The struggle for a new society in Brazil: Interview with landless workers' movement activist

Editor's Note: The following is an interview with Monica Dias Martins, an activist with the Brazilian Landless Workers' Movement (Movimento dos Trabalhadores Rurais sem Terra, or MST). First formed in 1979, it now has over 500,000 members and has engaged in innumerable land occupations and protests. The interview was conducted on Nov. 2 by Peter Hudis. Lou Turner

Could you tell us about the overall emphasis of the MST's work in this period?

The issue for the MST is not land reform per se. It starts with the problem of land but addresses a host of other questions-like production, education, socialism, and radical thought. We realize that we can't just occupy the land, we have to also change the production relations. Goods like the machines, the trucks, cannot be divided; there has to be social ownership of the property by all the families. The land that is occupied doesn't belong to the movement or the state, but to the group or family who are the direct producers.

Everything is decided collectively. First, the people have to plan how to use the land. Second, they have to create a fund to make various improvements. In the process of discussing this the people start thinking about what profit means in terms of the social process. Questions arise like how to share the profit. How much of it should go to schools? How much for health care and child care? The occupations have led to the discovery of a cooperative labor process. It has emerged from the struggle itself. This does not just happen on a small scale. Some of the settlements contain over 800 families.

When we take goods to the market other problems arise. We want to show that our system of cooperative work is better than the capitalist one. We want to have an alliance with workers in the cities. Sometimes the producers write small papers in their own hand and place them inside the bags of corn or beans to tell others about how they're trying to produce in a different way.

We understand that the Marxist theory is very important in creating a production process for a new society. So besides working, everyone has to have time for study. You work in the morning and study in the afternoon. What you study relates to what you do. The schools are in the settlements. You as a teacher have to work in the morning doing manual labor, since you have to provide for your own means of subsistence. But someone has to systematize the experiences, write everything down, so we don't lose all these experiences.

In addition to discussions in the settlements, we have local, state and national seminars each year, where we exchange knowledge about the different things that we have done. From these meetings, strategies are worked out concerning political change, governmental change and changing capitalism. We take those discussions back to the settlements and have a new exchange of ideas.

Would you say that the MST is consciously trying to break down the division between mental and manual labor in light of this century's failed revolutions?

I don't know if it was so clear from the beginning but now it is very clear. It's not only the landless who have to study but also the intellectuals by coming to the settlements and seeing how they work. The grassroots movement from the church has argued that you have to be poor, you have to be desperate, you have to abandon everything about being an intellectual and become a worker. But the landless movement does not have this prejudice. They accept intellectuals, but not to direct them. They direct themselves.

I used to be a member of a revolutionary party, but I couldn't remain with it. They thought it was good I was with the landless workers so that I could direct them. But I said, I'm not there to be a transmission belt between the popular mass movements and the party.

The educational process in the settlements, taking radical actions, engaging in radical thinking-these are the issues that interest me when I think of changing society. Many of the political parties say we shouldn't discuss these things now because the important thing is the elections. First let's win the elections, they say, then we'll discuss the problems of women and the landless. I don't believe in this. Elections change so little. We cannot wait. It's just like during the Spanish Civil War, when the masses wanted to change production relations right away but the parties told them to wait.

Is there discussion in the settlements about how to avoid the problem of a new bureaucracy emerging after the revolutionary seizure of power?

You can't teach someone to be revolutionary. You can have socialist ideas but if you don't change your process you can become as authoritarian as the others. In the educational work we study Marx, Lenin, Gramsci, Che, Luxemburg and others. The landless have respect for these people because they had important ideas about social change. Even though they didn't succeed, they are part of the process of learning how to create a new society.

This is a very amazing and challenging movement, because every time we think we have a solution to a problem, another one emerges. It never stops. We cannot say: now I have socialist knowledge, so let me promote this as the model. It's never that. All the time we are so busy trying to figure out another problem, concrete social problems. We believe we are making the social changes now that could lead to socialism in Brazil.

Have problems been encountered in breaking down sexism and the sexual division of labor in the cooperatives?

Some think: I'm going to do revolution outside the house-but inside my house I'll be very traditional. All the time that we're together, we try to observe what is going on and discuss how to be different. It's part of making the changes from inside us.

The women were the first to act during the land occupations. Women working in the cooperatives receive as much pay as the men. Also, instead of women doing the food in each case, or men doing it for each family, there is some rotation. There are big changes that I've seen, but I don't see big changes between women and men in terms of the interpersonal relations.

Has the MST developed relations with the feminist and Black movements in Brazil?

Yes, and in an interesting way. I work in the Northeast of Brazil, which is very conservative. We were invited to a meeting of women in the South, where they are much more progressive in terms of women's issues. I helped coordinate a meeting with 400 other women. It was big; everything the MST does seems to be big. We met for four days in August 1997. We discussed things like what is the role of women, how do we organize a household, what should happen in the kitchen, what kinds of relations occur in the bedroom, and so on. We discussed the organization of society, the public and private relations between men and women.

The Black movement is strong in Brazil. Its roots go back to Quilombo [the independent republic founded by escaped slaves]. They had a cooperative production process as well. The MST has relations with several Black organizations. As with the feminist movement, it's not with one organization in particular. Many MST activists attend mobilizations put on by Black organizations in the cities.

Could you mention just a few of the theoretical issues being discussed by the MST recently?

The MST has a newspaper as well as a magazine that is more theoretical. There is also an internal journal for the activists. The question of neoliberalism has been raised and discussed in the MST newspaper. We are discussing whether this globalization process is really something new or is imperialism that has developed in a new form. We really are in a different and new moment, so we decided that we should study people like Rosa Luxemburg to see what she had to say on issues like imperialism. Some in the MST have criticized Lenin's views of this. There is a ferment of ideas.

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