 2010).
In theory, the calibration of these indices is a technical matter. In practice, however, it has remained a point of
major political contention between MAPA and the MDA, with the former vetoing change. While the MDA recog-
nized the urgency of change and repeatedly tried to update the indices, legally it could not do so without MAPA’s
consent (Mészáros, 2013). It is in this context, incidentally, that one can begin to appreciate the political signifi-
cance of the move by the government of Michel Temer to abolish the MDA altogether. Whatever its limitations,
the MDA was one of the few thorns in the side of MAPA and landed interests. President Lula’s failure to update
the indices, despite his repeated promises to do so, along with the unwillingness of President Dilma Rousseff to
move this issue forward, highlight the state of paralysis in which land reform fell well before Temer took the helm.
These systematic failures over 13 years of PT rule also reveal the extent to which presidential policies remained
tied to interests that were inimical to redistributive reforms (Sauer, 2017).
The fault line between these two ministries had been present during the Cardoso administrations. Its origins are
well known. Certain congressional allies of the PT—and Cardoso’s Brazilian Social Democratic Party (PSDB) before it—
were rooted among landowning groups and regarded the Ministry of Agriculture as their fiefdom. In exchange for
their congressional cooperation, they demanded and secured the dominant say in the appointment of MAPA’s head
and its policy objectives. It is no accident that both of Dilma Rousseff’s Ministers of Agriculture came from the party
of her vice‐presidential ally, Michel Temer, of the Party of the Brazilian Democratic Movement (PMDB). Likewise,
Lula’s appointment of the president of the Brazilian Association of Agribusiness (ABAG), Roberto Rodrigues, as his
first Minister of Agriculture (2003–2006) was a clear nod to the power of this sector (Mészáros, 2013).
Arguably, this picture of continuity reached new heights (or depths) with President Rousseff’s appointment
(December 2014) of Senator Kátia Abreu as her new Minister of Agriculture. The appointment of senator Abreu, a
former head of the influential lobby group the Brazilian Confederation of Agriculture and Livestock (CNA), was
vehemently opposed by social movements and environmentalists. Among reasons for their opposition were her
support for weakening the Brazilian Forestry Code (Sauer & França, 2012)9; for liberalizing laws around genetically
modified seeds; her unwillingness to put outdated productivity indices to the test; and her championing of an
agribusiness export model, including more tax exemptions and tax incentives for agricultural exports as the solution
to agricultural and wider economic needs.
Even if the logic of such appointments is reduced to the arithmetic of congressional alliances, in Rousseff’s case,
there were real doubts over whether she harboured any real desire to see change in the area of land reform. The
matter was not even on the former president’s agenda.10 All told, the right of the agro‐industrial lobby to dictate

8
C. Lacerda, interview, Brasília, December 2011.
9
Changes to the code (which came into effect in 2012) represented a major victory for the agribusiness lobby in the face of opposition
from environmental NGOs and numerous social movements. The changes driven through by the land lobby saw a marked liberalization
of the code in favour of land exploitation and a weakening of environmental protections. President Rousseff’s failure to veto the vast
majority of changes illustrates the vast power of the land lobby within her administration (Sauer & França, 2012).
10
C. Lacerda, interview, Brasília, December 2011.
404 SAUER AND MÉSZÁROS

agricultural policy remained as entrenched under the PT as it ever was under Cardoso. In effect, the PT abdicated
responsibility and contracted out this vital area of policy to opponents of reform. At the same time, however, and
in keeping with the promises of the Letter to the Brazilian People (Silva, 2002), the PT governments did build policies
“aimed at enhancing agribusiness and family farming”. Left‐wing groups inside the PT were put in charge of the MDA
and developed policies to strengthen the economic role of family farming (as the next section will make clear).
Those policy inroads were immediately terminated by the new government of Michel Temer in 2016. On the one
hand, the MDA was abolished altogether, while on the other, Blairo Maggi, the world’s largest single producer of soy-
beans, was appointed as the new Minister of Agriculture. In addition to facing charges of illegal logging in the Amazon,
and defending the expansion of agribusiness with more tax breaks and logistical support, Maggi advocated the “eman-
cipation” of land settlements—literally relieving INCRA of its obligations to implement public policies in settlement
projects—and making changes to the law to open up land to foreign investment (O Globo, 2016), effectively legalizing
land grabbing (Borras, Hall, Scoones, White, & Wolford, 2011).

4 | L A N D R E D I S T R I B U T I O N A N D S U P P O R T F O R F A M I L Y F A RM E R S U N D E R
P T A D M I N I S T R A T I O N S : A CO N T R A D I C T O R Y L E G A C Y

Partly inspired by his Letter to the Brazilian People (Silva, 2002), Luís Inácio Lula da Silva’s election generated new
expectations related to land reform (Fernandes, 2015). Major rural unions and social movements reaffirmed their
demands in a Land Charter, which underlined the propitious national scenario for land reform (FNRA, 2003). These
demands were further underpinned by increasing numbers of encamped landless families (from 70,000 in 2002 up
to more than 150,000 in 2003), and increasing numbers of land occupations between 2003 and 2006 (CPT, 2015;
NERA, 2012).
President Lula responded to these occupations and to political pressure by announcing the creation of a high‐
level working group, under the leadership of Plinio de Arruda Sampaio (Mészáros, 2010). The working group formu-
lated the Second National Plan of Agrarian Reform (II PNRA), recommending the settlement of 1 million families over
4 years. Sampaio’s ambitious intention was to “expropriate enough land from the large estates in order to provoke a
real rupture with the old system of land tenure” (Branford, 2010, p. 420). However, the II PNRA was greeted with
scepticism inside government circles and the MDA immediately set about cutting the numbers back sharply, aiming
to settle 400,000 families in 4 years (Branford, 2010).
Although both of President Lula’s governments were marked by much greater social sensitivity, the government
did not break with the inherited neoliberal economic model (Delgado, 2010) but, as already mentioned, chose instead
to adopt a narrative closer to neo‐developmentalism (Boito & Berringer, 2014). That said, it no longer treated the land
struggle and associated mobilizations as a “police matter” (Carter, 2010; Mészáros, 2010), as Cardoso had done.
Although hotly debated (Delgado, 2013; NERA, 2012), there was a significant increase in numbers of settled fam-
ilies during Lula’s first administration, from 2004 to 2006. According to official figures of INCRA, in 2005 over
127,000 families were settled (over 13.4 million hectares), and another 136,000 families in 2006 (over 9.2 million
hectares). However, from 2006 onwards a marked decrease in numbers began, with only 67,000 families in 2007,
and 39,000 families in 2010, a decline that generated widespread criticism of Lula’s agrarian policies (Mészáros,
2013, p. 17). During President Dilma’s first term after 2011, the decrease was even more dramatic, as is shown in
Table 2.
Even though the precise numbers are open to question,11 the official figures in Table 2 suggest that President
Lula was a bit more efficient in settling landless families—over 614,000 in 48 million hectares of land, during his
8‐year term—than Cardoso was in his two terms. However, parallels between these two administrations include

11
According to more critical researchers, between 120,000 and 250,000 families were beneficiaries of land expropriation during Lula’s
administrations (NERA, 2012), since all the other figures are part of different programmes such as land titling and regularization, land
acquisition (not expropriated), recognition or legalization of territorial rights, and so on (see Fernandes, 2015; Sauer, 2017).
SAUER AND MÉSZÁROS 405

TABLE 2 Land redistributed and families settled by successive governments

Federal administration (years) Number of families Hectares

Sarney (1985–1989) 88,228 8,419,490

Collor (1990–1992) 2,866 129,483
Itamar (1993–1994) 33,576 1,349,091
Cardoso (1995–2002) 524,380 37,366,000
Lula (2003–2010) 614,088 48,291,180
Dilma (2011–2014) 107,354 2,956,218

Sources: INCRA (2009); INCRA (2014).

settling most of the families in the Amazon, where land is cheaper, adding the results of different programmes to
increase numbers and governmental achievements, buying instead of expropriating land, adding land titling to the
numbers, and so on.
Whatever the differences and similarities between the administrations, and their respective contributions to the
settlement of over 1 million landless families, the official data also underlie their failure to diminish structural inequal-
ity. Over a 10‐year period, Gini indicators (measuring land distribution) continued virtually unchanged: 0.857 in 1995/
96 and 0.856 in 2006 (Sauer & Leite, 2012). The power and privileges of agribusiness remained unchallenged
(Fernandes, 2015), while landed property remained deeply concentrated.
In the context of implementing II PNRA, President Lula substantially increased the MDA’s annual budgets, espe-
cially in areas such as the National Programme for Strengthening Family Farming (PRONAF) and the Family Farming
Cropping Plan (Mattei, 2005). The amount allocated to the Family Farming Cropping Plan rose from R$2.3 billion
(U$640 million) in 2003 to R$10 billion (U$ 4.8 billion) in 2007, R$15 billion (U$ 8.9 billion) in 2011, and R$28.9
billion (U$ 7.2 billion) for 2015/16 (MDA, 2015), mostly allocated to PRONAF (mainly credit for production).
Seeking to consolidate public support for rural development, in July 2006 Lula’s government passed the Family
Farming Law (No. 11.326). It established criteria for defining family farming. These are small‐scale farmers, who pro-
duce primarily with family labour. This law became the general rule for the definition of government programmes
geared exclusively towards this social sector (Delgado, 2010). Despite some advances, criticisms have been made that
since the main goal was to introduce family farmers to the market, there was an excessive emphasis upon capitalist
mechanisms of production as the path to the market (Delgado, 2010). Public resources for credit were increased,
mostly for cropping soy and corn, but with few incentives for alternative agriculture (Delgado, 2013).
PRONAF’s expansion was expressed in the range of financing (production as crop credit and investments) as well
as improvements in financing conditions themselves (lower interest rates and better payment terms). Created by
Cardoso’s government in 1996, PRONAF loans were initially implemented only as a crop credit line for family farms,
with more than 80% of loans made in southern Brazil. After 2003, however, the MDA tried to redress the regional
imbalance by creating more credit lines, such as PRONAF Forest, PRONAF semi‐arid, and PRONAF Agroecology,
as well as credit for rural women and youth. These were intended to meet the diversity of family farming, supporting
production and generating income (Aquino & Schneider, 2015). Notwithstanding these efforts at greater diversifica-
tion and inclusion, the fact remained that significant portions of family farmers, around two thirds, were left without
access to credit (Mattei, 2012). In large part, this was because PRONAF was implemented through regular bank con-
tracts. Thus, those who failed to meet its loan conditions (for instance, giving the bank sufficient risk guarantees or
having a proper project designed by a technician or agronomist) were disqualified (Aquino & Schneider, 2015).
Regarding those policies and public funding that were directed primarily towards the consolidation of existing
settlements, known as PRONAF A, they were and remain the object of much criticism on the grounds that they do
not properly respond to the realities and needs of the families involved. The MST and other agrarian movements
argue that the lack of other economic resources and poor—or non‐existent—technical assistance, mean that such
406 SAUER AND MÉSZÁROS

loans end up being poorly allocated or even misused, and generating unpayable debts for the settled families. For
this reason, the MST and other agrarian movements have lobbied for the creation of another credit line for settled
families.
Funding allocated to family farming quadrupled after 2003. Programmes such as the Programme for the Acquisi-
tion of Foodstuffs (PAA) and the National School Nutrition Programme (PNAE) also constituted part of the govern-
ment’s support for the commercialization of family farmers’ produce (Mattei, 2012), as they are part of public
purchases or institutional markets programmes. Created in 2003 and funded by the MDA and resources from the
Ministry of Social Development (MDS), the PAA was designed as a “direct marketing” programme, creating opportu-
nities for increasing family farmers’ incomes and incentives for local food production and consumption (Grisa & Porto,
2015). The National Supply Company (Conab), as the federal government’s executor, would sign a purchase contract
with a family farmers’ association to buy food produced by its members. On a weekly basis, the family farmers would
deliver the food directly to non‐governmental or local governmental organizations that helped families in situations of
food insecurity. Conab would then pay the association monthly, after receiving feedback from the recipients of dona-
tions (a form of social control over the contract) (Grisa & Porto, 2015).
The PNAE has existed since 1955, but a change in the law in 2009 made it mandatory for the programme to pur-
chase at least 30% of foodstuffs destined for elementary state school meals from family farmers. As a result, the fed-
eral government would send financial resources to local city halls, which had to buy foodstuffs directly from local
family farmers. The main goal of this change, which in effect created local buying and selling contracts exempt from
public bidding and competition, was to prevent family farmers from competing with large companies in supplying
foodstuffs to local public schools.12
According to Grisa and Porto (2015), in spite of the importance of PAA, the volume of public resources allocated
has not only fallen well short of the demands made by agrarian social movements in the past 10 years, but in quan-
titative terms has also been tiny. After all, only 185,000 family farmers, less than 5% of Brazil’s total, participated
as food supplyers to the PAA in 2012 (Grisa & Porto, 2015, p. 169). To that extent, it resembled a “pilot programme”.
After 2014, in spite of good evaluations, the PAA suffered deep budget cuts and, following Temer’s financial cuts pro-
gramme, is now virtually extinct. The continued emphasis of the PT governments upon production avoided generating
political friction with allies, but it ended up directing the resources to better established sectors of family farming (fam-
ilies with greater debt‐servicing capacity) (Delgado, 2010). Politically speaking, it was an attempt at a “win–win pro-
cess”, funding crops that also strengthened the agro‐export model (Mattei, 2012). Seen in perspective, however,
family farming’s budget represents a small fraction, 15.5%, of the R$187.7 billion (U$46.6 billion) governmental
funding available for agribusiness in 2015 (MDA, 2015; O Globo, 2016).
For rural social movements to argue against what had become a well‐established and deepening trend of capital‐
intensive farming represented a formidable challenge, especially when set against the background of record
agricultural production levels, associated record balance‐of‐payments surpluses, and heightened political influence
of agribusiness inside and outside government. Brazil’s recent economic troubles only reinforce that political and eco-
nomic logic, since agriculture has been one of the few bright areas of the economy. Ironically, under both presidents
the debate was recast in terms of a false opposition between an old model of land reform, supposedly obsessed with
numbers of beneficiaries and amount of land taken over, and a new qualitatively oriented model that prioritized the
sustainability of land reform settlements. The expression “agrarian reform of quality” was commonly used to describe
the latter and disqualify the former (Carvalho, 2013; Hackbart, 2006).
The most striking manifestation of this shift came in comments from Gilberto Carvalho, the former minister in
charge of the Secretariat General of the presidency, who compared land reform settlements to “rural slums” (Carvalho,
2013) and explained that “President Dilma has put a kind of brake on the process in order to have a ‘rethink’ of the
agrarian reform question and, from there, we will take really special care in relation to the kind of settlement that

12
For a better understanding of the importance and limits of PRONAF, see Aquino and Schneider (2015); and for the novelty and chal-
lenges of the PAA and PNAE, see Grisa and Porto (2015).
SAUER AND MÉSZÁROS 407

we promote.” In truth, however, the quantitative and qualitative must go hand in hand. Expropriating land is a futile—
even counterproductive—task if the living standards of beneficiaries subsequently decline to the point at which they
feel compelled to sell—or, in some instances, simply abandon—their plots altogether, a process that can lead to recon-
centration of land. Equally, though, a “land reform of quality” that fails to expropriate land on a substantial scale or
tackle marked inequalities of distribution cannot be characterized as a land reform.
Against a backdrop in which President Dilma had put a brake on land expropriations in order to “rethink” agrarian
programme policy, the dilemmas of social movement engagement with the government became acute even if not
manifest. In effect, the government was willing to reward certain sectors (family farming) while marginalizing land
reform as a project. It is a mixed picture. Although President Rousseff’s record on land expropriation is extremely poor,
her government did direct significant public resources to improving existing settlements, launching the National
Programme Supporting Industrialization in Agrarian Reform, in 2013, and the Programme Terra Forte, first piloted in 2009.
Both drew upon resources of the BNDES, the Banco do Brasil, the MDA, and INCRA. For Stédile (2013), these programmes
were important because they allowed the addition of value to agricultural products, thereby increasing the income of
settlers and generating non‐farming jobs, which demanded specialized skills and thus absorbed youth from the land.

5 | C HA L L E N G E S T O M O B I L I Z A T I O N : S O C I O‐ E C O N O M I C C H A N G E S A N D
THE CRIMINALIZATION OF AGRARIAN MOVEMENTS

As noted earlier, the rapid and sustained expansion of Brazil’s agribusiness sector has negatively affected the wider
prospects for land reform (Fernandes, 2015). Brazil’s transformation into an agricultural exporting superpower has
stoked up real and speculative demand for land, increasing its price and diminishing the state’s fiscal room for
manoeuvre (Delgado, 2010). For a host of reasons, there has also been a marked decline in the numbers of landless
families encamped and awaiting resettlement (Fernandes, 2015). Ironically, this decline may be partly the result of
one government social assistance programme, the Bolsa Família, leading to the draining of supporters from encamp-
ments and land occupations (Hall, 2008).
Petras (2008) has argued that strategically debilitating trade‐offs occur when social movement party allies occupy
the highest echelons of government and movements contain or demobilize their own supporters in exchange for gov-
ernment support (political, financial, legislative, and administrative). Although the precise numbers are contested, the
broad picture of a shrinking footprint of activism is widely accepted. What appears to divide opinion, though, are the
precise causes of that decline and the lessons to be drawn from it. Is the decline the result of deeper structural
changes, or is it circumstantial and temporary? Anecdotally, it has been suggested that challenges now facing land
struggle result from changes within Brazil’s class structure brought about in part by redistributive social and economic
policies (leading to improved income distribution); the creation of formal employment; and a rising minimum wage
(Branford, 2010; Fernandes, 2015). In combination, these are believed to have negatively affected the propensity
of landless workers to mobilize and press for land reform.
There is little doubt that sectors such as construction, in which many landless workers have traditionally found
temporary employment, have boomed as the government funded major infrastructural projects for the World Cup
(2014) and the Olympic Games (2016). These were supplemented by the Growth Acceleration Programme (PAC),
inaugurated in 2007, which saw a doubling of public infrastructure investment from 1.62% of GDP in 2006 to
3.27% in 2010, contributing towards the creation of 8.2 million jobs (Ministério do Planejamento, 2015). The house
building programme Minha Casa, Minha Vida is also reputed to have had a marked impact on employment levels in
and outside the construction sector, as well as on GDP (Gonçalves, Dutra, Lopes, & Rodrigues, 2014).
Evidently, such alternatives have a limited lifespan. However, in the case of the increases to the minimum wage and
formal employment, progress has been both striking and remarkably consistent (Neri, 2011). Between 2003 and 2010,
the minimum wage increased by 81% even after inflation was taken into account. As for the development of Brazil’s for-
mal economy, employment there grew by more than 15 million during the same period (ILO/OECD, 2011). Some
408 SAUER AND MÉSZÁROS

commentators (Neri, Melo, & Monte, 2012) have suggested that, combined, these processes led to the emergence of a
“new middle class”. Other studies note that, “Fifty‐two per cent of Brazilian households are now considered to be in the
‘middle class’, a rise of 22 per cent over 2004” (ILO/OECD, 2011, p. 2). Even if, in our view, this stretches the definition
of middle class (Neri et al., 2012) too far (by shifting persons from conditions of absolute misery to ones of relative pov-
erty and simply recategorizing them as middle class13), the overall trend is nevertheless significant. It is clear from var-
ious data sources that redistributive policies have had a positive impact on both income redistribution and employment
patterns (Hall, 2008). This is especially so among some of the most vulnerable people, precisely the group from whom
the MST and other agrarian movements have traditionally drawn support for its land occupations.
In his evaluation of the Bolsa Familia, President Lula’s widely acclaimed (and criticized) conditional cash transfer
programmes, Hall (2008) noted the marked drop (19%) in absolute poverty levels between 2003 and 2005. However,
he also noted the widespread suggestion “that the success of Bolsa Família in reaching the poorest sectors resulted in
a one‐third reduction in land invasions by the MST landless movement during President Lula’s first administration”
(Hall, 2008, p. 809). Although Hall (2008) was unable to account for the precise mechanics of this correlation, it is
widely believed (Neri et al., 2012) that government social support has in effect provided an alternative survival option
for some of the poorest families, who consequently may be less willing to confront the risks and uncertainties asso-
ciated with land occupations.
While the challenges posed to rural social movements by these socio‐economic developments are formidable,
they are eclipsed by concerted attempts to criminalize these movements. There is nothing new in landowners vio-
lently repressing popular demands, or the state treating those demands as “a police matter” (Porto‐Gonçalves & Cuin,
2014). Ruling classes have always been intolerant towards popular organizations and mobilizations that have refused
to accept isolation or co‐optation. What was new, though, was the Lula administration’s profound reluctance to sanc-
tion the repression of popular land struggles (Mészáros, 2010).
The relationship between the PT governments and rural movements and organizations would be marked by dia-
logue rather than criminalization, since mobilizations, demands, and land occupations were not treated as “police mat-
ters” (Carter, 2010; Mészáros, 2010), as they were during the previews administration. The close historical ties and
joint struggles between the PT and agrarian movements for the democratization of Brazil in the 1980s partly
accounted for this dialogue, and was wrongly interpreted by Martins (2002) as the politicization of the struggle for
land. Combined with these historical ties, dialogue, but also demands and political mobilizations led Lula’s government
to set its agrarian policy, particularly formulating the II PNRA (Branford, 2010).
This marked a decisive break with that legacy and a source of tension with the government’s right‐wing allies. As
soon as landowners understood the irreversible nature of this change, they shifted tactics and began to utilize other
means at their disposal; namely, legislative as well as investigative instruments. Their aim, however, remained the
same: to criminalize leaders, movements, and their social demands, thereby leading to public, media, and institutional
perceptions that these acts, individuals, and organizations were tainted with criminality. Legislative instruments would
also be used to oppose the government/executive, as cases against both INCRA and the National Indian Foundation
(FUNAI) attest (Sauer & Souza, 2014).
During the PT’s period in office, tactics of brute force (whether by the police or militias) and direct violence (assas-
sinations, death threats, forcible evictions, etc.) gave way to more sophisticated legal mechanisms that subjected var-
ious acts to the penal code using a widening repertoire of accusations (Mészáros, 2013). These accusations ranged
from trespassing, conspiracy, and illegal possession of arms to the misappropriation of public funds and damage
caused to property in the course of occupations and demonstrations. Criminalization is significant because it
undermined the legitimacy and efficacy of popular struggles, transforming them into “criminal” acts perpetrated by
“agitators” operating at the margins of law and order. Their political power and capacity to harness the solidarity of
other sectors of the population is diminished (Sauer & Souza, 2014).

13
On this question of class recategorization, see Wogart (2010), who notes that the above figure of 52% actually equates to monthly
earnings of between US$625 and US$2,700.
SAUER AND MÉSZÁROS 409

The principal authors of this process of criminalization have been the Ruralist Bloc, sectors of the Public Ministry
(the public prosecution service), and judges (Mészáros, 2013), as well as the Federal Court of Auditors (TCU), which
oversees and adjudicates public accounts. The use of legal instruments by these groups has left popular actions with
a distinctive and very public taint of illegality (Sauer & Souza, 2014).
The Ruralist Bloc in Congress assumed the dominant role in criminalizing popular struggles and blocking any mean-
ingful popular political conquests. Parliamentarians from this group used a variety of procedural mechanisms, including
setting up Parliamentary Commissions of Inquiry (CPI). A prime example of criminalization was the CPI on Land, created
in 2003. Aside from the collection of evidence, its work included a variety of external actions; that is, public audiences,
summonses of leaders to appear, the suspension of banking privacy rules, and opening the accounts of agrarian move-
ments to scrutiny. Although its stated goal was to investigate social movements in general, the real intent was to
criminalize the MST in particular (Sauer & Souza, 2014). The final version of the Commission’s report represents one
of the most potent ideological expressions of criminalization doctrine. It classifies land occupation under the worst
of legal infractions—as a “heinous crime” and a “terrorist act”. It accuses the MST of having transformed itself into a
political–ideological movement with a new strategy that resembles the strategies of international terrorists.
The CPI on Land, which concluded its work in November 2005, coincided with falls in both occupations and pos-
itive government interventions. Occupations declined after 2005, while the number of families settled by the state
also fell the following year (CPT, 2015; INCRA, 2014; NERA, 2012). This coincidence cannot account for all factors;
nor can it fully explain why “agrarian reform was not prioritised” in the Lula government (Mattei, 2012, p. 307). How-
ever, it does provide circumstantial evidence for the efficacy of criminalization, especially as a means of forestalling
mobilizations and increasing the challenges facing social movements.
The process of criminalization did not end with the termination of the CPI’s work in 2005. Its investigation was
transferred to the Federal Court of Auditors (TCU), which opened dozens of inquiries that debilitated the resources
of the MST. Following the CPI on Land, a CPI of NGOs was set up in 2007, and a CPI to “investigate the MST” in
2009. These investigations were directly associated with accusations of misuse of public funds, including investigation
of “clandestine financing” and “sources for financing land invasions” (Sauer & Souza, 2014). Engendering controversy
around the use of public resources has been a fundamental aspect of criminalization (Sauer, 2009). However neces-
sary investigations of misappropriated public funds may be, these were primarily intended to lead to the suspension
of banking privacy rules and an invasive scrutiny of agrarian movement accounts, as well as legal actions by the TCU
and Auditor General of the Union (CGU).14
Beyond delegitimation, the actions of the TCU have also functioned as a means of preventing, or limiting as much
as possible, the transfer of public funds to popular organizations and social movements.15 For their part, certain ideo-
logically motivated sectors within the Public Ministry (the prosecution service) have actively targeted militants
through investigations and prosecutions (Mészáros, 2013). As noted earlier, besides provoking the dissipation of valu-
able energy and resources in legal defence, criminalization not only diminished leaders’ capacity to mobilize internally,
but also left popular actions with a distinctive and very public taint of illegality.16 This undermined their public legit-
imacy and capacity to draw upon external sources of solidarity (Sauer & Souza, 2014). In combination, these processes

14
As a result of costly financial and political efforts to defend themselves in the legal and other spheres, rural social movements have
encountered other difficulties including bureaucratization in the presentation of accounts, justifying the “establishment of structures
of control” (Gohn, 2010, p. 340), making public employees co‐responsible for the execution of projects, and so on, as a precondition to
accessing public funds, thereby increasing challenges especially in the execution of grass‐roots activities (Mészáros, 2013).
15
Allied to this, in November 2015, the Chamber of Deputies installed another CPI to investigate the actions of the National Indian
Foundation (Funai) and INCRA. However, its main actions have been to investigate the access by indigenous and agrarian social move-
ments to public resources.
16
Even the MST’s national school, the Escola Florestan Fernandes (EFF), has been linked with criminality, albeit falsely. On November
4, 2016, police invaded the EFF, firing live rounds as part of an attempt to secure the arrest of MST militants. That the methods of
apprehension used were illegal and the alleged criminals never found is in some respects neither here nor there. As with other forms
of criminalization, the mere accusation of harbouring fugitives is sufficient to taint the EFF by association and suggest an element of
clandestinity where none exists.
410 SAUER AND MÉSZÁROS

frustrated the convening power of agrarian movements and their capacity to pressure the government to implement
agrarian policies and programmes.
To sum up, as Fernandes (2015, p. 172) notes: “Brazilian land reform follows in the footsteps of land occupations”
and social pressure. For various and contradictory reasons, agrarian social movements lost much of their “convening
power”, meaning their capacity to push government into implementing more conflictual aspects of land reform, par-
ticularly expropriations and new settlements. Instead, the main emphasis of governmental action was upon rural
development (support for agribusiness as well as credit and assistance to family farmers), resulting in marginal gains
for agrarian programmes and land reform.

6 | C O N C L U D I N G RE M A R K S

The Brazilian media has successfully portrayed land reform as both economically outdated (a drag upon finances
and wider economic development) and politically outdated (the stuff of old ideological cleavages). Despite the
technical modernization of agriculture, such accounts deliberately obscure the fact that Brazil still suffers from
highly inequitable land concentration, leading to land shortages for millions and the prevalence of acute rural
poverty.
Despite land struggles and the creation of settlements, the PT’s agrarian policies left the grim historical reality
of land concentration largely unaltered. Giving access to land for hundreds of thousand families fell well short of
the party’s historical commitments on land reform. Electoral alliances along with the opposition of agribusiness
groups to land redistribution and recognition of territorial rights diluted this historical commitment and led to
debatable results. Both Lula’s and Dilma’s administrations emphasized economic programmes, such as those for
supporting small‐scale family farming in parallel with disproportionate support of agribusiness. The appointment
of Katia Abreu to the Ministry of Agriculture vividly illustrated how Dilma Rousseff’s re‐election in 2014 merely
reinforced the negative status quo. Although the takeover of Michel Temer as president seals the fate of land
reform for the foreseeable future, the prospects of land reform had already been severely constrained under suc-
cessive PT administrations.
Where does this negative scenario leave rural struggles? For the time being, it leaves agrarian social movements
with a more nuanced, less polarized, and more defensive discourse. In a 2011 interview, Stédile, the MST’s leading
spokesperson, suggested that a classic agrarian reform, typical of the Northern Hemisphere, which redistributes land,
democratizes it, and which creates an internal market based upon industrialization, was off the agenda because of the
enormous power of the forces opposing it. This did not mean that the social case for redistribution was no longer
there: 4 million families might benefit if INCRA redistributed the 66,000 farms controlling 175 million hectares that
it had classified as unproductive. In the absence of a government lead on the question, however, Stédile (2013) stated
the need for a “popular land reform”: “beyond expropriating large unproductive estates agricultural production must
be reorganised with a new model. We defend policies that prioritise the production of foodstuffs. Healthy foodstuffs
without agro‐chemicals.”
One alternative being actively pursued is to strengthen leverage by forging alliances among rural movements. The
urgency of consolidating weakened forces is now widely accepted among these movements. A heightened sense that
something new must be done led to a national meeting of rural, indigenous, and agrarian movements in August 2012.
The intent was precisely to foster the development of a common front of activities on various issues, including land
reform (Encontro, 2012). Another area to look for will be in the strengthening of alliances with urban workers and
groups. However, given the weakness of the Brazilian industrial labour movement in recent years, questions remain
about the short‐term feasibility/strength of any such alliances.
Genro (2010) has discussed the historical limitations of direct action methods; that is, their correspondence to
particular situations of authoritarianism where the political alternatives are limited: “in a Democratic State, pres-
sure, persuasion and negotiation are more effective”. In the area of land reform, however, pressure, persuasion,
SAUER AND MÉSZÁROS 411

and negotiation have proved to be of limited efficacy, since the state under the PT closed off meaningful dialogue
by handing key aspects of policy—those dealing with structural reform—to opponents of reform. Inevitably, that
led to tensions inside rural movements. Critics within the MST, for example, questioned its strategic direction. Cer-
tainly it is clear that rural movements as a whole failed to set an effective agenda and found themselves on the
defensive.
They will have to reconsider their strategic direction in a context in which the PT is severely weakened and
the new government rejects land reform, is supported by the Ruralist Bloc, and instinctively supports criminaliza-
tion of land struggle. Following the logic of Genro (2010) above, though, it is not beyond the realm of possibility
that the power of agrarian movements to convene will increase partly as a result of the Temer administration’s
socio‐economic policies and authoritarianism, which close down socio‐economic alternatives and democratic
opportunities.
This paper has stressed that movement‐specific factors, namely how rural populations organize and strate-
gize, as well as their de facto alliance with the PT governments, are not the only reasons for a marked loss
of traction. Exogenous social and economic factors have reduced leverage—in other words, movements’ capacity
to mobilize—along with an adverse change in the external resonance inherent in such mobilizations. Rural social
movements are adjusting to these transformations with great difficulty. The key question now faced is not so
much one of how long they will maintain their uneasy alliance with a party that in government embraced so
many of the interests and policies that were formerly decried, but what is to be done now that the cycle of
PT governments is over.

ACKNOWLEDGEMEN TS
We would like to thank Leandro Vergara‐Camus and Cristobal Kay as editors and the anonymous reviewers for their
timely and invaluable comments and suggestions. This paper was written during Sauer’s tenure of a CNPq‐Brazil
scholarship.

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How to cite this article: Sauer S, Mészáros G. The political economy of land struggle in Brazil under Workers’
Party governments. J Agrar Change. 2017;17:397–414. https://doi.org/10.1111/joac.12206