Land and Freedom: The MST, the Zapatistas and Peasant Alternatives to Neoliberalism 9781350220980, 9781780327426

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ABBREVIATIONS

AEDPCH

Asamblea Estatal del Pueblo Chiapaneco

APPO

Asamblea Popular de los Pueblos de Oaxaca

ARIC-UU

Asociación Rural de Interés Colectivo-Unión de Uniones

CAP

Congreso Agrario Permanente

CCRI-CG

Comité Clandestino Revolucionario Indígena-Comandancia General

CCT

Conditional Cash Transfer

CEOIC

Consejo Estatal de Organizaciones Indígenas y Campesinas

CMP

Central dos Movimentos Populares

CNC

Confederación Nacional Campesina

CND

Convención Nacional Democrática

CNI

Congreso Nacional Indígena

COCOPA

Comisión para la Concordia y la Pacificación en Chiapas

CONASUPO Compañia Nacional de Subsistencias Populares CONTAG

Confederação Nacional dos Trabalhadores na Agricultura

CPT

Comisão Pastoral da Terra

CUT

Central Única de Trabalhadores

DICONSA

Distribudora de CONASUPO

EZLN

Ejército Zapatista de Liberación Nacional

FOSOLPRO Fondo de Solidaridad para la Producción FZLN

Frente Zapatista de Liberación Nacional

INCRA

Instituto Nacional de Colonização e Reforma Agrária

INI

Instituto Nacional Indigenista

INMECAFÉ Instituto Mexicano del Café ITERRA

Instituto Técnico de Capacitação e Pesquisa da Reforma Agrária

JBG

Juntas de Buen Gobierno

MAB

Movimento dos Atingidos por Barragens

MLN

Movimiento de Liberación Nacional

MPA

Movimento dos Pequeños Agricultores

MST

Movimento dos Trabalhadores Rurais Sem Terra

MTST

Movimento dos Trabalhadores Sem Teto

abbreviations  |  vii NAFTA

North American Free Trade Agreement

PAN

Partido Acción Nacional

PL

Partido Liberal

PMDB

Partido do Movimento Democrático Brasileiro

PNRA

Primer Plano Nacional de Reforma Agrária

PRD

Partido de la Revolución Democrática

PRI

Partido Revolucionario Institucional

PROCEDE

Programa de Certificación de Derechos Ejidales

PROCERA

Programa de Crédito Especial para Reforma Agrária

PRONAF

Programa Nacional de Fortalecimento da Agricultura Familiar

PRONASOL Programa de Subsidio Directo al Campo PSDB

Partido Social Democráta Brasileiro

PT

Partido dos Trabalhadores

PTB

Partido Trabalhista Brasileiro

SAM

Sistema Alimentario Mexicano

SER

Sindicatos de Empregados Rurais

STR

Sindicatos de Trabalhadores Rurais

UDR

União Democrática Ruralista

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Land and Freedom has been more than ten years in the making. Hence, numerous people have directly and indirectly contributed to it. Firstly, I could never have embarked on this journey without my ‘compañera’ Paula Hevia-Pacheco, who carried out most of the fieldwork for this book with me. I thank Paula for her love, unconditional support and passionate involvement in our never-ending dialogues, discussions and reflections. She has been the testing ground for most of my ideas, analysis, and projects for almost two decades now. Her acute critical sense, which has often put me in front of my own contradictions, has been invaluable in my work and in my life. Land and Freedom would simply not have been possible without her. Earlier or shorter versions of Chapter 1 and 2 were published respectively in the Journal of Peasant Studies in 2012 and the Journal of Agrarian Change in 2009, and some of the arguments in Chapters 3 and 5 appeared in Latin American Perspectives in 2009 and in 2012 in the book The New Latin American Left: Cracks in the Empire edited by Jeffery Webber and Barry Carr. Thus, throughout the years, many editors (notably Jeff), friends and colleagues have provided crucial support and feedback on many of the topics explored in this research. In so many ways, this book is the result of my journey as a graduate student in the department of political science of York University in Toronto. During the time that this book was still in its embryonic phase, I had the opportunity to learn from its faculty and my cohort at the time. Samuel Knafo, Thierry Lapointe and Geoff Kennedy, with their critical engagement with political Marxism, provided feedback on Chapter 1. Govind Rao helped me with my comparative method. Maya Eichler and Isabelle Masson, along with Paula, have made sure I take gender relations seriously. Susan Spronk, by sharing her insights from her work on social movements in Bolivia, and Angela Joya, by discussing her findings on peasant dispossession in Egypt, led me to sharpen my analysis of the MST

acknowledgements  |  ix and the EZLN and reinforced my decision to insert my understanding of their struggles within the processes surrounding what Marx referred to as the ‘so-called primitive accumulation’. I also want to thank Greg Albo for his support and for encouraging me to dive into the literature on agrarian issues in Mexico in his course on North American integration. George Comninel’s course on the state in historical perspective was also very important in getting me thinking about Marxian categories, the specificity of capitalism, and agrarian issues from the lens of social property relations. Leo Panitch, Ananya Mukherjee-Reed, Aijaz Ahmad, John Saul and Esteve Morera all contributed to enriching my understanding of critical theories and many of the ideas I explored with them are scattered throughout this book. Two outstanding scholars, Judith Adler-Hellman and Cristóbal Kay, have been instrumental in developing the arguments of Land and Freedom. As my PhD thesis supervisor, Judy generously mobil­ ized all her extensive knowledge of Latin American politics, especi­ ally her profound understanding of Mexican society and politics, as well as social movements in Latin America, to make me realize how the MST and the EZLN are in some instances very specific and in others more typical of the history of social movements in the continent. She encouraged me when I first thought of venturing into Brazilian politics, recommending numerous articles and books, and believed in my capacity to carry out such an ambitious comparative research project. Her comments, critiques and suggestions on every aspect of the book challenged me to think beyond my standpoint and reflect critically on my arguments. Cristóbal, whose profound knowledge of Latin American peasantries is probably unmatched, also took my argument with great seriousness and made countless suggestions to improve my analysis, notably on my under­standing and use of Marxist agrarian categories. As can be seen in this book, his work has truly been an invaluable source of ideas and inspiration for my research and his appreciation of my work has given me more confidence in my own perspective. I will be forever thankful to both of them for their continued support, constant encouragement, honest advice, and enormous generosity. To Luin Goldring, Liisa North and David McNally, I express my gratitude for their extremely valuable comments and suggestions on

x  |  acknowledgements

the very first draft of the book. Luin, by pointing me to James Scott’s reworking of E. P. Thompson’s concept of moral economy, greatly stimulated my reflection on peasant agriculture. Liisa’s comments and insights on the political economy of Latin America in general, and peasant agriculture in particular, helped broaden my understanding of Brazil and Mexico. I also want to express my gratitude to David, whose analysis of the current process of global resistance to capitalism through Marx’s concept of alienated labour, way of synthesizing my argument, and insightful comments were extremely helpful to begin building the argument of this book. I also want to thank Harriet Friedmann for commenting on initial ideas for this book and suggesting readings. When one carries out fieldwork abroad, one is bound to find help from ‘benevolent strangers’ along the way, strangers who have become dear friends. To help me develop and improve my under­standing of Brazil, I had the great pleasure of benefiting from the insights of outstanding critical scholars such as Lúcio Flávio Rodrigues de Almeida, Renata Gonçalves, Bernardo Mançano Fernandes, and Cliff Welch, who with their profound knowledge of Brazilian politics, and particularly the land struggle of the MST, allowed me to sort out some issues and sharpen my comparison. Lúcio and Renata provided comments on some of my arguments in Chapter 5 and the hospitality of their home in 2009. Bernardo and Cliff provided comments on different sections of the book and, with their respective partners Ana and Patricia, also a home away from home in 2009. I am particularly indebted to Lúcio for introducing me to the classics of Brazilian political economy in 2003 and to Cliff for pointing me to a whole set of literature on the social history of agrarian capitalism in Brazil and forcing me to ‘get the history right’ in Chapter 1. Similarly, my understanding of Mexico, which dates back to the time of my Master’s at UNAM, benefited greatly from the knowledge and friendship of Enrique Semo, with whom I enjoyed countless hours of discussion on the EZLN and the Mexican left. Many other friends, especially Lorena Loeza, Arturo Albor, Daniela Díaz, Luis Gerena, and Ivan Franco Cáceres, allowed me to slowly build knowledge for this book by simply engaging in numerous heated discussions on the ‘surrealism’ of Mexican politics while I benefited from the hospitality of their homes. In San Cristóbal de

acknowledgements  |  xi las Casas, I am indebted to Xochitl Leyva Solano, from the CIESASSureste, for agreeing to be my fieldwork supervisor in 2004, assisting with reading suggestions, and helping me to clarify my ideas. I am also grateful to Alicia Swords for sharing her ideas and experiences, and for always being willing to hear about my research findings ­during that year in Chiapas. For commenting on some of my original ideas during a seminar at CIESAS, I want to thank Gemma Van der Haar, Mercedes Olivera, José Luis Escalona, and Daniel Villa­ fuerte Solís. In San Cristóbal, we were also especially fortunate to meet and build friendships with Gladys Alfaro, Fredi Nango, Natalia Arias Leal, and Eduardo Serrano González, all from the Centro de Investigación y Acción para la Mujer Latinoamericana (CIAM). Their extensive knowledge of Chiapas, their concrete experience with alternative development projects with indigenous communities, and their commitment to changing all aspects of power relations in Chiapas and Mexico have greatly influenced me. The argument of Land and Freedom has benefited directly and indirectly from my affiliation with very dynamic academic institutions. At the University of Groningen, Pieter Boele Van Hensbroek and Yongjun Zhao, my colleagues at the Centre for Development Studies (now Globalization Studies Groningen), on numerous occasions acted as a sceptical audience to my ideas about peasant agriculture, land tenure systems, and capitalist development. The argument of the book was also influenced by my teaching in the minor in development studies that led me to collaborate and share ideas with several colleagues, among them Sandrine Nonhebel, Sjaak Swart, Jacques Zeelan, Inge Hutter, Ajay Bailey, and Dirk Bezemer. All my colleagues and the staff at the Department of International Relations and International Organization made it a unique place to work and freely develop research. I especially wish to express my gratitude to Cecile de Milliano, Frank Gaenssmantel, Bastian Aardema, Ron Holzacker, Jaap de Wilde, Herman Hoen and Gerda van Roozendall for their collegiality, hospitality and warmth, as well as their respectful criticism of some of my ideas. In the University of Groningen, the seminar on alternative theories and approaches to democracy, in which Pieter Boele Boele van Hensbroek, Hans Harbers, Mark Pauly and Joris Kocken participated, was also a space where I further developed my taste for the inter-disciplinary approach to theory that

xii  |  acknowledgements

is perceivable in this book. Finally, my current academic home, the Department of Development Studies at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London, could not have been a better place to finalize this book. The friendship and camaraderie of a very special group of people, including Tom Marois, Subir Sinha, Paolo Novak, Alessandra Mezzadri, Dae-oup Chang, Adam Hanieh, Gilbert Achcar, Jens Lerche, Alfredo Saad-Filho, Tim Pringle, Matteo Rizzo, Carlos Oya and Helena Pérez Niño, has allowed me to feel at home as soon as I arrived. Subir Sinha and Alfredo Saad-Filho deserve a special mention for commenting on the book, but exchan­ging ideas with colleagues as well as the students has also stimulated me in so many ways, not least by encouraging me to revisit, assess and reinforce my ideas about capitalist development, social change and social movements. Institutionally, the Seminar of Journal of Agrarian Change (and many of its follow-up dinners), as well as my teaching commitments, have provided fertile grounds to share and test several ideas that guide the argument in this book. My involvement in teaching the course ‘Agrarian Development, Food Policies and Rural Poverty’ with Carlos Oya, Jens Lerche and Deborah Johnston, partly because they do not share my perspective on peasant agriculture and because they work on other regions of the South, led me to further specify my theoretical approach to rural issues and be more aware of the particularities of the Latin American countryside. My ideas on alternative development and the relationship between social movements and the state were also influenced by my teaching in our core course ‘Theory, Policy and Practice of Development’. I also wish to thank Kika Sroka-Miller at Zed Books for believing in this project and providing support throughout the different stages. Above all, Land and Freedom would not have been possible without the persevering and courageous resistance of the Movimento dos Trabalhadores Rurais Sem Terra (MST) in Brazil and the Ejército Zapatista de Liberación Nacional (EZLN) in Chiapas. Considering the harsh conditions of their struggle for land, I feel extremely fortunate that I was allowed to live among them and learn from them about the daily preoccupations and challenges of peasant families in the midst of globalization. The interest and openness of the MST towards my research will always have my admiration and gratitude.

acknowledgements  |  xiii In particular, I want to acknowledge the assistance of Wanusa, Dulcinea and Gabriela at the Secretaría de Relações Internacionais (SRI) of the movement, Simone at the SRI São Paulo, Padre René and Rosevaldo in Andradina; João Lorenço in Sumaré; Silvina, Sócrates, Tião, Zezinho and Márcia in Itapeva; Jacques in Paranacity; Claudemir in Sarandí, Armando in Ronda Alta, and the students at the Escola Nacional Florestan Fernandes of the MST. I also want to extend my gratitude to Juana and René; Claudia and Rosevaldo in Andradina; Cecilia and João Lorenço in Sumaré; Silvina and ­Sócrates, Tião and Nazaré in Itapeva; Antoninho and Salete, Armando and Nair in Ronda Alta; João Estevão and Irene, Terezinha and Marcon in Pontão; Vera and Censi in Jóia; Leto, María and Teixara in the encampment ‘Seguindo o sonho de Rose’, the families of COPAVI in Parana City, and finally Valmir and Fátima in Sandovalina for offering their roof, and sharing their food and experi­ences. I also want to thank the EZLN, the Junta de Buen Gobierno of La Garrucha, the Municipio Autónomo Ricardo Flores Magón and the village of Santa María, our host community, for accepting us and sharing their views on the years of struggle since 1994. In Santa María, Juan and Magdalena, our immediate neighbours, who visited us in our cabaña every once in a while at the end of a busy day of work to talk, made us feel at home in an environment that could not have been more distant. Through our conversations with them we surely learned as much about ourselves as we learned about them. The same is true of our discussions with Marco, Pedro, Gloria, Juan and Manuel, and our exchanges and games with the children of the community. I feel extremely privileged to have had the opportunity of this experience. I hope the efforts we made to contribute to the community with our simple teaching skills was appreciated and made a little difference in the lives of our students and the community of Santa María as a whole. Last but by no means least, I want to express my enormous gratitude to my family, the Vergara-Camus, the Pacheco and HeviaDeschamps-Dupuis for their love, emotional support and interest in my work. My gratitude goes especially to Pía and Angélica who, as grandmothers, have stepped in to help with the ‘social reproduction of the household’, especially with the caring of their grandchildren Eluney Emiliano and Itzel Nina, when we required assistance so

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I could carry out the final stage of fieldwork and writing. I also want to thank my brother Mauro and my sister Anyela for their support and encouragement throughout the years, and especially my parents, José Vergara Turra and Angélica Camus Navea, for the values they have taught me, their example as persons who have surmounted their share of adversities, and their continued commitment to social struggles in Latin America. If I was able to relate to the struggles of the landless people in Brazil and the Zapatista indigenous people in the Lacandona jungle, it is in great part due to the way they educated me. I hope to be able to do the same with our own Eluney and Itzel.

To Paula, Eluney and Itzel, my everyday source of strength. To Natalia Arias Leal (1969–2006) and Eduardo Serrano González (1961–2006), whose lives will forever be an inspiration.

INTRODUCTION

The struggle for land is a struggle for a dignified life. We are not ‘vagabonds’, we are landless, we want to work the land. When you are working the land, you are producing, you are contributing to society, you are going forward.  (Irene dos Santos, squatter, municipality of Andradina, state of São Paulo) We are not fighting for much, we just want a piece of land to work, we just want health and education for us and our families. We want a dignified life as indigenous peoples that we are.  (Juan, Chol Indian and Zapatista support base, Santa María, autonomous municipality Ricardo Flores Magón, Lacandona jungle) With the struggle, all that I have, I have because we won the land. Land is the beginning of everything.  (Jacir Suares, MST settler in settlement Pirituba, municipality of Itapeva, state of São Paulo) It is not land in itself that is important. It’s what you build on it that is important.  (Solange Parceanello, MST settler in COPAVI settlement, municipality of Paranacity, state of Paraná) The movement has awakened me. It has shown me to fight for my rights, to fight for the rights of indigenous people.  (Domingo, Chol Indian and Zapatista support base, Rancho Recuperado Primero de Enero, autonomous municipality Ricardo Flores Magón, Lacandona jungle)

While organized peasant and poor people’s struggles for land have never really disappeared from Latin America, by the early 1990s, when the Central American guerrilla movements had been defeated, they had certainly lost much of their revolutionary impetus. With the fall of the Berlin Wall and its aftermath, most of the books on revolutionary processes, socialism or radical social change were now looked upon by many students and academics as simply relics of a distant past. In Latin America, many intellectuals who had once chanted the virtues of the revolution were now writing that the times had changed, that

2  |  introduction

the revolution had been an erroneous struggle in the first place, and that it was now time to embrace ‘democracy and the market’. In this ideological context dominated by neoliberalism, two movements stood out: the Movimento dos Trabalhadores Rurais Sem Terra (Landless Rural Workers’ Movement, MST) in Brazil and the Ejército Zapatista de Liberación Nacional (Zapatista Army of National Liberation, EZLN) in Chiapas. With their revolutionary discourse, their radical politics and their flags and hymns, these two movements appeared anachronistic in the midst of the transition to democracy, the consolidation of neoliberal hegemony, the crisis of the left, and the rise of postmodernism. However, stories told to me by poor Brazilian men and women about the vicissitudes of fighting for land, of the dangers of confronting the state and its repressive apparatus, and of the difficulties of achieving concrete goals are not anomalies or exceptions in Latin America. They are part of a long history of struggle of subaltern classes against oppression. The stories narrated by Zapatista milit­ ants, although embedded in the specificities of the local Chiapanecan context and the indigenous experience of resistance, were also reminiscent of the same desires for a decent dignified life and a just world that have permeated so many stories of struggle in the twentieth century, not just in Latin America, and continue to shape the hopes of millions across the globe. The struggles of the MST and the EZLN, as has been the case with many others in the region, are much more than struggles against neoliberalism. If they are reminiscent of the struggles of a few decades earlier, or even longer ago, such as the century-old initial Zapatista uprising of 1910, it is because they have profound historical roots in the capitalist development and state formation of  their respective countries. At the same time, these struggles transcend their particular national and geographic setting, as well as their cultural and ethnic context, because they express a universal claim for the right to a dignified life over the faceless logic of capitalism. What is more exceptional in the particular cases of the MST and the EZLN is that these collective claims for a dignified life have led to the elaboration and implementation of grassroots development alternatives to neoliberalism, which envision the possibility of building more democratic and just communities.

introduction  |  3 This book compares the struggles for land and the development alternatives of the MST and the EZLN since the 1980s. Through a mix of Marxist political economy, critical theories of development, agrarian studies, and an understanding of social change and radical politics heavily influenced by Antonio Gramsci, it examines issues of the privatization of the right to land, resistance to neoliberalism, peasant agriculture and transformation of gender relations, as well as the politics of alliance of these peasant movements. One of the main conclusions of the book is that, beyond having different class and ethnic compositions and being set in very different rural contexts, the landless people and Zapatista struggles for land and their corresponding development alternatives share some of the same broad objectives: securing subsistence and achieving some degree of autonomy from the state and the market for their member communities. In fact, I will argue that the strength of both movements lies in their capacity to create and/or strengthen ‘autonomous rural communities’, which depend on access to land for agricultural production geared in the first instance to food self-sufficiency. A ­ ccess to land allows the members of both organizations to partially delink from or mitigate the effects of the market and confront the power of the state. However, I will also argue that these common objectives and features take on different forms, obviously because of the indigenous composition of the Zapatista movement, but also because of the different national trajectories of capitalist development and state formation in Brazil and Mexico. An overview of existing scholarship on the MST and the EZLN There are few scholars of globalization or anti-globalization activists who have not heard of the Zapatistas and the Landless Rural Workers' Movement. Both the EZLN and the MST have indeed been quite successful in defending the right of access to land of poor rural families. Through their struggle, they have established the social and political conditions that allowed 60,000 families in Chiapas (Villa­ fuerte 2005) and between 800,000 and 1 million families in Brazil (Fernandes 2007) to gain access to land through several organizations. But it is not their success but the dramatic nature of their struggle for land and their  attempt to develop an alternative to neoliberalism which has won them the support and ­admiration of numerous

4  |  introduction

authors, ­intellectuals and artists, as diverse as Noam Chomsky, ­David Harvey, Michael Hardt, Antonio Negri, Alain Touraine, Manuel Castells, Arundhati Roy, photographer Sebastian Salgado and Nobel literature laureate José Saramago. Surprisingly, especially considering the enormous attention given to the MST and the EZLN in academic and activist circles, there are few systematic comparative studies of the two movements. There is nevertheless an enormous amount of scholarship on each of the movements separately, particularly on the Zapatistas (see Berger 2001). The MST has mainly been studied in relation to particular issues, such as agrarian reform, rural development and agricultural production (Zamberlam 1994; Zamberlam and Froncheti 1997; Palmeira and Leite 1998; Ferreira et al. 2001; Filho 2001), new collective forms of production (MST 1991; Zimmermann 1994; Bergamasco 1994; Brenneisen 1997; Singer 2002), its nature as a social movement within rural politics (Scherer-Warren 1988; Robles 2000; Wolford 2003a, 2003b, 2010; Ondetti 2008), and its contribution to the struggle against neoliberalism in Brazil (Almeida and Ruiz Sánchez 2000; Martins 2000; Galdino 2005). However, probably because the MST is not an indigenous movement and it adopts a fairly traditional view of state power, it is not viewed as a ‘new social movement’ and its struggle has not been seen as a struggle for peasant autonomy from the state and the market. Contrary to this widely held view, I will show that peasant autonomy has to be seen as one of the main objectives and achievements of the movement. There are few aspects of the Zapatista movement that have not been explored. Broadly speaking, we could argue that studies on the Zapatista movement can be classified into at least four types of work. The first is studies that analyse the Zapatista political project in relation to contemporary Western social theories and context (Jung 2008; Holloway 1997, 2000, 2002; Bruhn 1999; Yúdice 1998; Von Werl­ hof 1997; Burbach 1994). The second is studies that seek to explain the social origin of the Zapatista rebellion and which focus on the economic crisis triggered by neoliberalism and the rise of peasant and indigenous movements (Collier with Lowery Quaratiello 1994; Harvey 1995, 1998; Benjamin 1996; Villafuerte et al. 1999; Barmeyer 2009). The third type of work looks at the Zapatista movement as an indigenous movement and focuses on issues of identity, indigenous

introduction  |  5 rights and autonomy (Nash 1995, 2001; Stephen 2002; Gossen 1996; Lenkersdorf 1996; Burguete Cal y Mayor 1998a, 1998b; Van der Haar 1998, 2001; Leyva Solano 2001; Esteva 2001; Higgins 2004). Finally, the fourth type of studies comprises those preoccupied with the global aspects of the Zapatista phenomenon and its relationship with the constitution of the anti-globalization movement (Khasnabish 2010; Mentinis 2006; Kiele 2005). At the same time, there are very few studies (Toledo 2000; Earle and Simonelli 2005) that consider the kind of rural development proposed by the Zapatista movement. In fact, it could be said that this is the aspect of the Zapatista struggle that has received the least attention. With respect to the study of the Zapatista movement, the purpose of this book is thus to contribute to filling a gap in our understanding of the problems and challenges that Zapatista indigenous subsistence peasants face in the process of confronting neoliberal restructuring and elaborating strategies to improve the living conditions and well-being of their communities. The comparative studies of the MST and the EZLN that do exist have looked at them as social movements (Rubin 2002; Zibechi 1999, 2003) or as new peasant movements (Veltmeyer 1997; Petras and Veltmeyer 2001). In most cases, the conclusions drawn in these comparisons refer to similarities and differences that are explained as consequences of the ideological influences of the two organizations, their past political experiences, or merely as the result of decisions made by the organizations. In all likelihood, there are no systematic comparative studies of the MST and the EZLN because of their radical differences. Although they are among the most important and influential popular movements in Latin America, they differ greatly in size. The MST is what could be called a ‘mass movement’. It has a presence in twenty-two of the twenty-six Brazilian states and between 250,000 and 350,000 families – a million people – make up the membership of the organization (Carvalho 2003: 8; Wright and Wolford 2003: xiii). The EZLN does not compare in numbers with the MST. It is not spread throughout Mexico but is instead concentrated in the most indigenous regions of Chiapas where the population is estimated to be around 300,000 people.

6  |  introduction

Peasant alternatives to neoliberalism From a conventional political economy perspective, a comparison of the MST and the EZLN is difficult because, as I will show more clearly in Chapters 2, 3 and 4, the landless people in Brazil and the Zapatistas are in a sense at opposite ends of the spectrum of the Latin American peasantry. In very broad terms, Brazil’s landless represent proletarianized rural workers while Zapatistas exemplify indigenous subsistence peasants. While it is easy to see the EZLN as an indigenous peasant movement, since it is mostly made up of indigenous families that have direct or indirect access to land, the case of the MST is not as simple. In terms of class origin, the MST has a more diverse social base than the EZLN. It is mostly comprised of landless rural workers, but small peasants with insufficient access to land, sharecroppers, tenant farmers and posseiros (peasants without land title) have historically made up a significant proportion of the membership.1 Nevertheless, the MST can still be considered a peasant movement because, as I was able to confirm during my fieldwork, most of the Sem Terra come from peasant backgrounds, have a personal or family history of land possession, and a class identity and a culture that is ‘still bound up with an access to land’ (Petras and Veltmeyer 2001: 101) and a peasant way of life. Far from shying away from using the term peasant because it would lack analytical clarity, be anachronistic and permeated with an essentialism based on transhistorical and static understanding of rural producers (Bernstein 2006: 399–402), this study defends the usefulness of the term. Drawing on Colombian scholar Luis Llambí (2000: 181), in order to understand the various kind of rural dwellers that form the Latin American peasantry, I will use the term peasant to refer to a class of direct agricultural producers that ranges from ‘the independent subsistence farmers formally relished by Chayanovians’ to the ‘small entrepreneurs embedded in a capitalist accumulation process’ in a subordinate position, and that also include sharecroppers, squatters and small-scale contract farmers. This way of looking at the peasantry seeks to understand it less as an economic structural category, because ‘what unifies these different groups is not an immanent “peasantness” common to all so-called peasant enterprises, but multiple social relations linking them to the historical projects of a collective peasantry’ (ibid.: 181). In other words, the experience

introduction  |  7 of struggle of these movements shows that the process of being a ­peasant or claiming peasantness (re-peasantization) is a political process more than a mere economic category. That said, and recognizing that the peasantry includes several social strata, as I will show in Chapter 2, the MST and the EZLN are movements of poor peasants in their respective context. Hence, the ways in which the different ethnic and class compositions play out in the struggle for land and the formulation of the development alternatives of both movements will be a fundamental aspect of the comparison I undertake in this study. Akin to how E. P. Thompson understood the emergence of the working-class consciousness in England (1991: 11, 887–915), the experience of the MST and the EZLN shows that peasants constitute themselves as a class politically through their experiences of struggle against expropriation and social marginalization, which leads them to cling on to or reclaim and constantly reinvent their peasantness and attach to it their own conception of how the economy should be organized in order to be fair. Among the many peasant organizations that have emerged in the midst of decades of restructuring of the countryside in Latin America, the MST and the EZLN have stood out for the radicalism of their challenge to current neoliberal hegemony. Indeed, both have openly spoken in terms of revolutionary change. Moreover, they have had a national impact (transcending issues related to the countryside) that their recent predecessors did not have, and they effec­tively control territories where they implement their development alternatives. In the case of the MST, these territorial spaces are the ‘encampments’ and the ‘settlements’ that are scattered throughout Brazil, and bring together anything from 100 to 2,000 families. Indeed, the MST’s struggle for land has two stages. First, landless families temporarily live and prepare themselves for land occupation in encampments (acampamentos) on the fringes of federal roads near large property that meets the requirements for expropriation. Then, when the land occupation has been planned, the encampment moves to the ­chosen property. Depending on the negotiations with the state, the encampment can be located on a portion of that property for several weeks, months or years or moved on to another location several times. The period of encampment is thus a period of occupation/­displacement/reoccupation/redisplacement (Gonçalves

8  |  introduction

2005: 151) when the ­territorial space of the encampment changes but its community space, institutions, social relations and practices are always reconstructed. Secondly, once these families have been successful in their occupation, they are given the land they occupied, and a permanent settlement (assentamento), divided into family or common plots, common area and buildings (school, healthcare clinic, cooperative, etc.), is created under the supervision of the Brazilian state. The people involved in land occupations are referred to as acampados and acampadas while settlers are referred to as assentados and assentadas. The ‘MST territories’ are thus not contiguous or grouped together geographically. They are more or less distant from each other but come together through the political structure of the MST, which is organized at three levels: the region, the state and the country. In the case of the EZLN, the territories that the movement controls are the Zapatista autonomous communities and municipal­ ities that have been set up in several indigenous regions of Chiapas since 1994, namely the Lacandona jungle, the highlands, the north and the Fronteriza region, which make up about half the territory of the state of Chiapas (approximately 36,000 square kilometres). Although in very different rural contexts, the emergence of the MST and the EZLN can be shown to have resulted from similar processes. Both movements developed as a response to the free-market restructuring of the rural economy that, because it was accompanied by the transformation of the nature of state programmes, impacted negatively on employment, wages and working and living conditions. A significant portion of the rural population lived in poverty in southern Brazil and extreme poverty in Chiapas, but in both cases neoliberalism exacerbated their working and living conditions. In both cases, the issues of access to land, agricultural production and marketing are paramount. In both cases, the organizations had to struggle against a history of state corporatism, clientelism and co-optation of leaders. With respect to their development alternatives, both the MST and the EZLN have emphasized the production of food, have adopted some kind of collective form of agricultural production (production, marketing or credit cooperatives, associations or groups), and have taken charge of education and health services. Politically, both movements have formed a collective and rotating leadership, accountable to assembly-type decision-making

introduction  |  9 processes, and both have sought to participate in or generate national coalitions. Thus their current development alternatives point, in both cases, towards a process of self-management, self-government and autonomy of peasant communities. However, these two organizations are embedded in very different cultural traditions and rural contexts. The MST emerged in the southern states of Brazil, characterized by European immigration and family farming, while the EZLN appeared in Chiapas, in regions where Indians make up the great majority of the population. Hence, these two movements exemplify very different traditions of resistance and rebellion – the EZLN, notably, having chosen an unprecedented form of armed struggle.2 In general, Brazil’s peasant communities do not have the ancestral ethnic roots that indigenous communities have in Mexico (Bonfil Batalla 1994) and Chiapas (García de León 1997). In contrast, Brazilian peasants today, for the most part, tend not to experience their landlessness as a process of collective dispossession but have historically organized regionally as rural workers through trade unions, or as small producers through cooperatives. Secondly, these two struggles for land have taken place in very different types of rural societies, a factor that conditions the form their development alternatives take. For instance, even though it seeks to establish some level of autonomy from the market, many features of the MST’s alternative to neoliberalism seek to improve the insertion of its members and small farmers in general into the market, while the EZLN’s alternative model of development is much more geared towards trying to find ways to bypass the market altogether. As I will discuss further in Chapter 3, their relationship to the market is one of the most fundamental differences between the two movements. Another important difference corresponds to the relation that these organizations have with the state. Indeed, since their creation, autonomy from political parties and the state has been very important for both the MST and the EZLN, but the means to reach and maintain autonomy has led to completely different strategies based on different understandings of (and experience with) political parties and the state. The MST, for instance, has adopted a pragmatic strategy of pressuring the state and either collaborating with it or opposing it, according to the movement’s assessment of particular state programmes. It has also developed a very close relationship

10  |  introduction

with the Partido dos Trabalhadores (Workers’ Party, PT), supporting it during electoral campaigns and presenting MST members as PT candidates at the local level. The historical alliance that the MST had with the PT led to serious contradictions since Luiz Inácio ‘Lula’ da Silva attained the presidency in 2003, as he did not accelerate the agrarian reform and chose to support agribusiness and made conditional cash transfer payments his main policy towards the popular classes. The EZLN, on the other hand, has since 1998 rejected any collaboration with the state in response to the government’s refusal to honour its commitment in the negotiations over the San Andrés Accords.3 As for its relationship with political parties, after the 1994 uprising the EZLN tried to establish some kind of an alliance with the Partido de la Revolución Democrática (Party of the Democratic Revolution, PRD) but then became highly critical of it around 1998. Since then, the EZLN has definitively rejected elections as a possible path to social change, refused to support Andrés Manuel López Obrador, the PRD candidate in the 2006 and 2012 presidential elections, and has focused, with mixed results, on building bridges with sectors of civil society. Considering the scarcity of studies that compare the MST and the EZLN, drawing from a variety of sources and debates, in this book I will seek to provide a systematic analysis and comparison of the land struggles and development alternatives of both movements. Like the few comparative studies that exist on these movements, the book will also look at the class, ethnic, ideological and organizational aspects of both movements. However, I will mostly seek to explain the specificities of these movements by combining a longer-term historical perspective on the kind of rural economy in which they are inserted with an analysis of the everyday preoccupations and social relations of production and reproduction of the peasant families that make up the grassroots membership of these movements. I will focus on the objectives, orientations, values and challenges behind the construction of these development alternatives, especially with respect to issues of political organization, access to land, orientation of agricultural production, and forms and relations of production and social reproduction. More specifically, the following questions will guide my inquiry: What accounts for the emergence of the current struggle for land in these two very different countries? What are

introduction  |  11 the objectives, challenges and contradictions of the development alternatives presented by the MST and the EZLN? What explains the specific features of these development alternatives to neoliberalism? What are the political experiences and/or cultural practices that ­peasant organizations rely on to elaborate their alternatives? What has been the impact of state policies and practices on the elaboration of the alternatives sponsored by these organizations? What has been the political strategy of these peasant organizations with respect to alliances and conflicts with actors within civil society and the state? While analysing the impact of neoliberal policies, the social and ethnic composition and the organizational structure of both movements, taking issue with the idea of a transhistorical single peasant rationality that Bernstein correctly criticizes (2006, 2009), I explain the nature of the struggles of the MST and the EZLN by looking at the distinct paths of capitalist development and state formation of Brazil and Mexico, and the practices and objectives guiding agricultural production of Zapatista and MST peasants. I argue that both movements share two features: 1) the control of a geographic space allows the organization and mobilization of rural communities that reach high levels of political cohesion, politicization and empowerment through the development of popular, participatory and autonomous structures of power, which are alternative to the state; 2) the control of the means of subsistence and the organization of production around the peasant family unit allows their memberships to prioritize food production and avoid the market for their social reproduction in different degrees. Hence both development alternatives generate ‘autonomous rural communities’ that seek political autonomy, food self-sufficiency, community self-reliance, and class, gender and racial equality. To a different extent, these objectives are reached by relying on non-capitalist and non-commodified social relations such as family labour and kinship or community reciprocity and solidarity. However, because the MST has evolved within a highly capitalist countryside and receives credits from the state, its members are also preoccupied with finding ways to better negotiate market integration and secure state support and funding. Inversely, since the EZLN is located in predominantly indigenous regions with marginal market penetration, its membership emphasizes the reinforcement of noncommoditized kinship and community relations. Finally, I look at the

12  |  introduction

strategies that the MST and the EZLN have adopted towards the state, political parties and civil society to explain why they have not been able to build a broad national coalition against neoliberal policies. Alternative development and alternatives to development This book approaches the MST and the EZLN development alternatives ‘from below’ – that is, by focusing on the experiences, expectations and objectives of grassroots members of these movements. Thus I have left aside some very important aspects of these movements, such as their impact on – and active role within – the anti-globalization movement. In the case of the EZLN, I have also turned my attention away from the Zapatista discourse and the prominent figure of Subcomandante Marcos, not because they have not been important, but because I believe such a focus distracts from what Zapatismo represents for the indigenous peasant families that form the movement. Further to this, I invite the reader to abandon some commonly held ideas about development, to think about development as being not so much about quantifiable, material means but more in terms of social relations that guide the interaction between people. Secondly, the reader will be asked to abandon the commonly held idea that development needs to be assessed on its universal potential. In other words on how much it can serve as a model for other cases. One of our main goals in the book is to assess whether and the extent to which these development alternatives enhance the peasant fam­ ilies’ control over their own lives in contrast to that of the general working-class population. Thirdly, the reader will have to get rid of the statist bias that dominates most thinking about development, and be open to the idea that the state, although unavoidable, can be bypassed or confronted, albeit never completely transcended, by local communities and social movements, which can become the subjects of their own development. In this book I touch upon various issues related to social mobil­ ization against neoliberalism, popular participation, and different aspects of local rural development. The scholarship and thinking that comes closest to my concerns is the literature that can be grouped around the idea of ‘alternative development’ (Max-Neff et al. 1991; Rahman 1993; Friedmann 1992; Carmen 1996; Mies and Bennholdt-

introduction  |  13 Thomsen 2000; Barkin 2001). A secondary body of literature that is also relevant to my study is the post-development approach (Schuurman 1993; Escobar 1995; Munck 1999; Esteva and Prakash 1999). The ‘alternative development’ and ‘post-development’ perspectives are eclectic and interdisciplinary. They draw from Marxism, Weberian sociology, Polanyian institutionalism, dependency approaches, world system theory, liberation theology, postmodernism, feminism and environmentalism. Apart from sharing similar perspectives on development, they also share a particular political view of social change, a feature that is clearly marked by the historical conjuncture of their emergence (Veltmeyer 2001a, 2001b). Having emerged in the 1980s when revolutionary processes in the Third World had lost their momentum, both approaches abandoned the idea of radical structural social change and focused instead on the potential of the everyday resistance practices of social movements. For these intellectuals, the practices of social movements signalled ‘new forms of doing politics’, ‘new forms of sociality’, ‘new forms of relating the political with the social’, and ‘new ways of associating the public with the private’ (Escobar 1992, 1995; Calderón et al. 1992). More specifically, according to many, the practices and the outlooks of social movements appeared to be moving them away from the state towards demands for a greater level of autonomy for civil society. Hence, analysts argued, the scholarly thinking around development alternatives had to follow the lead of movements and also move away from its traditional focus on the state. The main differences between the ‘alternative development’ and the ‘post-development’ schools of thought revolve around their interpretation of the term development and their assessment of Marxist class analysis, and the relevance or appropriateness of approaching social issues from a political economy approach. Authors working within the alternative development approach, although they recognize the problematic meaning associated with the traditional concept of development, think that the term should be reclaimed and infused with a humanist meaning. In contrast, those adopting the post-development approach argue that the term development is too embedded in the modernist project, be it liberal or Marxist, and should thus be abandoned. One of the most influential proponents of this latter view is Arturo Escobar.

14  |  introduction

Escobar (1995), inspired by Foucauldian thought, criticized the concept of development for being simply an apparatus that links forms of knowledge about the Third World with deployment of forms of power and intervention, thus setting up a particular set of discursive power relations that construct an objectified representation of the Third World. Escobar called for abandonment of the concept of development altogether and a focus instead on alternatives to development as represented by social movements. Drawing on Foucault’s concept of governmentality (Foucault 2001: 635–57), the main idea behind Escobar’s call was that any type of analysis, policy or political project using the concept of development could not escape either its Eurocentric character or its corollary deployment of objectifying forms of knowledge and intervention. This kind of criticism of the concept of development, particularly its Eurocentric and imperialist character, was not new; indeed, other authors had made that argument long before Escobar (Goulet 1988 [1971]; Wiarda 1988 [1983]). What was new, however, was how the post-development approach reframed this old criticism within a new postmodernist, post-structuralist framework (Ahmad 1996). Thus two features distinguish the ‘post-development’ approach (Schuurman 1993; Escobar 1995; Munck 1999; Esteva and Prakash 1999) from the ‘alternative development’ approach. First, proponents of the ‘postdevelopment’ approach reject any kind of Marxist-inspired analysis on the basis that it is incapable of integrating categories such as gender, ethnicity and race within a non-economistic framework. Secondly, they reject any form of universalizing claim regarding social agency and experiences. Drawing on the literature on alternative development, this book will adopt the following understanding of development: 1 The process of development is understood as a process of empowerment (Friedmann 1992), a process in which human beings are able to fully realize their creative potential (Rahman 1993: 187–8, 207), and a process in which ‘object-person’ human beings become ‘subject-person’ human beings (Max-Neff et al. 1991: 8). 2 This process of ‘people’s self-development’ has to be based on horizontal popular participation and on forms of organization that can allow a certain degree of political autonomy with respect to

introduction  |  15

3

4

5

6

7

the state and the market through the creation of a ‘counter-power’ (Friedmann 1992: 190; Carmen 1996: 83, 86–8). The process of development can thus only be endogenous (Rahman 1993) and should be focused on realizing fundamental needs (Max-Neff et al. 1991). Fundamental needs, as opposed to basic needs, move away from a purely ‘material’, redistributive, and assistancialist understanding of needs towards an understanding in which human beings realize these needs through their own creative power (Carmen 1996: 147; Rahman 1993: 187). Hence, development should rely on the inherent capacities of individuals and communities more than on the accumulation of goods. One of the fundamental objectives of these approaches to development is thus the search for self-reliance. Self-reliance can be achieved through a variety of means, including non-capitalist ones, such as relations of solidarity, reciprocity, and so on. For certain proponents of this understanding of development, nonWestern cultures are identified as the basis for a different kind of development (Escobar 1995; Carmen 1996; Esteva and Prakash 1999). Logically, this kind of development has to be carried out on a human scale (Max-Neff et al. 1991) by focusing theoretically and practically on the household (Friedmann 1992: 31–3), the community and popular social movements (Rahman 1993). This combined focus on empowerment, popular participation, endogeneity and the household obviously implies the need to address issues of gender discrimination and seek gender equality (Friedmann 1992; Mies and Bennholdt-Thomsen 2000; Carmen 1996) by transforming traditional gender roles and patriarchal structures of power. Finally, development has to be environmentally sustainable (Mies and Bennholdt-Thomsen 2000), organically linking human beings, nature and technology together (Max-Neff et al. 1991: 9).

After more than two decades since their emergence, many of the ideas, themes, issues and emphases that ‘development from below’ approaches have raised (community-based development, empower­ ment and participation, the satisfaction of fundamental needs, gender equality, respect for cultural diversity, and so on) have been

16  |  introduction

gradually integrated into mainstream approaches to development. Sen’s human development approach (which has inspired the United Nations Development Project – UNDP – as well as many development agencies in Western countries), the appropriation of Putnam’s concept of social capital by economists of the World Bank (Fine 2001), and the more recent ‘sustainable livelihood approach’ are all examples of this process (Petras and Veltmeyer 2001: 87; Veltmeyer 2001a: 22; Kay 2005: 10–15). However, in contrast to the alternative development and the post-development perspectives, all of these new mainstream appropriations are fundamentally liberal in their understanding of agency, and are thus uncritical of the market bias of most development policies. For them, development is ultimately about individual or community integration into the market. The alternative development approach has opened the doors to a broader critique, including ethical and philosophical dimensions, to conventional understandings of development. It has also managed to integrate insights from gender analysis and the practices of social movements and non-governmental organizations, and has consciously attempted to grasp their universal appeal. Within the context of the recurrent economic and social crisis, and given the dominance of neoliberal policies, the scholarship written from alternative development perspectives represents an important contribution to the process of rethinking development. On one hand, studies written in this vein provide an alternative to both the anti-universalism of the post-structuralist analysis of the post-development approach and to the reductionism of orthodox Marxism. On the other, they represent an alternative to mainstream approaches that still operate within the boundaries of market economics. Alternative development approaches nevertheless have several limitations. First, they lack a historical perspective that is capable of identifying the long-term effects of the insertion of local processes into regional, national and global ones. Secondly, by relying on the use of the undifferentiated category of ‘the poor’, proponents of this approach have abandoned the attempt to grasp the specificity of peasant communities and smallholder production within different national capitalist formations. Thirdly, alternative development proponents tend to avoid facing the issue of power relations among (and within) classes, ethnic groups and genders, and resort to moral

introduction  |  17 criticism rather than recognizing that all forms of oppression rest on power relations and can only be tackled through conflict and ­struggle. Fourthly, their criticism of the state-led model of development, which is subsidiary to their criticism of state-imposed neoliberal restructuring, has also led them to avoid reflecting on the role that state power could play within a broader project of social transformation. Finally, alternative development approaches tend to overemphasize processes of social change at the local level. This heavy focus on the local level reflects a theoretical and political weakness with regard to how alternative development proponents address the insertion of local processes of social change into global processes and struggles. Petras and Veltmeyer go even farther and argue that alternative development as well as post-development approaches share the objective of not seeking ‘fundamental change or challenge to the broader system – that is social transformation – but instead look for democratization to enlarge the space for local, communitybased and people-led development’ (2001: 87). Petras and Veltmeyer are probably overstating the critique, since both of these schools have at least the merit of having followed the lead of the practice of many social movements, which have recognized the importance of transforming interpersonal, especially gender, relations as well as the need for radical structural social change. In this book I will adopt a perspective that allows addressing the five limitations identified above. Working from this background, I argue that in order to assess peasant alternatives to neoliberalism we ought to turn our attention to the issue of whether (and to what extent) these alternatives change the social relations of production and reproduction between human beings and their environment within peasant communities. In other words, any assessment needs to examine the achievements, limitations and contradictions of these alternatives for the particular human beings involved in them. Hence, this book analyses the development alternatives implemented by the MST and the EZLN by drawing from a number of debates within the field of agrarian studies that have attempted to understand the dynamic and contradictions of peasant production. But rather than falling back on the conventional Marxist frameworks of analysis of peasant agriculture produced by Engels, Lenin, Kaustky and Chayanov, I will sustain my analysis on a less conventional framework

18  |  introduction

that draws freely from the Marxian categories of use-value, exchangevalue, ‘so-called’ primitive accumulation, commodification, commodity fetish­ism, competition, property relations and alienated labour (Marx 1991, 1992, 1993). In his ‘Economic and philosophical manuscripts (1844)’ (1992), Marx pointed to the establishment of private ownership of the means of production as the beginning of a process of alienation of human beings. This is because private ownership prevents labourers from fully realizing their creative potentialities for transforming nature and their social environment. We can fully enjoy this ability only when we maintain control over our work, the labour process and the product of our labour. However, the imposition of private ownership of the means of production forces men and women without property to sell their labour power, and so alienate themselves from their creative potentialities in exchange for a wage. Through this process, human beings under capitalism are alienated from their individual and collective nature in four ways. First, people are alienated from their labour as it is controlled by the owner of the means of production. Secondly, people are alienated from the product of their labour, which becomes an object with intrinsic value that presents itself as something external to them and their labour. Thirdly, people are alienated from their nature of creative and social beings, because the labour process is turned into an individual and atomized activity. Fourthly, people are alienated from other human beings, who as capitalists are responsible for this alienation or as workers become competitors in the labour market. Twenty-three years later, in Volume 1 of Capital, Marx added that this process of alienation linked to labour exploitation is mediated by and wrapped around a mystification that he called ‘commodity fetishism’, through which social relationships between humans are suppressed and transformed, by humans themselves, into relationships between objects that take on a life of their own (Marx 1990: 165). Thus social relations between humans become mediated through commodities, money and exchange-value. The labour that enters into the production of value seemingly disappears and the different usages that an object can have for human beings become subordinated to its exchange-value.4 In capitalism, land, like any other ‘object’, is transformed into a commodity with seemingly intrinsic value and

introduction  |  19 appreciated for that alone. The fact that the land, through the efforts of human beings, can be a source of livelihood, food and material environment for social life (in other words that it can have use-value in meeting all the major vital needs of human beings) is obliterated by its exchange-value on the market. I justify the use of these Marxian categories because the struggle for land of the MST and the EZLN is fundamentally about challenging capitalist private property and reclaiming control over land, production and reproduction, but also because these categories help to understand and contrast the social practices in communities oriented mainly towards subsistence agriculture5 as much as those embedded in capitalist settings. Moreover, the personal life trajectories and the everyday experiences of most peasants involved with the MST and the EZLN speak of the coexistence of the logic of subsistence and the logic of the market, but also of the difficulty of striking a balance between focusing on subsistence as a refuge from the market and the imperative of having to engage with the market. In the current context of the profound crisis of peasant agriculture and rural and urban unemployment, Marx’s concept of alienated labour (Marx 1992) in particular appears to be very appropriate to help us understand the experiences that lead landless and indigenous families to join the movements, as well as the roots of their moral and political claim on the use of land. Staying with MST and the Zapatista communities Owing to the different contexts and types of struggles, the fieldwork experiences with the MST and the EZLN were very different. In the case of the MST, I was able to benefit from the organizational structure of the movement. Two staff persons at the Secretariat for International Relations (SRI in Portuguese) established contact with the regional branch of the MST before I travelled to their region, and they were in constant contact with me during my fieldwork. As a result, in 2003 I was able to visit eight encampments and seventeen settlements, ranging from settlements that had been created fifteen years earlier to others that had only been in existence for four years, in the states of São Paulo, Paraná and Rio Grande do Sul. Altogether, I was able to interview over seventy settlers and squatters in the relatively short time of three months. In 2009, I visited three more

20  |  introduction

encampments and five settlements in the sugar-cane-dominated regions of the state of São Paulo. In every settlement and encampment I visited, an MST family hosted me. I was able to visit every facility I asked to see. I had the opportunity of interviewing a broad range of settlers, from people who were highly militant to people who were at a distance from the movement; from settlers who worked their land as a family unit to those who worked under different kinds of cooperative arrangements. I never sensed that there was any attempt to withhold information. On the contrary, some MST members even stated, ‘We have to talk about everything, what is good and what is bad, otherwise we will not move forward.’ Because many landless people took self-criticism seriously, I was exposed to contradictions and tensions within the organizations and was able to hear what various Sem Terra had to say about their experiences, the movement, and the challenges and problems within the movement. With respect to the fieldwork in Zapatista territory, the bulk was carried out in one isolated community, which, in order to protect the anonymity of the Zapatistas, I have chosen to call ‘Santa María’. The community was located in the Santo Domingo Cañada (valley), on the northern fringe of the Lacandona jungle, but I also conducted visits to other Zapatista communities and facilities. Santa María belongs to the Ricardo Flores Magón Rebel Autonomous Municipality, which is one of the five municipalities that form the Junta de Buen Gobierno (Good Government Council) of La Garrucha in the region of Ocosingo of the Lacandona jungle. Santa María is a small indigenous peasant community, made up of about thirty families. From the information we could gather, it was founded by Chol indigenous families who came from the region of Tumbalá in the north of Chiapas in the early 1970s. However, according to some testimonies, Santa María was awarded its ejido title only in the early 1980s after several conflicts with authorities from the Ministry of Agrarian Reform. The ejido is a form of land tenure that dates back to colonial times, but which was institutionalized after the Mexican Revolution. Ejido refers to a peasant community that has been awarded by the state the right to collective use of a given territory. There were some experiments with collective ejidos in the 1930s and again in the 1970s. Most ejidos allocated an individual parcel of land to each of its founding families and maintained a

introduction  |  21 reserve of land for their offspring. However, even if the ejidatario (ejido title holder) has an exclusive right to his plots of land, before 1992 he could not sell his plot or use it as collateral for loans. This exclusive usufruct right over a parcel of land given to an ejidatario is accompanied by political rights and duties. Only ejidatarios are allowed to participate in formal ejido politics. Only ejidatarios can vote in the ejido assembly, which discusses and takes decisions on community matters such as water use, maintenance of community areas and buildings, etc. Only they participate in the election of ejido political representatives who will be in charge of carrying out the decisions of the ejido within the ejido, and represent the ejido before the municipal, state or federal authorities (Ibarra Mendívil 1996). Santa María has no direct access to a road and is accessible only by footpaths that connect it to neighbouring communities. At the time of the fieldwork it had no electricity and no water pipes (they have had electricity since 2006), and women were in charge of providing families with drinking water. Since the division of labour is extremely gendered, the spatial organization of the community is also gendered. For instance, the communal areas, such as the casa ejidal,6 the school and the basketball court, around which the community is organized, are mainly spaces where men socialize at the end of the day, while the section of the river where women get the drinking water is a place strictly reserved for women – because it is also where they bathe – and pre-teen children. During our fieldwork, in 2004, a third of the families were Zapa­ tista and two-thirds were followers of the Partido Revolucionario Institucional (Institutional Revolutionary Party, PRI). Of the latter, some had been part of an indigenous organization called Xi-Nich. Villagers of Santa María had never heard of a guerrilla movement in the region before January 1994, but very quickly after the uprising some of them went in search of the EZLN leadership, were recruited by the movement, and began recruiting others within their family and among their neighbours. According to many accounts we gathered, between 1994 and 1997, before adopting the policy of ‘resistance’ (refusing any funds or programmes from the state), two-thirds of Santa María’s families had abandoned their priísta affiliation (i.e. to the PRI) to become Zapatistas. The adoption of the resistance policy slowly led many villagers back to the PRI in order to gain

22  |  introduction

access to the meagre state subsidies, a situation that has divided the community and created some tensions between the two groups. Although Zapatistas with land rights have been allowed to continue to participate in the decisions of the ejido assembly, there have been many occasions when priístas have tried to impose decisions on the Zapatistas and threatened to expel them if they did not comply. Many places in the community where people customarily gather have thus also become somewhat politically segregated, clearly separating Zapatistas from priístas. For instance, Santa María has two elementary schools, an official multilevel primary school, and an autonomous Zapatista multilevel primary school. Aside from this division, unlike what has happened in other indigenous regions and communities, Santa María has not fared too badly, and family ties that cut across political affiliations have remained strong and allowed the different groups to work out their differences. Circumstances are, however, very fluid and can vary depending on the political conjuncture. In June 2013, following Enrique Peña Nieto’s victory in the presidential elections of 2012, tensions and violent clashes were reported in several communities of the regions owing to attempts by PRI followers to expel Zapatistas from their communities or destroy the buildings they were using in village communal spaces. Comparing the MST and the EZLN There are few comparative studies of the MST and the EZLN because they represent radically different peasant movements and yet important insights are gained by comparing the two. It is crucial, then, that any comparison takes account of the differences between the MST and the EZLN, especially with regard to class and ethnic composition, to national paths of capitalist development and state formation, and to the concrete experiences and struggles of these movements. By adopting this approach, the picture of the MST and the EZLN that I present can provide a very interesting, albeit partial, portrait of land struggles and peasant movements in Latin America. The comparison allows for the opportunity to contrast two extremes of the Latin American countryside: one marked by the redundancy of rural proletarians owing to the concentration and modernization of agriculture, the other by the growing marginalization of sub­sistence peasant indigenous communities owing to the crisis of peasant pro-

introduction  |  23 duction triggered by a shift in food systems. The comparison will thus allow us to understand these two different land struggles in Latin America as moments in the current worldwide process of resistance against privatization of land rights and globalization of agriculture. There are obviously some important methodological challenges to the comparison as I have designed it. These challenges are, to a great extent, related to the different kinds of fieldwork it proved possible for me to undertake. But the principal challenge of the exercise was of course typical of the raison d’être of comparative politics: to explain variation and commonality. Sociologist and comparativist Charles Tilly identifies four types of comparison: 1) individualizing; 2) universalizing; 3) variation-finding; and 4) encompassing. According to Tilly, ‘a purely individualizing comparison treats each case as unique, taking up one instance at a time, and minimizing its common properties with other instances’ (Tilly 1984: 81). In an individualizing comparison, ‘the point is to contrast specific instances of a given phenomenon as a means of grasping the peculiarities of each case’ (ibid.: 82). In contrast, ‘a pure universalizing comparison, on the other hand, identifies common properties among all instances of a phenomenon’ (ibid.: 81) and thus ‘aims to establish that every instance of a phenomenon follows essentially the same rule’ (ibid.: 82). Tilly argues that Reinhard Bendix adopts the method of individualizing comparison in his work on the industrialization and democratization of the West (ibid.: 89–97), while he sees Theda Skocpol’s work on social revolutions as a good example of a universalizing comparison (ibid.: 109–15). The third type of comparative study, variation-finding comparison, ‘is supposed to establish a principle of variation in the character and intensity of the phenomenon by examining the systematic differences among instances’, while the fourth, encompassing comparison, ‘places different instances at various locations within the same system on the way to explaining their characteristics as a function of their varying relationships to the system as a whole’ (ibid.: 82–3). According to Tilly, Barrington Moore’s study of the origins of democracy and dictatorship is a good example of variation-finding comparison (ibid.: 119–24), while the work of Stein Rokkan on conceptual maps of Europe epitomizes the results of an encompassing comparison (ibid.: 131–9).

24  |  introduction

One of the main limitations of most of these approaches to comparative analysis is that they tend to favour the adoption of a relatively static and somewhat ahistorical understanding of the state and the market (McMichael 1990: 393). Hence, in contrast to what I attempt to do in this book, the changing nature of the state and the market across time and space is not considered as a major component of the comparison. Philip McMichael, in order to avoid the limitations of conventional ‘encompassing comparison’ and the ‘individualizing comparison’, has proposed the idea of ‘incorporating comparison’, which can be either ‘multiple’ or ‘singular’. McMichael argues that: Rather than using ‘encompassing comparison’ – a strategy that presumes a ‘whole’ that governs its ‘parts’ – [incorporating comparison] progressively constructs a whole as a methodological procedure by giving context to historical phenomena […]. The goal is not to develop invariant hypotheses via comparison of more or less uniform ‘cases’, but to give substance to a historical process (a whole) through comparison of its parts. (Ibid.: 386)

Following this objective, an incorporating comparison can be ‘multiple’, by analysing instances ‘as products of a continuously evolving process in and across time’, or it can take a ‘singular form’ that analyses ‘variation in or across space within a world historical conjuncture’ (ibid.: 389). Following McMichael, land struggles as different as that of the MST and that of the EZLN are thus comparable ‘because they are competitively combined, and therefore redefined, in an historical conjuncture with unpredictable outcomes’ (ibid.: 389). In the research that led to this book, I adopted an individualizing comparison approach, and I conducted my study of the two movements’ land struggles and development alternatives separately and individually in order to understand them in their specificity. I started by studying the Zapatista case and placed the EZLN within its specific Chiapanecan and indigenous context and its relation to the nation-state. I then followed with the case of the MST and studied the context of its emergence in southern Brazil. At that point, I relied mainly on scholarship that investigated the socioeconomic and political transformations in which these movements have been involved, as well as the literature that described their forms of ­struggle and their organizational features.

introduction  |  25 To be able to assess the development alternatives of these movements, I established that, during the fieldwork period, I would concentrate on gathering observations focused on the following six aspects: 1) the meaning of land and the preferred forms of land tenure; 2) the forms of labour and management of agricultural production; 3) the type of agricultural production, marketing and credit; 4) the kind of presence or absence of state institutions and programmes in their region of influence and communities; 5) the type of autonomy that rural communities were able to achieve in respect to the state and political parties; and 6) social reproduction and gender relations within the household, the communities and the two organizations. It was really only after my first period of fieldwork in southern Brazil in the summer of 2003 that my comparison of the MST and the EZLN started to take form and that the global aspect of these two struggles for land began to emerge. However, it was only at the end of my second fieldwork experience – in a Zapatista community in the spring of 2004 – that the commonalities between the two struggles and their proposed development alternatives became clear to me. From that point on, my study moved more towards what McMichael calls a ‘singular form of incorporating­comparison’ (ibid.: 393), where the struggle of the MST and the struggle of the EZLN represent two different kinds of Latin American ‘instances’ of the global historical neoliberal restructuring of agriculture, the process of privatization of land rights, and the emergence of peasant development alternatives to neoliberalism. The fieldwork experience also led me to place the control of the means of production and social reproduction of peasant families at the centre of my analysis of the development alternative of both movements. Overview of the book With this book I seek to contribute to the understanding of the characteristics, achievements and challenges of the development alternatives presented by the MST and the EZLN. From a theoretical perspective, I provide an approach to peasant struggles that combines the macro perspective of the historical trajectories of distinct nationstates with the micro perspective of the everyday preoccupations of peasant families living in radically different contexts. Hence, I hope

26  |  introduction

to contribute to current debates on the effects of and responses to neoliberalism in the field of political economy and development, on the nature of peasant production in the field of peasant studies and on the factors explaining the success of peasant movements in the field of social movement analysis. The book is organized into five chapters and follows a thematic presentation that covers and compares both movements in each chapter, rather than a presentation that analyses each case separately and undertakes an actual comparison only in the concluding chapter. In the first chapter, I outline the theoretical framework for my study of peasant agriculture within the context of different paths of capitalist development and state formation in Brazil and Mexico, and do so in order to place the land struggle and the development altern­ative of the MST and the EZLN in a longer-term historical context, beyond that of the current neoliberal period. The second chapter provides a characterization of the land ­struggles of the MST and the EZLN. In it, I assess earlier generations of scholars who explained the peasant rebellions by applying their general conclusions to the  land struggle of the MST and that of the EZLN. I suggest that these land struggles represent new forms of peasant rebellions, and I offer an alternative approach to the notion of semi-feudalism that many students of peasant rebellions have adopted. In the third chapter, I look at the internal organization and decision-making structure of the movements in order to show the process of empowerment that the Landless Rural Workers' Movement and the Zapatistas are carrying forward. Falling back on Gramsci’s idea of the modern prince, I make an argument that the MST and the EZLN have replaced the political party in its function of ‘school of government’. I also argue that the control of a territory, along with the development of political structures that are alternative to the state, differentiates peasant movements from other social movements because they allow the creation or strengthening of ‘autonomous rural communities’. Here, I also look at the extent to which women have been allowed or encouraged to participate, and the degree to which gender relations have been transformed. In Chapter 4, I analyse the productive and reproductive aspect of these development alternatives to neoliberalism. I look at ques-

introduction  |  27 tions of land tenure, organization of production, and the focus and objectives of production, as well as the gendered division of labour. By contrasting some of the work on ‘peasant rationality’ and ‘peasant culture’ with debates around petty commodity and simple commodity producers, I show how many practices and decisions regarding agricultural production of MST settlers and Zapatista indigenous peasants correspond to a non-capitalist logic, which is consciously chosen and not inherent to peasantness. I also show how food ­security, and thus production for subsistence, is the primary objective of MST settlers and Zapatista indigenous peasants, and how this focus on subsistence allows them to partially mediate the effects of the market. In Chapter 5, I analyse how the MST and the EZLN view state power within a broader project of social change, and I look at the strategies they have adopted towards civil society, political parties and state institutions. I argue that both movements have been successful in growing numerically, but that they have not generated a social and political alliance that would lead other actors in Brazil and Mexico to adopt political positions and strategies closer to their more radical political outlook. The MST’s more pragmatic approach to collaboration has actually backfired since the PT attained the presidency, and the Zapatista strategy of rejecting state power has convinced only a small minority of movements in Mexico. Finally, in the Conclusion, I review the main arguments of the book, highlight some of the main commonalities and major differences of both land struggles and development alternatives, and assess the movements’ achievements, failures, contradictions and challenges.

1  |  PEASANT STRUGGLES AND PRIMITIVE ACCUMULATION

Land struggles against neoliberal restructuring Many people have highlighted the fact that the current re-emergence of land struggles throughout the South is a response to the profound economic and social crisis triggered by the implementation of neoliberal policies. Since the previous models of development were already deficient in producing ‘urban social safety valves’ in the form of employment opportunities and instead had resulted in high levels of unemployment and an enormous informal sector, neoliberalism simply led to the exacerbation of those consequences (Bernstein 2004; Moyo and Yeros 2005; Bryceson 2000b; North and Cameron 2003). For Latin America specifically, some authors (De Janvry et al. 1989) have talked about a ‘double (under-)development squeeze’, which involves both a ‘land squeeze’, as smallholders are less and less able to increase their landholdings or even secure land, and an ‘employment squeeze’, due to the reduction of employment opportunities in the countryside and in urban centres. In this context, access to land becomes a refuge from neoliberal restructuring. The principal objective of families involved in land struggles is to at least secure their subsistence or the social reproduction of the family household through the production of food, which they do not need to acquire through the market. In Brazil and Mexico, neoliberalism, although differently implemented, has generated dramatically high rates of rural and urban unemployment far beyond the high levels that already existed. Brazilian agriculture has gone through a process of modernization and market concentration, allowing large modernized farms to compete internationally, but at the cost of jeopardizing the survival of small producers and generating higher levels of rural unemployment and landlessness (Dias and Amaral 2002). The election of Lula to the presidency brought some form of relief from extreme poverty in the countryside, as he introduced and expanded a conditional cash

peasant struggles  |  29 transfer programme first called Fome Zero and later Bolsa Família. In contrast, in Mexico, agriculture has in general not gone through a process of market concentration, but highly subsidized agricultural imports from the USA have pushed ejidatarios to hold on to their land and subsistence production (mainly of maize) or to migrate (Rubio 2004). Only a small proportion of medium producers have been able to find a niche in fruit and vegetable markets through contract farming with agribusiness (Barros Nock 2000; Mackinlay 2008; Pechlaner and Otero 2010). Hence, in both cases, neoliberal restructuring, in addition to unemployment and the fall in the prices of agricultural products that it generated in the countryside, has also exacerbated the unemployment crisis in the cities. Thus, through the 1990s until the mid-2000s, landless rural workers and indigenous peasants were seeking to get hold of land, or were defending their right to land, in order to secure the subsistence and the future of their families and communities. Rural–urban exodus is no longer an option.1 I argue in this chapter that the rise of the MST and the EZLN is indeed due to the different kinds of neoliberal restructuring that have taken place in Brazil and Mexico. However, I contend that the particular character of the land struggles by the MST and the EZLN, as well as their respective development alternatives, cannot simply be explained by the neoliberal restructuring of the countryside. The differences between these two movements must be explained with regard to the different path of capitalist agrarian development and state formation in Brazil and Mexico, which can be traced to different regimes of land property rights dating to the mid-nineteenth century. Hence, in order to understand the nature and consequences of different types of neoliberal restructuring, we need to look farther back at the struggles over property rights to land and the types of agrarian transitions to which the specific balance of class forces led. In contrast to other analytical perspectives, my approach to the agrarian transition will particularly focus on the political character of the development of capitalist relations (Araghi 2009), by stressing the class nature of the imposition of private property rights to land and concomitantly the class struggle it generates between landowners (traditional or capitalist) and peasants.

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Agrarian transitions, struggles over property rights and the development of capitalism Drawing on Marx’s concept of primitive accumulation and his understanding of the role of competition, as well as on the work of Ellen Wood and Karl Polanyi, I contend that the result of the social conflicts that surrounded the establishment of private property rights to land in Brazil and Mexico led to different paths of capitalist development, which still condition the nature of the neoliberal globalization of agriculture and land struggles of subaltern classes in each of these countries. More specifically, owing to different balances of class forces, the establishment of absolute private property rights was more complete in Brazil than in Mexico, where it was stopped and reverted by the peasant revolution of 1910–17 and the subsequent creation of the ejido form of land tenure. In turn, the different property regimes led in the twentieth century to a much more capitalist countryside in Brazil than in Mexico and to particular forms of state intervention in each country. This ‘capitalist countryside’ had the effect of turning generous credits to grain producers of the 1970s into the catalyst that completed the commodification of land, pushed the fully capitalist development of agriculture, and marginalized peasant producers and rural workers. In Mexico, because of a different property regime and state formation, neoliberal reforms have triggered a profound crisis of peasant agriculture. In response, the MST and the EZLN sought land distribution through mobilization, cast their struggle in relation to the existing or newly reformed legal arrangement, and looked for ways to protect the access to land of their members within the parameters of their historical experience with the state. Following from this, I will argue that there is an important distinction between the struggle for land of the MST and that of the EZLN. Even if both are facing the historical process of so-called primitive accumulation, they are confronted by different phases of this process. The militants of the MST are responding to the development of fully capitalist social relations in the countryside, while the Zapatista communities are fighting the mere establishment of the conditions for the development of fully capitalist relations. Since the rise of the post-Washington consensus, it has become fashionable to focus on institutions. This is specially the case with

peasant struggles  |  31 private property rights because they are associated by many with positive outcomes for economic development and for the poor in particular. Indeed, in the early 1990s, neo-institutionalism challenged some of the assumptions of neoclassical economics, such as the inherent efficiency of the market and the no less inherent inefficiency of the state. Among the many arguments that neo-institutionalists were putting forward were the centrality of certain institutions, particularly private property rights and state bureaucracies, and the importance of understanding economic development as the result of politics that lead countries to specific historical trajectories and market capitalisms (Zysman 1994). Douglas North (1990) in particular moved away from some neoclassical assumptions by emphasizing the importance of informal as well as formal constraints on individual behaviour and recognizing the state partly as an institution that could be used by certain individuals to their advantage. This shift of focus towards a more dynamic view of institutions, however, has recently slipped into ahistorical policy advice where the establishment and enforcement of private property rights are presented as the panacea to underdevelopment and poverty. The work of Hernando de Soto (2000) is a case in point. If he correctly identifies property rights as fundamental for the development of capitalism, he wrongly assumes that the enforcement of private property rights places everyone, particularly the poor, on the same playing field. Nowhere in his analysis does he consider the possibility that a privileged minority can use its control of the state and the market to exclude others from control of or access to resources. In fact, for De Soto the enforcement of private property rights is more beneficial to the poor than informal access to resources. As my analysis will show, this is far from being the case and has not tended to be the view of peasants and landless rural workers. Historically inclined neo-institutionalism has brought back the need to understand institutions as the result of power relations and conflicts between actors with their own interests and strategies. However, most neo-institutionalist studies never really abandoned the idea that the market is necessarily the more efficient way of allocating resources (Saad-Filho 2005). Their disagreement with neoliberalism is over the role of state institutions in facilitating market trans­actions. In their comparative analysis, in the last instance, what

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they very often seek to find is why an efficient market was or was not established. This search for an explanation for the emergence of an efficient market impedes a focus on the social and political effects of the establishment of markets based on the private property rights to access to resources of certain groups. A historical materialist perspective that takes institutions seriously, but which sees them as being the result of conflict between classes that want to gain or retain access to resources more than a search for efficiency, represents a compelling alternative. This alternative can be found in a reframing of the agrarian question.

Recent approaches to the agrarian question  Cristóbal Kay and Haroon Akram-Lodhi recently brought the classic agrarian question debate, which can be traced back to the work of Marx, Engels, Kautsky and Lenin, back to the fore of the academic discussions on neoliberal rural transformations (Akram-Lodhi and Kay 2009, 2010a, 2010b). Although several points of entry (or problematics) to the classic agrarian question can be discerned, the central preoccupation of this first wave of Marxist analysis of rural transformation by capitalism was to explain the processes that lead to the subordination of agriculture to capital, as well as the consequences of these processes for the different rural classes. Surveying the contributions to their book, Akram-Lodhi and Kay (2010a, 2010b: 264–70) contend that there are today seven agrarian questions: 1 the agrarian question of class forces; agrarian transitions are the results of class conflict and are thus contingent on specific ­national and regional contexts. 2 the agrarian question of path-dependency; imperialism introduced capitalist relations of production into the countryside and that the inexorable consequence is the deepening of capitalist relations and proletarianization. 3 the decoupled agrarian question; the agrarian question of capital has been resolved and what remains is the agrarian question of labour in which the main question is no longer capital accumulation or control, but rather the simple reproduction of labour. 4 the agrarian question of the global reserve army; moving away from a nation-state-based analysis, current processes of neoliberal

peasant struggles  |  33 r­ estructuring and peasant dispossessions need to be analysed as consequences of the restructuring of the global food regime that is driven by the restructuring of labour forces in the South and the North. 5 the agrarian question of the corporate food regime; in which the an­ alysis is also cast at the world-system level but in which the ­focus is placed on the increased control of agriculture and food by transnational corporations with the resulting marginalization of peasant producers. This variant of the agrarian question argues in favour of politicizing the agrarian question by placing food at the centre of the debate and sides with the concept of food sovereignty of Via Campesina. 6 the agrarian question of gender; which points to the limited scope of the current discussion on the agrarian question because of the serious absence of gender analysis, and highlights the ways in which gender relations are key in determining the nature of agricultural production, class formation and unequal distribution of assets and work. 7 the agrarian question of ecology; which points to the other major limitation of the agrarian question debate, reminding us that the debate needs to insert the processes of restructuring within their environmental context because accumulation, forms of agriculture and conflict over resources are constrained by biophysical agroecological settings. Although this taxonomy has the advantage of highlighting particular sub-questions within the broader classic agrarian question, and I will engage with several of these dimensions throughout the book, I believe that the core of the dispute around the agrarian question remains the same, namely: who will control and how will they control the resources necessary to sustain life? In his seminal and colossal book on the agrarian question, Terence Byres (1996) sought to develop an analytical approach to explain the variety of paths to agrarian transition, i.e. the transition to capitalist agriculture. Byres proposes a ‘case-oriented comparative approach’ that ‘needs to be ordered by, and rooted in theory: in ideal types which theory establishes, and the hypotheses which theory suggests’ … while the analysis ‘must be grounded on … secure

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theoretical foundations that remain sensitive both to diversity and historical contingency’ (ibid.: 12). Following Kautsky and especially Lenin, Byres organizes his case studies around two ideal types: transitions leading to ‘capitalism from above’, epitomized by the ‘Prussian junker path’, and transitions leading to ‘capitalism from below’, exemplified by the ‘American farmer path’. The approach that Byres adopts is preoccupied with the ways in which capitalist development takes hold in the countryside and ultimately contributes to the process of industrialization in the city. Byres highlights five factors which are determinant for the type of agrarian trans­ ition: class formation, peasant differentiation, class struggles, the historical conjuncture and the role of the state (ibid.: 6–7). However, his more than four-hundred-page study of Prussia and the United States does not dwell too much on the role of the state. Among the named factors, class struggle and peasant differentiation stand out. Following Robert Brenner (1977), Byres considers that an analysis of the balance of class forces during an agrarian transition yields better explanatory results than analyses emphasizing other factors. However, a focus on the balance of class forces needs to be completed with an analysis of the class differentiation developing within the peasantry (ibid.: 65–8). Of particular interest to Byres, especially in his analysis of the United States, was the ways in which market coercion and the imperative of competition gradually emerge in the practices of what he calls ‘advanced petty commodity producers’, without generating fully capitalist producers. In his view, this is due to the fact that the technology that was being developed at the time, although saving labour time, was appropriated for farms run by family labour, blocking in this way the development of fully capitalist relations in the countryside (ibid.: 393–6). More recently, in his comparison of England, France and Prussia, Byres synthetized his analytical framework by underlining the need to focus on three elements: the kind of landlord class, the kind of class struggle, and the kind of peasant differentiation (Byres 2009: 58). However, of the three elements the process of peasant differentiation becomes the predominant explanatory factor in his assessment of the different agrarian transitions. In Byres’ words, peasant differentiation ‘is not an outcome but a determinant variable: a causa causans rather than a causa causata […] Differentiation is no mere outcome’

peasant struggles  |  35 (ibid.: 58). For him, as for many other Marxist scholars, peasant differentiation is central to the process of agrarian transformation because it is often the rich strata within the peasantry itself which become capitalist producers while the other strata remain or are transformed into wage labourers, semi-proletarians or subsistence peasants. The emphasis is thus more on the end result of the class struggle than on the core object of class struggle itself, which in my view is the control of the means of production. For instance, although he looks at the ways in which peasants and rural workers resist their marginalization and dispossession, Byres does not give special attention to the process of establishment and enforcement of private property rights to land, because he considers peasant differentiation and the development of productive forces – changes in forms of producing, the technology used, the amount of capital mobilized, etc. – to occur independently of the establishment of absolute private property rights. In his most recent work, Byres also abandons the focus on market coercion and the imperative of competition. Moreover, Byres is not interested in drawing conclusions about the consequences of each path for subsequent struggles of subaltern classes in the countryside of specific countries. This is evident in Byres’ idea that the agrarian question needs to be ‘successfully resolved’ for development to take off (Akram-Lodhi and Kay 2010b: 257). Questions of whether this resolution is beneficial or not for peasants remain outside Byres’ approach. In Byres’ approach to the  agrarian question, the Mexican road would not be a ‘successful’ agrarian transition, because it did not set the foundations for the full development of capitalist agriculture. As Araghi puts it, Byres’ approach transforms the agrarian question because it applies the ‘lessons of the original debate to an altogether different purpose, turning the political peasant question into a developmentalist ­peasant question focused on third world development’ (Araghi 2009: 118). Keeping Byres’ emphasis on class struggles in order to explain different types of capitalist development in agriculture while shifting his analytical focus away from the issue of peasant differentiation, I propose an alternative approach – one that centres on the class conflict between landlords and peasants and which is less interested in determining whether a path leads to ‘successful agrarian ­capitalism’

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and more in determining what kind of consequences these paths have for the survival and prospects of peasant agriculture. Henry Bernstein and Philip McMichael are two authors who have been preoccupied with this question in the context of globalization. Although they are far from being the only ones attempting to reframe the agrarian question, Henry Bernstein (2004, 2006, 2009) and Philip McMichael (2006, 2009) represent two rather distinct views on the current conjuncture that echo the classic debate on the disappearance of peasants. In broad strokes, Bernstein argues that because of the recent process of transnationalization of capital, the agrarian question is no longer the question of capital. On the one hand, the very limited industrialization in the South is incapable of integrating substantial elements of the reserve army of labour and is instead intensifying the fragmentation of labour (2004: 204–5, 2009: 251), and on the other hand agrarian capital no longer strictly depends on the countryside for its accumulation purposes (2004: 201). In these circumstances, peasants and rural workers are now simply struggling for their social reproduction as labourers and are bound to disappear. Bernstein’s reframing of the classic argument that peasants are bound to disappear into an argument about the quasi-irrelevance of peasants for capital identifies crucial processes. However, considering that there are still many crucial battles for capital in the countryside, such as the privatization of property rights, the commodification of collective resources, the control of seeds and the means of producing food, his claim that there is no longer an agrarian question for capital seems overstated. As will be shown, this is an overstatement even in places like Mexico, where agrarian capital appears to be relying on a variety of strategies other than intensification of capital accumulation. It is plainly wrong in the case of Brazil, where agrarian capital (national and transnational) has been expanding and taken control of land and agriculture, as well as intensifying capital accumulation and labour exploitation. Philip McMichael, in contrast, has developed an alternative approach on the new agrarian question that defends the view that peasants and smallholders across the globe are adapting to this new globalized context dominated by agribusiness. He argues that the agrarian question is now about food and that the conflict between capital and peasants is being waged as a political question, where

peasant struggles  |  37 two worldviews oppose each other around the social and cultural implications of different ways of linking forms of production and consumption of food. In order to wage this battle, the peasant movement has jumped scale to the global level and in opposition the corporate idea of food security has put forward the concept of food sovereignty, which represents a new form of moral economy (McMichael 2009: 294–305). Peasants are thus not disappearing, but rather reinventing themselves. McMichael’s approach to the agrarian question has the advantage of moving the debate towards extremely relevant and crucial political questions and underlines how crucial they are in the current context of accumulation by dispossession (ibid.: 304–7). However, since the argument is cast at a global, general and abstract level in order to draw attention to the connection between producers and consumers, it tends to de-emphasize the complexity and diversity of local struggles for land, as well as the relations of production and social reproduction within different rural settings. Because of his focus and purpose, McMichael’s approach also underestimates the importance of institutional settings in the path taken by different countries.

The control of the means of production, peasant production and the rise of capitalism  Although seldom recognized, different conceptions of capitalism lie at the core of the different interpretations of the agrarian transformations and agrarian transitions. Authors that privilege class differentiation and the development of productive forces as the driving processes behind the development of capitalism tend to see the increased commercialization and commodification of agriculture as the precursor of, or a condition for, the subsequent development of capitalism. Following a certain interpretation of Marx and Engel’s Communist Manifesto in combination with Marx’s Preface to the Critique of Political Economy, the main assumptions are 1) that the capitalist impulse to accumulate is already present in commercialized pre-capitalist societies and that it is simply a question of these non-capitalist obstacles being removed for capitalism to emerge, and 2) that the economic ‘base’ has a distinctive logic and determines the legal-political ‘superstructure’. In other words, the development of productive forces within a pre-capitalist society can push the development of capitalism.2 In contrast, for what has been called

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‘political marxism’ (Brenner, Wood), fully capitalist social relations do not gradually develop out of a somewhat autonomous development of the productive forces. Fully capitalist relations develop only in very specific circumstances that arise after the political and coercive establishment of private property relations by a dominant class. This triggers a social environment that obliges producers to reproduce themselves through the market and compete against one another. The focus should thus not be on the development of productive forces but on the class struggle around the establishment of private property rights. Following the works of Marx (1990, 1991, 1992), Brenner (1977) and Wood (1995, 2009), I understand capitalism as the contradictory combination of a set of social relations characterized by: 1) the separation of workers from their means of production, 2) market dependence of producers, 3) the dominance of absolute private property, 4) the compulsive imperative of competition among producers, 5) production for capital accumulation, 6) the separation of the economic from the political, 7) commodity fetishism, and 8) the predominance of exchange-value over use-value. As mentioned in the Introduction, the labourer’s loss of control over his or her labour and labour power that is triggered by the expropriation of labourers from their means of production is crucial to the development of all these characteristics. In the case of agriculture, this means that the expropriation (dispossession) of peasants from their access to land is an essential condition for the development of a fully capitalist relationship. This, however, is not the case for all agricultural producers in Brazil and Mexico. As will be further developed in Chapter 4, peasant production within peripheral capitalist social formations like Mexico or Brazil, especially when peasants have direct access to non-commodified land, exemplifies a form of production in which the labourer still controls his or her labour and labour power and to some extent the degree and form of integration into the market. Peasants, even those who depend on the market for the fulfilment of a substantial amount of their subsistence needs, have more room for manoeuvre, through the adjustment of production or consumption, than producers under fully capitalist conditions. Ellen Wood, overstating her argument, goes so far as to say that the farmer ‘up to a point, stands outside

peasant struggles  |  39 the “normal” capitalist economy and its price/cost logic, to the extent that only his bare subsistence, and not the compulsions of profit or rent, represents his absolute minimum’ (2009: 63). This is the case even for peasant producers who are market dependent, i.e. who reproduce themselves through the market because they have to buy food from the market. To make her point, she develops a distinction between ‘different types of market dependence’ that rely on different forms of market compulsion. Some producers would be subjected to the ‘market as an opportunity’ that ‘derives from the need to obtain subsistence goods by means of exchange, while others are subjected to the “market as an imperative”, which means that they are obliged to generate a profit in order to reproduce themselves’ (Wood 2002: 66). The major distinction is that the former is subject to the need to sell, while the latter is obliged to ‘attain an average rate of profit in order to survive, irrespective of [his/her] own consumption needs’ (ibid.: 64). Following this distinction, peasant households with access to land in the South in particular thus have the ability to withdraw from the market and take advantage of the use-value of land and its produce. That said, when peasant production is insufficient to meet the needs of the family unit and the household thus has to go through the market to satisfy its needs, monetization can erode the alternatives open to peasant families, leading to the commodification of peasant agriculture and accelerating the effects of their particular form of market dependence. As Armando Bartra (1982, 2006) for the case of Mexico and Frans Papma (1992) for the case of southern Brazil have highlighted, the peasant household does not function strictly as a capitalist unit of production, and its relationship with the market does not follow a strictly capitalist logic. To start with, the labourer is not separated from the means of production and consumption and can thus control the process and outcome of production, resisting in this way the process of alienation. Secondly, internally, more so in the case of Chiapas than for southern Brazil, the productive decisions do not simply obey the market signals of price and cost because the labour power of the family unit is not commodified, i.e. does not have to be paid for in money. Thirdly, the primary goal of production in the case of indigenous peasants in Chiapas and the immediate objective in the case of MST settlers is thus not profit maximization, but instead

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the satisfaction of the basic food consumption needs of the family. Correspondingly, land and access to land have a series of different meanings for peasant producers than they do for capitalist farmers, often combining use-value and exchange-value. Peasant struggles for land and against the commodification of land are thus a constant in the history of so-called primitive accumulation and the development of agrarian capitalism.

Primitive accumulation, property relations and the imperative of competition  Marx correctly highlighted that one of the fundamental conditions allowing the development of capitalist social relations in agriculture is the total subordination of land to capital (Marx 1991: 936, 948). This process of subordination of land to capital is, however, a historical process that depends on the particular class relations and forms of property relations of a concrete nation-state, which can take centuries to unfold. Indeed, during the rise of capitalism, very often non-capitalist forms of production and exploitation can be consistent with the development of industrial capitalism. However, as capitalism expands, non-capitalist forms of production may end up restricting the generalization of capitalist social relations. This limitation to the generalization of capitalist social relations can only be removed when land is open to free capital investment, i.e. when land is commodified. When the process of full commodification of land is unleashed, the social reproduction of the different social subjects of the countryside gradually becomes dependent on the reproduction of capital. In other words, with time, if they do not want to lose their means of production (land), those who control land are obliged to produce for the market and accumulate a portion of their income to reinvest in improving their means of production. Similarly, for the growing number of people who have no direct access to land, the options begin to revolve around finding arrangements that will allow them to pay higher rent in money for the land they cultivate, sell their labour power for a wage, or move to the city in search of employment. The other essential condition of the subordin­ ation of land to capital is hence the appearance of competition as a social imperative for the survival of producers that develops when prices and costs of production become totally determined by market mechan­isms (Wood 2009: 41–2, 52; Akram-Lodhi et al. 2009: 217–18).

peasant struggles  |  41 In his chapter on ‘The equalization of the general rate of profit through competition’ in Volume 3 of Capital, Marx explained this process by describing how competition produced a social compulsion among producers to at least reach the average rate of profit in order to remain in the market (1991: 273–306). For Marx, this compulsion led to problems of over-accumulation and eventually to a fall in the rate of profit in a particular sector, which capitalists tried to solve by increasing capital accumulation, technical innovation and labour productivity. Hence, the social imperative triggered by competition can develop only if the means of production have been privatized. Drawing inspiration from the work of Marx and Polanyi (1944), Ellen Wood argues that one of the fundamental specificities of capit­ alism is the separation of the economic from the political (Wood 1995: ch. 1). Prior to the development of capitalism, in most societies economic and political power were fused and exploitation was often enforced through extra-economic means. Wood, referring to Robert Brenner (1985: 209), characterizes the form of property relations that corresponds to these types of societies as ‘politically constituted property’, because it is political power (or the control of the state) which gives access to property and the appropriation of surplus value (Wood 1999: 49–50). In contrast, capitalist social relations are enforced through ‘absolute private property’, which relies mainly on ec0nomic means to appropriate surplus value (Wood 1995: 29–31, 37–9).3 Capitalism represents a radical historical break, because in comparison to other modes of production, it relies on a conflictive separation of the economic from the political that insulates the moment of appropriation from the moment of coercion (the state). In principle, within capitalism an owner of the means of production can expect the state to protect his claims to the exclusive property rights and can decide freely on how to use his property, how to organize production, how much he will pay his employees, etc. Political questions become limited to deciding who will govern. Of course, this separation of the economic and the political is constantly being challenged by labouring classes and the state is often required to step in to mediate in the conflict between capital and labour by establishing laws and regulations, but always without jeopardizing bourgeois property rights. Polanyi (1944: ch. 4) used the term ‘double movement’ to refer to this reaction from society against the

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market. In a sense, the collective power of society, expressed through a ­particular balance of forces, circumscribes the power of the class that controls the means of production. The appearance of these conditions for the emergence of capitalist social relations in the countryside is not part of a logical culmination of previous historical patterns. It is made possible through what Marx referred to as the ‘so-called primitive accumulation’ (Marx 1993: 449–69, 1990: 873–940), whereby land is expropriated from labourers (peasants) through a series of political measures and laws which allow for the commodification of land and force market discipline upon labourers. In Capital, Marx chose to call this the ‘so-called primitive accumulation’ because he was rejecting the liberal idea of the necessary accumulation of wealth before the development of capitalism. Marx’s great contribution to our understanding of capitalism was not to have discovered a historical teleology whereby the expansion of capitalism is inexorable, but rather to have uncovered the political and coercive nature of capitalism, and by the same token to have underscored the centrality of private property and the state in the emergence and development of capitalism. Ellen Wood’s contribution – and that of the so-called Political Marxism school more broadly – has been to clearly reject the base-superstructure metaphor that has been wrongly associated with Marx’s legacy and to underline the contingent character of social institutions. Wood’s approach calls for concrete analysis of the class struggles around the establishment of absolute private property rights to land because they are one of the key institutions around which different social classes battle to protect or improve their livelihood. For the agrarian question more particularly, this means emphasizing property rights over land because they are what triggers peasant differentiation. The outcome of battles over property rights to land, i.e. whether claims of absolute private property rights are successfully imposed by ruling classes upon subaltern classes or whether subaltern classes are able to put limits on private property, will thus have long-lasting effects on the path of capitalist development and the ability of peasants to subsist. In contrast to approaches that consider processes of class differentiation as the key to the development of capitalist relations, the so-called Political Marxist approach argues that significant class differentiation can develop only once private property rights to land

peasant struggles  |  43 are secured and absolute private property relations predominate in the countryside. My reading of Marx and the use of Brenner’s and Wood’s conceptual categories, which highlight fundamental distinctions between fully capitalist forms of production and exploitation and not fully capitalist forms, could seem too restrictive for the analysis of the development of capitalism in the South, where rarely have we seen a clear break with pre-capitalist forms of production. This approach probably does not provide a satisfactory answer to the question of how to theorize the complex imbrication of capitalist and noncapitalist forms of production in a single social formation. However, I believe it has the advantage of signalling a crucial turning point, i.e. the rise of particular dynamics between producers that lead to more intense capitalist relations. Moreover, I believe this approach is particularly relevant to the current historical context – basically because neoliberal globalization, having at its core the expansion of absolute private property and market competition, should be understood as the latest phase of primitive accumulation in the global South (Araghi 2009), and thus as a new expansion of the process of alienation of producers and dominance of exchange-value over use-value in the countryside. Primitive accumulation, class struggles and the different property regimes in Brazil and Mexico In nineteenth-century Latin America, three historical processes were crucial in preparing the ground for the emergence of capitalism: the abolition of slavery; the implementation of liberal reforms (Teubal 2009: 151); and the policies of colonization of ‘scarcely populated lands’ (Cardoso and Brignoli 1987: 13), which in reality were inhabited by indigenous peoples. Among the liberal reforms that were implem­ ented, the enactment of land laws that established private property rights to land formed one of the fundamental prerequisites for the initial emergence of capitalist relations of production. In Brazil, although the process of subordination and expropriation of peasants can be traced back to the second half of the eighteenth century (Palacios 2009: 155–61), the privatization of land began in 1850 with the promulgation of the Lei de Terras (Land Law). In Mexico the initial impetus for the privatization of land came with the enactment

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of the Ley Lerdo (Lerdo Law) in 1856 and several other reform laws that followed, and culminated with the consolidation of the liberal order under Porfirio Díaz at the turn of the nineteenth century. In both Brazil and Mexico, apart from the establishment of private property rights to land, the other major preoccupation of the ­ruling classes was that of finding a way of guaranteeing an adequate supply of labour for plantations and haciendas. Hence, in contrast to countries such as the United States, where land was turned into private property but made available at low cost (Viotti 1985: ch. 4), in Brazil and Mexico land legislation sought to block access to land to subaltern classes. In Brazil the ruling classes had to come to an agreement on the issue of slavery while in Mexico they had to tackle the entrenched rights that indigenous communities had inherited from the Spanish colonial order. In both countries one of the most notable consequences of these laws was the rapid and extreme concentration of land in the hands of the old oligarchy and the nascent agrarian bourgeoisie, resembling a process of primitive accumulation. In both cases as well, these laws came enshrined in a discourse of progress and racist immigration policies that encouraged European immigration in order to ‘whiten’ the racial composition of the populace. ­Staging numerous regional peasant revolts and rebellions throughout the end of the nineteenth century and into the beginning of the twentieth century, Brazilian and Mexican peasantries opposed the process of privatization of land rights. Nevertheless, in Brazil the peasantry never had sufficient power or national coordination to seriously challenge the gradual establishment of absolute private property rights, which ended up leading to the consolidation of a large capitalist sector in agriculture in the late 1960s. However, until then, an important peasant economy was still able to subsist within the Brazilian countryside. In contrast, in Mexico, there were numerous peasant rebellions that maintained an atmosphere of political instability throughout the nineteenth century (Tutino 1986). The massive peasant participation in the 1910–17 revolution led to an agrarian reform that reconstituted the ejido form of land tenure and blocked the full development of capitalist relations, allowing for the persistence of a much larger peasant sector. In Brazil, before the Lei de Terras, land was legally held by the Crown and only free individuals could have access to land, either

peasant struggles  |  45 through grants from the Crown or through squatting. Of course, not everyone who squatted had their land legally recognized because often this state recognition depended on the political power of the claimant or on what Motta calls ‘the domination tripod of force, power and prestige’ (Motta 2008: 62). The enactment of the Lei de Terras came during a period of early forced transition from slavery to wage labour. As such, the law had to accommodate the interests of the slave owners of the sugar plantations of the north-east and the need for salaried labour of the emerging coffee bourgeoisie of the state of São Paulo. One of the main objectives of the law was thus to impede easy access to land in order to force poor peasants (and future freed slaves) to become salaried rural workers. Hence, the Lei de Terras made purchase the only way to acquire land, and by requiring those who had possession of land to pay for it effectively blocked access to land to ex-slaves and free poor peasants (Guimarães 1968: 133–5; Martins 2003: 304). According to the ideologues of the law, the increase in the price of land would also encourage more effective and productive use of land, at the same time that it would eliminate what they saw as large unproductive estates, as well as small and equally unproductive subsistence farms. Hence, the law embodied the entrepreneurial spirit of the emerging capitalist sector but did not do away with the remnants of a seigneurial mentality that saw property as a privilege (Viotti 1985: 83–4, 91). Indeed, among landlords the Lei de Terras and other accompanying reforms triggered the practice of large-scale illegal land grabbing in the south of Brazil and in the west of the state of São Paulo. This land grabbing was covered up by the falsification of property titles – or grilagem in Portuguese – that were purposely registered before 1850, because it allowed the owner not to have to pay for the land. However, as Polanyi would have it, this expansion of the market generated a double movement whereby peasants mobilized their own understanding of what was just. Squatter peasants who did not have titles and did not have money to buy their right to land or have their lots measured to be registered opposed the new legal framework through several means other than open rebellion. In many regions of Brazil, peasants destroyed official records and archives in order to protect their access to land (Burns 1980: 118–19) and in several cases poor peasants challenged the individual claim of large

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landlords over the land they were occupying by taking them to court using the imprecisions and ambiguities of the same Land Law that gave certain rights to formal occupants (Motta 2005: 256–7). In the most radical case, peasants rebelled against the new order and set up a utopian millenarian community called Canudos in the interior of the state of Bahia (1893–97), which was violently crushed by the federal army (Burns 1980: 27–9). Most rebellions, however, were very local and short-lived, and private property rights to land were not drastically challenged. Several revolts that could have tipped the balance of power on the side of the peasantry did not have the Land Law as their main target, but surprisingly a decree of 1851 making the registration of births and deaths mandatory and calling for a census (Palacios 2009: 171). Peasants perceived the decree of 1851 as a veiled ‘captivity law’ that in the dawn of formal slavery would enslave the free poor of colour by forcing them to register their legal status. They saw this policy as the continuation of a long process of expropriation led by the state dating back to the early 1800s that threatened their livelihoods (ibid.: 161–9). The Brazilian state, fearing that the revolt would spread to other regions, quickly abandoned its intention of registering the population. This example is telling because it highlights the centrality that the abolition of slavery had for social conflict at the time, overshadowing in the eyes of peasants the historical importance of the enactment of the Land Law. This is probably because the majority of Brazilian peasants, instead of rebelling, chose to adapt to the new legal framework and to fall back on strategies that would allow them to informally negotiate their access to land with landlords. They did not see the Land Law as completely blocking their access to land. In Mexico during the colonial period, land had also traditionally been allocated to individuals in the form of concessions by the Crown, but with time concessions were turned into private property. The Catholic Church and its various religious orders were granted several privileges and ended up holding an enormous quantity of land and becoming the main lending institution. The Ley Lerdo of 1856 called for the expropriation of the land of the Catholic Church and indigenous communities and the subsequent reform laws sought to turn collective land properties into individual private properties for a class of idealized smallholders (Semo 1978: 292). The law thus

peasant struggles  |  47 included provisions that obliged ecclesiastic orders to sell their properties to their tenant farmers. The expropriation of the properties of the Church was finally carried out, but not along the lines of the official discourse. The land of the Church ended up in the hands of those who had enough money to buy it, mostly rich merchants and the petit bourgeoisie, which were conveniently well represented in the Congress. The other object of the reform laws was the indigenous communities that also held land under collective property rights protected under colonial law and under the guardianship of the Crown. Like the Church, indigenous communities were portrayed as archaic institutions that impeded the progress of the nation. The dominant discourse of the time presented the individual smallholder, especi­ ally if he had left behind his traditional indigenous institutions, as the ideal citizen. But the division of the collectively held land of indigenous communities proved to be very difficult and triggered a multitude of regional indigenous peasant revolts that maintained an atmosphere of political instability throughout the second half of the nineteenth century. Colonization of scarcely populated indigenous regions became the alternative, and the Mexican state provided all kinds of facilities to potential land purchasers. During the presidency of Porfirio Díaz, the privatization of land accelerated through the creation of the compañías deslindadoras, private shareholder companies that had the mandate of colonizing scarcely populated regions.4 These companies served as intermediary between the state and private buyers. They were responsible for measuring, dividing and selling national land. In exchange, the shareholders had the right to a third of the colonized land (De Vos 1995). Between 1881 and 1906, 49 million hectares were privatized through this mechanism5 (the equivalent of 25 per cent of Mexican territory), 20 million hectares of which ended up in the hands of the shareholders of the compañías deslindadoras. The state also participated militarily in this process of privatization by waging war on indigenous peoples. The war of extermination of the Yaqui Nation in the state of Sonora and the deportation of its survivors to the henequen plantations of the Yucatan peninsula as slave labour is one of the most horrible examples of this policy. In contrast to their counterparts in Brazil, Mexican peasants res­ isted this process of privatization much more fiercely and generated

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a double movement that managed to combine different regional peasant rebellions into a full-blown revolution in 1910. One of the major peasant demands throughout the nineteenth century was village autonomy, which among other things meant the defence of the indigenous community, but also the return to locally controlled land registration and land dispute settlements in which local customs prevailed. Centuries of colonial reinforcement of the corporate identity and the dependent legal status of indigenous villages vis-à-vis the state certainly made the institutional legal framework one of the targets of struggle for indigenous populations. Although in Brazil courts were sometimes used by subaltern classes to seek justice and protect their access to land (Motta 2005, 2008), the central state was weak and there was nothing equivalent to this way of gaining and maintaining access to land through the state in the case of the Brazilian peasantry. It is questionable whether the objective of privatizing the land of the Church and indigenous communities was really to promote the modernization of the Mexican economy or simply to open new opportunities for wealth accumulation for the ruling classes. What is certain is that, as in Brazil, the process reinforced the consolidation of large private property. In both countries, however, access to land and control over surplus labour were still predominantly through what Wood calls ‘politically constituted property’ (1999: 49–50), depending more on access to the state and extra-economic means of enforcement and extraction. The formal privatization and concentration of land were not able, by themselves, to drastically modify the existing social relations of production as labour relations changed only very gradually. The Brazilian and Mexican countryside continued to be characterized by various forms of production and patron–client mechanisms, ranging from servile relationships to sharecropping, to small peasant production, and to capitalist wage relations, or a complex combination of any of these. Certain agricultural sectors strictly oriented towards producing for export, such as sugar and coffee plantations, expanded significantly, and many functioned as quasi-capitalist enterprises. But in general, the fazenda in Brazil and the hacienda in Mexico maintained a double orientation of production (for the market and for subsistence) because, as production units, they were not solely dependent on market mechanisms for their

peasant struggles  |  49 survival. Hence, subsistence agriculture and non-capitalist forms of production persisted well into the first half of the twentieth century.

The divergent paths of agrarian transition and the development of capitalist agriculture in Brazil and Mexico  If in the nineteenth century Brazil and Mexico adopted similar legislation that led to a similar process of land concentration, in the twentieth century the development of capitalist agriculture took a different form in each country. In Brazil, the twentieth century is characterized by the gradual, but inexorable, establishment of absolute private property rights as the basis for further land concentration, commodification of land, and the generalization of wage labour, which ended up leading to the rise of a large capitalist sector in agriculture in the 1960s and 1970s. In Mexico, in contrast, the regional peasant revolts of the late nineteenth century that culminated in the revolution of 1910–17 converged around the famous Zapatista lemma ‘Reform, Liberty, Justice and Law’, which enshrined demands for access to land and village autonomy over land use rights. To comply with these demands, the state enacted an agrarian reform that created the ejido form of land tenure that represents, still to the present day, a political limitation on absolute private property rights over land. In turn, the ejido, by impeding the subordination of land to capital, blocked the complete generalization of wage labour and allowed for both the development of diversity of forms of production and the persistence of a peasant economy far more important than in Brazil. In Mexico, capitalism in the countryside developed through the intervention of the state, which integrated small peasant producers into the market and gradually increased its support to capitalist farmers. Of course, this contrast between a rural Brazil organized around absolute private property rights to land and a rural Mexico characterized by limited private property rights to land did not come into being overnight, nor was it as clear-cut as to eliminate any remnants of the other forms of controlling or having access to land. In both countries, rural social subjects continued to rely on a variety of regionally specific strategies and mechanisms for gaining and maintaining control over land. But this contrast nevertheless establishes the possibility of the development of large-scale capitalist farming in Brazil, and not in Mexico.

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At the turn of the nineteenth century until the mid-twentieth century, Brazil developed agrarian structures dominated by a landed class that owned either large commercial plantations or large fazendas that produced for the market, mostly on the basis of the labour of wage workers and sharecroppers. However, the fazenda system also involved a variety of other rural producers. In the sugar plantations of the north-east region of Brazil, the abolition of slavery gradually gave way to a system that combined tenant farming and wage ­labour, in which a small number of ex-slaves remained as permanent ­workers (moradores) within the plantations and a larger number became wage workers constantly migrating from one plantation or region to another (Wolford 2010: 116–21). In the coffee and sugar plantations of São Paulo, planters introduced the colonato system, which combined salaried work with payments of rents in kind or labour, and special arrangements such as the colono’s right to plant subsistence crops between the rows of coffee trees. Finally, in the southern states of Rio Grande do Sul, Santa Catarina and Paraná, as a result of a deliberate state policy to encourage European immigration, a small, self-sufficient peasant sector developed (Martins 2003: 305–10). Beyond these regional differences, wage labour and capitalist social relations of production, even if not yet generalized, were much more predominant in Brazil than in Mexico. In Mexico capitalist development of agriculture could not be carried out on the basis of the concentration and further commodification of land. The state had to find ways to raise the productivity level of peasants. Following the revolution, a variety of state institutions and legislation were created to mediate between the market and the different sectors of the rural population. The model of development adopted also encouraged the creation of many state enterprises that provided infrastructure, subsidies, credit and technical assistance to ejidatarios and small producers. But the most important way that the state intervened in agriculture was through the regulation of prices for the main agricultural products, mainly through guaranteed prices for agricultural producers and a sub­ sidized consumption price for the main food crops that form the basis of the diet of the Mexican population. Peasants benefited from this policy but, because of demographic pressure on land, it was not sufficient to ensure their reproduction, forcing them to combine

peasant struggles  |  51 agricultural production with wage work. However, in contrast to what happened in Brazil, because it was not commodified, peasant land in Mexico was not subjected to market pressure. Using the labour power of these semi-proletarianized peasants, an important sector of medium-scale capitalist farmers, engaged in the production of cash crops and the sale of machinery and inputs, as well as processing activities, managed to prosper in many regions of the country, and even found ways to get around the size limitations of rural properties and accumulated land. But, with regard to economic and political power, these post-revolution capitalist farmers do not compare in any way with the powerful large landowners of Brazil. The industrialization process is intimately linked to the capitalist development of the countryside. The countryside feeds the process of industrialization through the transfer of raw materials, and it provides cheap food for the growing working classes and for the contingents of dispossessed peasants and rural proletarians who migrate to the cities to join the ranks of the reserve army of unemployed workers who help to keep wages low. From the 1930s until the end of the 1960s, agricultural production was crucial for the industrialization process in Brazil and Mexico. In general terms, on the one hand, agricultural production provided wage goods for the growing urban population and cheap raw resources for industry. On the other hand, the export of certain agricultural products generated the foreign currency necessary for the importation of capital goods (De Janvry 1981: 151, 157–8). Both in Brazil and Mexico, the prices of basic food crops were regulated by the state in order to keep them below international prices. In Brazil, the state even established export licences on food crops that were issued only when domestic targets were reached (Goodman and Redclift 1981: 134).

The strategy of the Brazilian ruling class: dictatorship, capitalism and selective corporatism  In the 1930s, the ‘peasant question’ became one of the fundamental issues of Brazilian politics and, despite an article allowing for agrarian reform in the 1946 Constitution, it was mainly tackled as a labour issue rather than a land issue. In the 1940s and 1950s President Getulio Vargas tried to incorporate rural workers into the corporatist state system but made sure not to infringe further on the interests of the landed class and did not

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enforce the ­constitutional article (Houtzager 1998: 137). The Brazilian state preferred to use legislation and a series of institutions and agencies to institutionalize the demands of peasants and agricultural workers in order to control their forms of organization, and favour certain groups over others. Of course, peasants and rural workers were not mere bystanders; they used these laws and state institutions and forged alliances with politicians, the Communist Party of Brazil (PCB) and the Church to wage their own battles. Many peasant organizations – notably the Confederação Nacional dos Trabalhadores na Agricultura (National Confederation of Agricultural Workers, ­CONTAG) and the Ligas Camponesas (Peasant Leagues) – emerged during this period, mobilized for labour rights and agrarian reform, and radicalized rural conflicts (Welch 2009). In southern Brazil, where the MST emerged, the gradual marginalization of peasant agriculture paralleled the rise and fall of five agricultural products: cattle, wheat, maize, rice and soybean. In the 1940s and 1950s, wheat became one of the most important crops in Rio Grande do Sul. From the end of the 1930s up to the end of the 1950s, the Ministry of Agriculture set up a variety of programmes (credits, guaranteed prices, a public marketing corporation) to promote wheat production (Heidrich 2000: 92). The expansion of wheat production gave rise to a class of granjeiros (capitalist farmers), who quickly integrated into the agroindustrial complex through their cooperatives (ibid.: 91). Alongside the granjeiros, many peasant producers and sharecroppers also turned to wheat production until the end of the 1950s, when international prices fell. In 1963, within a context of growing peasant mobilization, President João Goulart finally codified rural labour rights through the Estatuto do Trabalhador Rural (Rural Worker Statute), but also signed a decree in 1964 that would lead to the expropriation of land located within ten kilometres of federal motorways and railway lines (Meszaros 2000: 523). This was unacceptable for the São Paulo oligarchy that, with other sectors of the Brazilian ruling class, sponsored the military coup of 1964. After the coup, the military dictatorship clearly supported the agrarian bourgeoisie and favoured a project of modernization of the countryside. At first, the modernization was centred on the Estatuto da Terra (Land Statute) that was supposed to promote capitalist enterprise over the traditional latifundio as the privileged

peasant struggles  |  53 form of rural property (Houtzager 1998: 112, 115). However, in line with the US-promoted Alliance for Progress, this and other pieces of legislation eliminated the hurdles that impeded an agrarian reform in the 1946 Constitution (Meszaros 2000: 524). More importantly, the agrarian reform clauses of the Estatuto da Terra targeted properties that did not fulfil their ‘social function’, i.e. that were not put to productive use or that did not provide employment. But the regional traditional oligarchies were successful in expressing their opposition to that aspect of the Estatuto da Terra and the clauses allowing for an agrarian reform remained without effect almost for the whole duration of the military dictatorship. The state even privatized close to 115 million hectares of public land between 1960 and 1980 (Da Silva Jones, cited by Meszaros 2000: 524). The modernization of agriculture really took off after 1968 with heavily subsidized credit schemes (Goodman and Redclift 1981: 144; Houtzager 1998: 124), which increased public credits for agriculture by 504 per cent between 1969 and 1979. In southern Brazil, where the MST emerged, the modernization of agriculture of the 1960s was closely associated with the expansion of soybean production. Wheat was gradually replaced or combined with soybean, now promoted by advantageous credit facilities. Soybean production became so important that scholars refer to the ‘soybean boom’ when they discuss the period between the 1970s and the mid-1980s. With the soybean boom, which contributed greatly to the restructuring of the Brazilian countryside, the soybean-wheat farmers emerged, cultivating soybeans during summer and wheat during the winter (Papma 1992: 144). In comparison with other traditional crops, soybean is considered a very capital-intensive crop since its cultivation is mechanized and its successful growth requires a substantial amount of chemical fertilizers and pesticides. Since capitalist farmers had easier access to credit and possess tractors and combine harvesters, they were in a better position to benefit from the soybean boom. The boom led to the mechanization of agriculture, the commodification of social relations, and further land concentration. Medium-sized family producers, on the other hand, were also integrated into soybean production but they held a subordinate position in relation to farmers because they did not own but had to rent tractors and combine harvesters (ibid.: 149). At one extreme, large ranchers and capitalist farmers thrived

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during this period. At the other, however, few peasant producers, living as they were at a subsistence level, were able to hold on to their plots. Most of the posseiros, sharecroppers and rural workers lost their access to land and were forced to migrate to the city, while others remained in the countryside to work as occasional day labourers on capitalist farms. In parallel with the credit scheme for agricultural production, the state also allocated fiscal incentives to any company that invested in land (Cardim et al. 1998: 23; Palmeira and Leite 1998: 123, 125). One of the perverse consequences of these fiscal incentives, however, was that large national and transnational corporations, the great majority of them not even from the agricultural sector, bought large extensions of land.6 This fuelled land speculation and accentuated land concentration (Guimarães 1982: 310–13). In only eleven years, from 1967 to 1978, the amount of land in the hands of the largest landowners (the top 5 per cent of all landowners) went from 65.3 per cent of all land to 71.6 per cent (Sparovek 2003: 20). The modernization policy, which also reoriented credits towards exports of grains and soybean and agroindustries that could add value to these exports, transformed Brazil into a ‘New Agricultural Country’ that came to occupy a very important place within the international food regime (Friedmann 1993: 45–6). Both of the monetary incentives mentioned above raised land prices and eroded the mechanisms through which peasants and certain rural workers were accustomed to having access to land. The inflow of credit and the obligation to pay back these loans introduced the market imperative of competition among capitalist farmers. As Marx had theorized (1991: 273–306), the possibility of losing their land if they did not reach average levels of profitability compelled rural landowners to cultivate land with modern technology or move to seeking cash rents instead of maintaining paternalistic arrangements with sharecroppers (Martins 2003: 312–15). In other words, most rural producers, but particularly large and medium commercial farmers, moved from a context in which their market dependence was such that the market was an opportunity to one in which the market became an imperative, generating a compulsion to constantly generate a profit. Simultaneously, the modernization of agriculture, the increased mechanization of most sectors, and the growth of cattle ranching drastically diminished the

peasant struggles  |  55 need for labour. As a consequence, between 1960 and 1980, 28 million rural workers and peasants were expelled from the countryside (Sparovek 2003: 24) to cities that were unable to provide employment for these newcomers. The hundreds of thousands of small family farmers that still remained were now much more subordinated to large agribusiness complexes, very often through soybean, wheat or maize production. The modernization policy of the 1960s and 1970s is thus the turning point that ended traditional peasant/landlord subordination and triggered another round of land concentration, allowing for the fully capitalist development of agriculture, in which accumulation became much more capital-intensive than before. Property in land and access to surplus labour became less based on ‘politically constituted property’ and extra-economic forms of extraction and more on ‘absolute private property’ and economic means of extraction.7 Ironically, in the aftermath of the military coup of 1964, after brutal persecution of communist leaders and other progressive rural activists, rural unions became the ‘distributional arm of the state’ in the countryside, providing rural workers and small farmers with a series of state services such as health and pension benefits (Houtzager 1998: 117–22; Welch 2009: 138). The state thus used the CONTAG, which had been created just before the coup, as a corporatist organization to compensate for the negative effects of this restructuring and gain some consent from the rural poor. By linking rural unions to the state and introducing legislation that encouraged the separate organization of small farmers and rural workers, the state was also able to de­mobilize the peasantry and remove the issue of land distribution from the political agenda. Local leaders of the CONTAG in turn could use their political connections to wage specific battles through courts or demand assistance from politicians. Only in the early 1980s did a new generation of union leaders emerge to fight for the democratization of rural unions. At the same time a new wave of land struggles was initiated by the poorest sectors of the Brazilian peasantry through the leadership of the MST, which eventually found common ground with certain sectors of the union movement. The transition from authoritarian rule in the mid-1980s provided a new opportunity to organize a counter-movement (Ondetti 2008: 100, 135), bring agrarian reform back to the table and impose ­political

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limits on the rule of the market in the countryside. In order to have the support of the rural sectors in the negotiations with the military, Alianza Democrática (the coalition of parties of the centre-right) promised to carry out agrarian reform once they took power. The CONTAG, the MST, the Catholic Church, the Workers’ Party and groups from civil society also tried to influence the outcome of the constitutional negotiations (Coletti 2005: 78), by among other things collecting 1.2 million signatures in favour of agrarian reform (Meszaros 2000: 526). Fearing the loss of their privileges, the agrarian bourgeoisie used their enormous power to influence members of the Constituent Assembly of 1987/88 to modify to their advantage the constitutional article related to agrarian reform. The agrarian bourgeoisie was not strong enough to bury the agrarian reform clause. However, its influence was felt in the articles regarding ­rural properties, which were modified in numerous ways in order to make land expropriation technically and financially very difficult. For instance, whereas previously with the Estatuto da Terra any land that did not fulfil its social function was subject to expropriation, the Constituent Assembly established that only land that was considered ‘unproductive’ according to a technical prerequisite that would be defined in a subsequent law could be expropriated (Martínez-Lara 1996: 147–69; Meszaros 2000: 524–5). To be fair, progressive forces were not completely defeated. To have the Constituent Assembly retain an article on agrarian reform in the highest law of the land, even if it was crafted in a way that opened the possibility for non-compliance, was an important victory – particularly considering that the composition of the Constituent Assembly disproportionally favoured the interests of large landlords. This half-victory paved the ‘institutional way’ for future political pressure by rural movements that led to the largest distribution of land in Brazilian history in the 1990s and 2000s. The strategy of the Mexican ruling class: state-led development, corporatism and gradual demobilization of the peasantry The Mexican revolution was probably one of the most radical agrarian reforms in the history of Latin America. It practically eradicated large rural properties during the Lázaro Cárdenas government (1934–40) when the state massively redistributed land to poor peasant and indigenous communities, undertook irrigation works and helped

peasant struggles  |  57 the constitution of collective ejidos to facilitate economies of scale (Hellman 1988: 84–90). Although disguised large properties persisted here and there thanks to the political leverage of certain landlords – for example, in several regions of Chiapas – a capitalist development path based on large-scale farming was virtually closed for Mexico. The model of development adopted by the post-revolutionary elite placed the state at the centre of economic and political activity, and established two sectors within agriculture: the ejido sector and the medium-sized capitalist farms, which had their territorial extension limited by law. The state created various state enterprises, which purchased agricultural production at guaranteed prices, and provided subsidies, low-cost inputs and technical assistance for farming and commercialization, which already by the 1950s were favouring the capitalist sector. For instance, state enterprises like the food agency CONASUPO and the coffee agency INMECAFÉ participated directly in the purchase of agricultural products and often sold them to transnational corporations (TNCs) operating in Mexico. This arrangement gave the state more leverage with respect to peasants and other sectors of society while it allowed TNCs to have access to products at low prices without having to bear production costs (Cockcroft 1983). But the most important way that the state intervened in agriculture was through the regulation of prices for the main agricultural products. Here, the state has had a double policy. It has provided guaranteed prices for agricultural producers, and it has also subsidized the consumption price of the main food crops that form the basis of the diet of the Mexican population.8 By doing so, the state has provided cheap wage goods for workers and in turn has allowed the industrial bourgeoisie to pay low wages (Otero 1999: 63–4). In parallel, the Mexican state developed a state corporatism far more extensive than its Brazilian counterpart. Through its corpora­ tist peasant organization, the Confederación Nacional Campesina (National Peasant Confederation, CNC) linked to the ruling Partido Revolucionario Institucional (Institutional Revolutionary Party, PRI), the state managed to partially incorporate peasant interests while suppressing or co-opting independent opposition. The CNC functioning as a clientelist instrument maintained a virtual monopoly over peasant representation until the early 1970s and generated broad base corruption (De Grammont and Mackinley 2009: 23–4). Even if

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the state never resolved the issues of poverty and land scarcity of peasant communities, the Mexican state-led model of agricultural production centred on peasant production was actually quite successful (Barkin 2002: 77). Between 1945 and 1966 and between 1977 and 1981, the ejido sector was able to provide 51.3 per cent of the total value of production, 65.3 per cent of the maize, 63.9 per cent of the beans, 66.1 per cent of the rice, 47.4 per cent of the cotton, 46.4 per cent of the coffee, and 41.4 per cent of the fruit (Calva 1999: 522). However, the production of cash crops for export was concentrated in the private sector, which drew on a growing pool of wage labourers coming from the increasingly marginalized ejido sector. Already by the late 1960s, the state was no longer committed to maintaining the Mexican model of peasant agriculture. In order to maintain its policy of subsidizing low wages through cheap food, the state opted to start to import more and more basic food crops from the United States (ibid.: 506; Barkin 2002: 79; Rubio 2004: 952). The recovery of Mexican agriculture in the late 1970s, based on the flow of resources into agriculture through President Lopez Portillo’s Sistema Alimentario Mexicano (Mexican Food System, SAM), proved to be only temporary. The ejido sector entered a crisis that triggered a new wave of land struggles in the 1970s, led by independent peasant and indigenous organizations. In the early 1980s, in the context of the debt crisis, as Brazil had done under the military regime nearly two decades before, the Mexican state decided to reorient its intervention towards the promotion of market forces. However, unlike its Brazilian counterpart, it opted for market liberalization, privatization of almost all its state enterprises, and a radical elimination of state subsidies (Foley 1995: 63; Pechlaner and Otero 2010: 195). As a result, between 1981 and 1997 public investment in agriculture decreased 85.7 per cent (Calva 1999: 511). Politically, this meant the erosion of CNC but also the rise of community-based independent organizations that adopted a different attitude towards the state, looking for more autonomy and control of the productive process (Foley 1995: 60; De Grammont and Mackinley 2009: 25–6), but also sought to establish alliances with certain state officials. This political realignment culminated under President Carlos Salinas de Gortari (1988–94) with his attempt to reorganize the clientelist network around new anti-poverty programmes like PRONASOL and PROCAMPO and the previously

peasant struggles  |  59 independent peasant organizations, such as the Unión Nacional de Organizaciones Regionales Campesinas Autónomas (UNORCA) and others (Hernández Navarro 1992: 236, 243; Rubio 1996: 135–41). As in Brazil, the state’s restructuring of the rural sector in Mexico also included consideration of the size of agricultural properties, with a bias towards larger-size properties, but unlike in Brazil it abandoned agrarian reform. The reform of Article 27 of the Constitution in 1992 was the culmination of a long process of de facto cancellation of land distribution and the definitive signal that Mexico was turning its back on its peasant model. The reform of Article 27 was in fact a requirement for beginning the negotiations with the United States and Canada over the North American Free Trade Agreement. The neoliberal factions within the Salinas government favoured full liberal­ ization of land tenure and the abolition of the ejido, but agrarianist sectors within the state argued for some protections (Foley 1995: 64). The reform hence allowed for the possibility of land concentration by permitting corporate enterprises to own twenty-five times the individual limit (Ibarra Mendívil 1996: 55). The new formulation of the constitutional article also placed several limits on the power of the state over private property. In effect, it did away with the idea that private property should have a social function by eliminating the expression ‘under exploitation’ from the previous formulation, which had given the state the right to expropriate land (Moguel 1992: 270). In addition, it opened the door for the privatization of ejido land, by allowing ejidatarios to sell their land or to use it as collateral for loans. The reform thus established the legal basis, the precondition, for the subjection of land to capital and the complete generalization of capitalist relations in the Mexican countryside. According to state officials, the only possible solution for Mexican agriculture was to open the countryside to private investment in order to allow rural producers to modernize and compete with foreign producers. This bold policy shift was accompanied by an explicit recognition of the dramatic consequences that this process would generate among the rural population. Indeed, the undersecretary of agricultural planning, Dr Luis Tellez, is reported to have said the following at the University of California San Diego in La Jolla in 1991: ‘It is the policy of my government to remove half of the population from rural Mexico during the next five years’ (cited by Barkin 2002: 81).

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When the reform was announced, the peasant movement was not in a position to mount any kind of real political opposition. The CNC no longer had the internal leverage to negotiate with the president. The independent peasant organizations were far from being consolidated nationally when discussions on the reform surfaced. Most of them were weak and divided, simply attempting to find room for peasants within the neoliberal model, like several organizations within the UNORCA, or had been co-opted by President Salinas’ neocorporatism. Peasant organizations and their allies within the state were able to win only some minor legal concessions  that subjected the process of ejido privatization to a series of steps that  required the consent of three-quarters of the ejido assembly or the intermediation of the state (Ibarra Mendívil 1996; Foley 1995: 65–6). However limited these concessions may have been, they have been important in slowing down the process of privatization of ejido land. With its armed uprising of 1 January 1994, the EZLN was the only peasant organization that opted for radical resistance to the imposition of the reform of Article 27 of the Constitution and demanded its withdrawal (Harvey 1998: 169–226). The Mexican countryside did not witness the rapid privatization or concentration that some feared and others wished for. Although some indications of land concentration by a small emerging ‘middlesize agribusiness’ exist in the vegetable and fruit sector (Mackinlay 2008: 186–7), this process of change has been very slow and very unequally distributed geographically. The deep economic crisis that the Mexican countryside has endured in the last twenty years has been contradictorily the other factor that has slowed down privatization. Indeed, this crisis has led peasants to cling on to their land, if only to produce for self-subsistence, as the recent increase in maize production for self-consumption studied by Barkin (2002) can attest. Many regions of the Mexican countryside, especially indigenous regions, even if they are labour poles, are still characterized by the coexistence of capitalist and non-capitalist relations of production. The counter-reform of 1992, however, just like the Ley Lerdo and the Brazilian Land Law of 1850, represents an attempt to establish the precondition for the fully capitalist development of agriculture in Mexico. This time, the Mexican ruling class did not attempt rad­ ical institutional transformation but decided to slowly suffocate the

peasant struggles  |  61 peasant sector by cutting off state support, thinking that the fittest agricultural producers would rise, enlarge their properties, find credits and modernize their production. As the Brazilian case attests, the establishment of a legal framework is not sufficient. The closure of the so-called primitive accumulation can take a century to unfold or without state intervention might not happen at all. The MST and the EZLN have thus inherited the conditions of their struggles for land from this long history of successive battles over property regimes, state formation and state policies, in which, akin to what has recently happened elsewhere in the South in the case of agrarian reform, pressure from below managed to find reformist allies within the state (Akram-Lodhi et al. 2007: 390). This is to a great extent what explains the different nature of their struggles, priorities and strategies. The current context and the institutional setting in which the Zapatista struggle takes place in Chiapas should be seen as the long-term result of the resistance of indigenous communities, the strength of the peasant movements, and the division of the ruling class during the Mexican revolution. The situation is very different in Brazil, where peasants did not have a tradition of communal rights or a broad class-based national political capacity, and where the ruling class never lost its quasi-monopoly over land. As a consequence, even though the MST emerged in the regions of Brazil with the strongest presence of a peasant economy, the struggle for land in Brazil takes place in a rural society that is much more marked by the commodification of land and the predominance of capitalist social relations than the rural areas in which the Zapatistas live in Mexico. This is the long-term result of the gradual establishment of private property rights to land since 1850 and the emergence of the imperative of competition triggered by the infusion of credits and fiscal incentives in the 1960s and 1970s. As a consequence of the latest round of struggles over property rights to land, the MST was able to benefit from a broad social movement that maintained the agrarian reform in the Constitution in order to lead land occupations that forced the largest redistribution of land in Brazilian history. Hence, the MST is able to build and legitimize its struggle by referring to the existing legal framework (Hammond 1999; Meszaros 2000), namely the Brazilian Constitution and the corresponding legislation that establishes the conditions and criteria for land expropriation – particularly the

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levels of agricultural productivity. However, because of the nature of the property regimes and the imperative of competition that the credit policies triggered in the 1970s and 1980s, it is difficult for the settlers affiliated to the MST to prosper. The MST has thus focused on strategies that could protect settlers and force the Brazilian state into supporting peasant agriculture. The Zapatistas also justified their rebellion by referring to the right of the people to revolt against tyranny enshrined in the Mexican Constitution and by demanding a return to the original spirit of Article 27 related to property rights to land (Womack 1999: 247–54). In its zones of influence, the EZLN has even succeeded in establishing an alternative institutional order that protects access to land from commodification by falling back on the original Article 27. It is also no coincidence that the struggle for land of the Zapatistas, like the land struggles of the late nineteenth century, brought back the question of local autonomy as one of the ways to protect peasants’ access to land and control of resources, this time through an attempt to win the constitutional recognition of indigenous peoples’ right to autonomy. However, in both cases, as we will see in Chapter 3, it was only the intense political mobilization of their membership and the radical critique of the liberal concept of private property rights to land which allowed them to challenge the ways in which laws were applied or modified. At the same time, these two struggles for land are clearly responses to neoliberal restructuring of agriculture, which affects Brazilian and Mexican peasants differently. The next chapter will describe the specific ways in which peasants in southern Brazil and Chiapas were concretely affected by neoliberal restructuring and identify the circumstances that led them to radically oppose these reforms and develop their own alternative to neoliberalism.

2  |  NEOLIBERALISM AND NEW FORMS OF PEASANT REBELLION

The last chapter placed the current land struggles in Brazil and Chiapas in historical perspective and highlighted the impact of property regimes on the different types of agrarian transition that Brazil and Mexico underwent in order to understand the type of countryside in which the struggle of the MST and the EZLN are inserted. In this chapter we turn our attention to the specific transformations that neoliberal restructuring triggered in the Brazilian and Chiapan countrysides. The objective is to understand how the grassroots membership of both organizations was concretely affected by these changes and assess the extent to which their response can be seen as new forms of peasant rebellions because of the radical nature of their resistance to neoliberalism and capitalism. Latin America has a long history of peasant revolts, rebellions and revolutions. The land struggle currently being waged by the MST in Brazil and the EZLN in Chiapas share many of the characteristics of previous peasant rebellions. Although the MST and the EZLN’s struggles for land are not social revolutions in a strict sense,1 they do represent a radicalization of peasant politics that shows both continuities and ruptures with other peasant rebellions studied by a previous generation of scholars (Moore 1966; Wolf 1973; Migdal 1974; Paige 1975; Scott 1976; Skocpol 1982). Both organizations have strongly opposed the implementation of neoliberal policies, questioned the sanctity of private property, challenged the existing power relations in the countryside, and have inserted their struggle within a broader perspective of global social transformation. The fact that the MST and the EZLN have adopted forms of political action that privilege social mobilization over military confrontation should not impede us from using the term rebellion to characterize their struggle for land, because it simply shows that peasant movements adopt forms of struggle in accordance with historical circumstances. Even if they justify their actions on the state’s own terrain by linking it to national

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symbols, the contemporary discourse on democracy and even the constitutional basis of the current political regimes, the MST and the EZLN still seek to radically transform the existing social order. Furthermore, as will be shown in Chapter 3, the political practices encouraged within these movements also represent a radicalization of more traditional forms of politics because they emphasize grassroots politicization and participation within the territorial spaces under their control – namely encampments and settlements in the case of the MST and autonomous indigenous communities and municipalities in the case of the EZLN. Scholars of peasant rebellions have identified the expansion of capitalism and state modernizing policies as two of the fundamental processes triggering agrarian changes that lead to revolts. However, since most studies were conducted during periods when traditional agrarian social structures characterized the countryside, most ­scholars inserted their analysis of the process of proletarianization within a framework that also attributed a great importance to ­peasant–landlord relationships, which were seen as quasi-feudal. As will be argued below, this framework is no longer appropriate for studying the current resurgence of peasant struggles in Latin America. In the last thirty years, following a continental trend (Kay 1995, 2000), in Brazil and Mexico ‘traditional landlords’ of the kind Moore, Wolf, Paige and Scott wrote about have essentially dis­appeared.2 The MST’s and the EZLN’s struggle for land cannot be explained by referring to feudal-like relationships. We are hence witnessing new forms of peasant rebellions, reacting at the same time to land dispossession and the experience of alienation through the labour market. Scholars who have sought to characterize and explain peasant rebellions have mainly focused on four interrelated issues: 1 2 3 4

the conditions giving rise to peasant rebellions; the social and political goals of the rebellions; the class composition of the rebellions; and the reasons explaining the success of the revolutionary ­movement.

There is a large body of literature that has focused on identifying and analysing the political and organizational processes that led to

new forms of rebellion  |  65 the emergence, development and success of the MST (Almeida and Ruiz Sánchez 2000; Navarro 2000; Branford and Rocha 2002; Welch 2006; Ondetti 2008) and the EZLN (Collier with Quaratiello 1994; Harvey 1998; Nash 2001; Petras and Veltmeyer 2001). Hence, this chapter will focus mainly on the first three issues. In the first section, I will describe the neoliberal restructuring of the countryside that has occurred in Brazil and in Chiapas. I will follow with an overview of some of the debates on the goals and the traditional class composition of peasant rebellions. In the last section, I will provide a characterization of the class composition of the membership of the MST and the EZLN and highlight some of the radical and anti-capitalist aspects of their development alternatives, which will be described in detail in the following two chapters. The crisis of peasant agriculture under neoliberal Brazil and Mexico Most scholars of peasant rebellions (Moore 1966; Wolf 1973, 1999; Migdal 1974; Paige 1975; Scott 1976;3 Skocpol 1982) agree that modern peasant rebellions are responses to sudden drastic agrarian changes that disrupt the daily lives of peasants, and which trigger economic and political crisis. Focusing on Latin America, Susan Eckstein has also pointed out that the existence or the absence of exit options for peasants was crucial in determining whether or not a revolutionary movement emerged. When impoverished peasants are able to find work in cities or in agricultural enterprises, or when they can migrate to other regions, a revolutionary organization will have difficulty in finding recruits. Conversely, if no exit options exist, peasant rebellions are more likely to develop (Eckstein 2001 [1989]: 46). At first glance, if we look at the general structural causes that gave rise to the MST and the EZLN, the origin of these struggles for land does not seem to diverge from previous rebellions. However, the contemporary crises of peasant agriculture can no longer be seen in terms of encroachment upon the non-capitalist logic of isolated peasant villages by the logic of capitalist market relations. Members of the MST and the EZLN, although they partly rely on non-capitalist social relations for their survival, have engaged in capitalist exchanges for a long time, either through the sale of the crops they produce or their labour power for a wage. Hence, it is

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not the expansion of capitalist relations per se, but rather the nature of the restructuring of agriculture which explains the re-emergence of the struggles for land in Brazil and Chiapas. As has happened in other regions of the South, the profound crisis of the peasant economy, exacerbated by growing unemployment in the countryside and in cities, has endangered subsistence, i.e. the simple social reproduction of the peasantry (Bryceson 2000b; Bernstein 2004; Moyo and Yeros 2005). In turn, this situation has led many sectors of the peasantry to confront the power of the state and rural elites. In Brazil and Mexico, particularly Chiapas, the economic crisis reached such a degree at the end of the millennium that the struggle for land is now geared towards the subsistence of poor and marginalized families. In both countries, maintaining or gaining access to land, and thus reclaiming the peasant condition (repeasantization), is one of the political strategies adopted by rural subaltern groups to resist the ongoing crisis. However, as shown in the previous chapter, since Brazil and Mexico adopted very different paths of capitalist development and state formation, which can be traced back to different regimes of land property rights, the actual nature of the countryside differed. Regardless of their differences, the state-led models of agricultural production in Brazil and Mexico were part of a global food regime, dominated by ‘the United States as the main rule-maker and – con­ sequently – main exporter’ (Friedmann 2004: 125). Within this regime, state intervention and regulation focused mainly on setting prices and conditions on domestic producers, controlling distribution, and protecting the national market (ibid.: 129). The United States has simultaneously promoted the commodification of agriculture and further technological improvements in agriculture, which in Third World countries was carried out through the Green Revolution via the encouragement of monoculture and the introduction of highyielding varieties of rice, wheat, maize and potatoes, as well as the use of modern inputs such as pesticides and fertilizers (ibid.: 133). The shift from a state-led to a market-led model of agricultural production in Brazil and Mexico was thus also part of a worldwide restructuring process of capitalism and agriculture that was initiated in the core capitalist countries. In the second half of the 1970s, in response to the subsidized overproduction of US agriculture and

new forms of rebellion  |  67 the growing competitiveness of western European agriculture (ibid.: 135), the US government began pressuring Third World countries into opening their markets and phasing out state intervention in the agricultural sector. Like other Latin American countries, Brazil and Mexico adopted market-led development, and since the 1980s agriculture has been transformed by market and trade liberalization, the specialization of production, and the expansion of agribusiness. In both countries, transnational agribusiness complexes have also filled the void left by the retreat of the state and have increased their involvement in and control of the liberalized market. In both countries, processing companies set production standards and con­ditions, while the banks of agricultural equipment companies, such as John Deere, have become an important source of credit for modernized agricultural producers (Belik and Paulillo 2001: 103; Rubio 2004: 953). However, in each country, though more in Brazil than Mexico, the state maintained some support programmes for large and even small producers well into the early 1990s. Nevertheless, the Brazilian and Mexican states never returned to the kind of involvement in agriculture that characterized their policies before the 1980s. In Brazil, even though agricultural credits were cut fivefold ­during the 1980s (Belik and Paulillo 2001: 96), the state continued to intervene in the market throughout the 1980s and the early 1990s by purchasing and stockpiling food crops and maintaining guaranteed prices (Dias and Amaral 2002: 214; Delgado 2001: 47). As a result, large Brazilian capitalist farmers were protected for several decades and are now fully integrated with the transnational agribusiness sector (Belik and Paulillo 2001: 98), as well as with the national supermarket chains (Dias and Amaral 2002: 217). In contrast, in Mexico, public investment in agriculture also decreased dramatically, but as the country opened its agricultural market faster than NAFTA prescribed it, heavily subsidized agricultural imports from the United States have pushed small and even medium-sized agricultural producers to migrate (Rubio 2004) or into production for self-consumption (Barkin 2002). Only a small proportion of medium-sized producers were able to find a niche in fruit and vegetable markets through production contracts with agribusiness (Barros Nock 2000: 169). In Brazil and Mexico, small and medium-sized producers, ­peasants, squatters and rural workers have had to bear the costs of

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this restructuring. In Brazil, in addition to the already mentioned 28 million rural workers and peasants who were expelled from the countryside between 1960 and 1980, 10 million lost their jobs in the agricultural sector between 1985 and 1995 (Filho 2001: 196) and it is estimated that another 4 million people abandoned agriculture between 1995 and 1999 (Petras and Veltmeyer 2003a: 75). However, smallholder production was far from being eradicated because up to 1995 as many as 69.8 per cent of all production units in Brazil cultivated an area of less than 20 hectares (Buainaim et al. 2003: 322). However, as was mentioned earlier, it became more and more difficult for peasant families to maintain their access to land, compete on the market, and find paid work on capitalist farms. Similarly, in Mexico, the number of profit-making agricultural producers dropped from 4 million producers in 1994 to only 300,000 in 2000 (Rubio 2004: 955), and by the end of that decade only 20,000 of the 7 million producers could be considered dynamic enough to participate in the export sector (Pechlaner and Otero 2010: 201). In Chiapas, according to official data, the percentage of municipalities considered of ‘high’ and ‘very high’ marginalization went up from 63.06 per cent of all municipalities in 1995 to 93.16 per cent in 2000 (Gobierno de Chiapas – Secretaría de Desarrollo Social 2003: 27). In 2010, 78.5 per cent of the population of Chiapas lived below the poverty line, of which 38.3 per cent lived in extreme poverty. In the municipalities with a Zapatista presence, such as Ocosingo, Chilón, Las Margaritas, Tila and Chamula, the population living in extreme poverty was as high as 59.7 per cent, 70.6 per cent, 60.8 per cent, 69.3 per cent and 69.7 per cent respectively (CONEVAL 2012: 17). In Chiapas during the 1980s, poor indigenous peasants experienced the crisis through a drastic drop in the price of maize and coffee, the two crops from which they derived their monetary income. INMECAFÉ, the state corporation that regulated, financed and purchased coffee production, was privatized in 1989 in the midst of the worst coffee crisis, which saw prices fall by 50 per cent in a year, leaving thousands of small and micro producers loaded with debt and without access to credit (Harvey 1995: 42–3). Similarly, the price  of  maize dropped drastically to the extent that in 1987 43 per cent of maize producers were operating at a loss. The number jumped to 65 per cent in 1988 (ibid.: 44). As a consequence, in all regions

new forms of rebellion  |  69 of Chiapas this crisis propelled an even more dramatic struggle for land. In the Lacandona jungle, where the EZLN emerged, the low price of coffee and maize came to exacerbate the already abrasive land conflict between indigenous peasant communities and the state, which dated back several decades. First, President Gustavo Díaz Ordáz (1964–70) promulgated a decree promising ejido titles to the peasants who colonized and settled in the Lacandona jungle. Then in 1971, his successor, Luis Echeverría (1970–76), halted the possibility of gaining access to land through colonization by allocating 614,321 hectares of the jungle to only sixty-six families of Lacandon ­s and cancelled the rights of twenty-six indigenous communities of other ethnic origins that had recently settled in the area (Leyva Solano and Ascencio Franco 1996: 113). The indigenous settlers, whose lands were now endangered by the decree, did not want to relocate and began an arduous struggle against the government. Subsequently, in 1979, President José López Portillo (1976–82), through another decree, created the ecological reserve of Montes Azules, which meant another relocation of hundreds of indigenous peasant settler communities, and the revocation of their ejido titles. This threat against their land rights in the context of a deep economic crisis was at the root of an important process of communal organization and mobilization that culminated in the development of the EZLN (Harvey 1998: 68–90). Hence, in 1989, when President Carlos Salinas de Gortari (1988–94) granted ejido titles to twenty-six ‘illegal’ communities settled within the Montes Azules bio-reserve (Collier with Quaratiello 1994: 78), it was, for most of them, too little too late. The state had lost the little legitimacy it had enjoyed in the eyes of the peasantry, had become a class enemy and had effectively been replaced by the EZLN, which was at the time still a clandestine organization (see ibid.: 51). Collier synthetized the whole process in these terms: Government intervention into the colonization of one of Mexico’s last frontiers thus subtly but irrevocably reversed earlier perceptions of agrarian authorities as allies. The government replaced large landowners as the hated enemy by taking over their role. First, the state came to act as a self-interested proprietor of national lands rather than facilitator of peasant needs … Second, the government, by rewarding peasants loyal to the ruling party,

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set peasants against peasants, just as hated landlords had once conceded marginal lands to ‘their’ peasants as a bulwark against claims of other peasants in the earlier phase of agrarian reform. And finally, in 1992, the government changed the law to put an end to the very claims it had encouraged peasants to make as colonists on the final frontier. (Ibid.: 51)

Thus, beyond some important differences between the conditions and development of the Brazilian and Mexican countryside, the modernization of agriculture in Brazil and the neoliberal restructuring of the 1980s and 1990s in both countries led to a crisis in peasant agriculture and the marginalization of peasants and rural workers. In turn, this crisis created favourable conditions for the emergence of the struggle for land by the MST in Brazil and the EZLN in Chiapas. In the case of the MST, the land struggle started before the implementation of neoliberal policies, but neoliberal restructuring gave it a second impulse and has allowed the MST to continue growing nationally. In the case of the EZLN, neoliberal restructuring exacer­ bated an already existing local land conflict between indigenous peasant communities and the state. The deepening of the economic crisis of the Chiapan countryside has allowed the EZLN to expand its social base outside the initial geographic area of the Lacandona jungle, but only into regions within the state of Chiapas that are populated by indigenous subsistence peasants. The decision to reject any kind of relationship with the state, including anti-poverty cash transfers, has, however, fragmented many Zapatista communities internally, splitting them according to social and political affiliations. The neoliberal restructuring of agriculture that occurred in Brazil and Chiapas provides the conditions that made revolt possible, but it does not in itself tell us why peasants rebelled only in those two regions and not elsewhere in Latin America. Three factors can help explain the peculiarity of the struggle for land by the MST and the EZLN. First, peasant politics and the state’s response to it in Brazil and Mexico run counter to the recent history of peasant politics elsewhere in Latin America. Peasantries in Latin America have participated in guerrilla movements since the 1960s in Colombia, Guatemala, Nicaragua, El Salvador and Peru. Over a period of several decades, while guerrilla movements were frequently able to destabilize local

new forms of rebellion  |  71 oligarchic regimes, they never managed to defeat them completely. As a consequence, peasant movements in Central America have accepted that their demands must remain within the limits of liberal representative democracies instead of challenging them as the MST and the EZLN do. Jeffrey Paige, taking issue with Barrington Moore’s (1966) three routes to modern democracy, argues that Central American failed ‘socialist revolutions from below’ exemplify a fourth route to democracy, because the unintended consequence of these revolutions was the establishment of liberal democratic regimes (Paige 1997: 316, 329–32). In contrast, Brazil and Mexico are two countries where the state managed to suppress guerrilla movements very early on in the 1960s and 1970s. The Brazilian and the Mexican states were also able to develop or maintain successful corporatist structures in the countryside until the early 1980s (Houtzager 1998; Villafuerte et al. 1999: 154). Hence the demise of these corporatist structures, due both to the implementation of neoliberal policies and the challenge of a new wave of peasant movements, has led to the radicalization of some sectors of the peasantry two decades later than in other Latin American countries. However, as will be shown in Chapter 5, the decreased financial capacity of the state has not made corporatism fade away and most peasant organizations continue to seek clientelistic relations with political parties and the state. Secondly, the absence of an exit strategy for peasants and rural workers in Brazil and Chiapas provided further impetus for this radicalization of peasant politics. In the case of Brazil, the mere size of the rural population expelled from the countryside eliminates the possibility of speaking of any kind of significant exit option. For many peasant families wanting to remain on the land, the choice was simply between social marginalization in cities and land occupation with the MST and other peasant organizations. The same is true for indigenous regions of Chiapas. Sources of local off-farm work that had traditionally been important for the subsistence peasants of the Lacandona jungle and for other indigenous regions of Chiapas became ever scarcer as a result of the development of cattle ranching from the 1970s and the coffee crisis of the 1980s. Moreover, in contrast to other indigenous regions of southern Mexico, in Chiapas migration to the United States did not replace migration to the city as an exit strategy. In 1995 Chiapas was still ranked 27th out of 32

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Mexican states in terms of the amount of remittances received from abroad, as indigenous peasants continued to rely more on their kinship network and community for their survival than on migration.4 The third factor distinguishing the experience of the MST and the EZLN from those of other peasant organizations in Latin America arises from the role played by these peasant movements in the radicalization of peasants and landless rural workers. Joel Migdal emphasized that peasant revolutions could emerge only if a revolutionary organization filled the political vacuum created by the decline of traditional village institutions and leaders. For him, peasants would be ready to join a revolutionary organization if it was able to offer concrete solutions to their problems, provide them with ­material rewards or services, or allow them to reach longerterm goals (Migdal 1974: 237–52). Barrington Moore, on his part, highlighted the importance of the ‘types of solidarity arrangements among the peasants … insofar as they constitute focal points for the creation of a distinct peasant society in opposition to the dom­ inant class and as the basis for popular conceptions of justice and injustice that clash with those of the rulers’ (1966: 479). However, he seemed to suggest that the type of solidarity arrangements was more the result of the agrarian structure of a peasant society and less the fruit of the efforts of peasant organizations. The experience of the MST and the EZLN shows that by controlling a territorial space – the encampment and the settlement in the case of the MST and a whole network of indigenous communities in the case of the EZLN – these organizations were able to replace the state and provide peasants with political representation and basic services (Robles 2000; F­ernandes 2005; Burguete Cal y Mayor 2003; Starr et al. 2011). From these ‘­autonomous rural communities’ they were able to develop a radical understanding of politics and social change based on the re-creation or strengthening of the bonds of solidarity among ­peasants and landless rural workers. Very few peasant movements in contemporary Latin America have achieved a similar control over a territorial space that can be translated into a powerful tool for social mobilization. When they have achieved that control, such as in the case of the indigenous movement in Ecuador, the actions of peasant movements have yielded impressive political results (see Perreault 2003).

new forms of rebellion  |  73 Searching for a revolutionary subject in the countryside Determining which sector of the peasantry is more prone to adopt revolutionary strategies has been at the centre of many heated debates among scholars of peasant rebellions. Indeed, in his study on the Russian countryside, Lenin argued that middle-income peasants were a barrier to socialist transformation ‘because of their vacillating nature on the border of subsistence and profit-oriented production, and because of the brake they placed on the development of a home market, given their tendency to be self-sufficient producers’ (Bryceson 2000a: 10). Lenin added that, in contrast, landless rural labourers, because of their class position, could be considered ­allies of the industrial proletariat in a socialist revolution. Two of the most influential studies on peasant rebellions, Barrington Moore Jr’s Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy: Lord and Peasant in the Making of the Modern World (1966) and Eric Wolf’s Peasant Wars of the Twentieth Century (1973), provided evidence against the argument about the conservative orientation of peasants and the revolutionary potential of rural labourers. For Moore, Wolf and Scott, landowning peasants were more prone to rebel than landless peasants and rural workers (Skocpol 1982: 352). Wolf’s work is more relevant here because, among the three, he is the one who tried to push and refine this argument the farthest. According to Wolf, poor peasants or landless labourers cannot be revolutionaries because they have no tactical power (Wolf 1975: 268). Only the ‘land-owning middle peasantry’ or a ‘peasantry located in a peripheral area outside the domain of the landlord control’ has sufficient internal leverage to sustain a rebellion (ibid.: 269). But for Wolf it was basically middle-income peasants, those ‘who work their own land with labour of their own family’, who were the ‘prime movers to rebellion’, because ‘only they possess the degree of autonomy required to initiate political action and to become viable allies for “outside agitators”’ (Wolf 1999: 235). In contrast to Wolf, Jeffery Paige recognized that under particular circumstances peasants could radicalize and even engage in revolts, but only to return to their prior conservatism (Paige 1975: 339). For Paige, it was the migratory estate labourers and the sharecroppers (i.e. the poorest sectors of the peasantry) who formed the principal base of revolutionary movements.5

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The respective positions of Wolf and Paige in the debate over which sectors of the peasantry were more prone to rebel is ­grounded in different views on the ties that different groups within the ­peasantry maintain with land and with their communities. Indeed, Wolf argued that middle-income peasants were ‘primary movers of revolutions’ also because their children, who are sent to the city to work, maintain their ties to their village and can introduce to the village revolutionary ideas learned in the city (Wolf 1973: 292, 1999: 235). Conversely, according to Wolf, children of poor peasants, once in the city, simply break their ties with their family and village (Wolf 1973: 292, 1999: 235). In contradistinction to Wolf, Paige’s analysis of the migratory estate system shows that it is the ties of poor peasants (migrant estate workers) with land and their communities which allow peasant communities to be drawn into a revolutionary movement (Paige 1975: 361). Similarly, for scholars of the Latin American countryside, one of the major debates within agrarian studies has been that around the characterization of the social condition of the majority of rural producers. There are broadly two positions within this debate: the ‘proletarianist’ position, which argues that the main tendency in the Latin American countryside is towards the proletarianization of rural producers, and the ‘peasantist’ position, which argues that regardless of the growing reliance of rural direct producers on wages, the peasantry as a class still resists the process of proletarianization and manages to remain connected to land through their kin or villages (Harris 1978: 8; Otero 1999; Kay 2000). Implicitly, in the background of this entire debate, a few central questions always come back: Through what productive process do rural producers ensure their material reproduction? Is it through what they produce on their plots or is it through the wage that they earn as wage labourers? Because the reality of agricultural production and the peasant condition within capitalism are much more complex than a simple answer to those questions could allow, a subsequent question normally follows: Which of these two components of agricultural production is more important for the simple social reproduction of the peasant family? Some analysts see wage labour as a complementary activity to peasant production for self-consumption, while others see production for self-consumption ­simply as a means

new forms of rebellion  |  75 of survival that helps rural proletarians to reproduce themselves as labourers. In turn, again rarely explicitly, this search for the correct characterization of the class position (proletarian or peasant) of rural social subjects involved in rebellions is rooted in a particular understanding of class formation that is built upon the base/superstructure model. Determining the correct class position becomes important because it is believed that class consciousness derives from ‘objective’ class position, i.e. from the place of the subject within the productive process. This objective class position can later be mobilized and shaped by militant political struggles of a radical organization, which triggers the ‘subjective’ (i.e revolutionary) aspects of class formation. Marxists theorists have used the metaphor of ‘class in itself’ to refer to the first moment and ‘class for itself’ for the second moment. To escape from this conundrum, one has to understand class and social reproduction as a highly complex phenomenon that cannot be accurately grasped primarily by the structural reductionism that establishes the condition of social subjects according to their simple ‘material’ or ‘objective’ conditions of existence. On the contrary, class and social reproduction must encompass, as equally determining, political, cultural and symbolic elements, understood as constitutive elements inseparable from the totality and as acquiring a materiality through concrete social relations, but also, as we will see in Chapter 3, through the process of participating within a political organization. That said, identifying the kind of economic activities in which rural subjects are involved is important, not because it tells us something about their class consciousness, but rather because it indicates the various kinds of experiences that they bring with them when they decide to enter an organization. Peasants or proletarians will not be ‘revolutionary’ per se or collectively become a class because of their place in the economy, but rather because they have reflected on the people, institutions and mechanisms that oppressed them and have taken collective means to address this situation. Hence, at the beginning of the new millennium, experiences as wage labourers in the countryside or in the city are extremely important in the radicalization of landless rural workers in Brazil and subsistence indigenous peasants in Chiapas. These experiences are not as important in terms of access to revolutionary ideas – especially

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not today – as they are in terms of experiences of alienation and marginalization. The long periods of unemployment and on-and-off casual wage work lead poor peasants and landless rural workers to reassess the advantages of having access to land. In the case of indigenous peasants in Chiapas, these experiences with the vicissitudes of underemployment, which are racially mediated, reinforce their sense of alienation from Mexican society. As early as the late 1960s, some Latin American Marxists (Marini 1973; Quijano 1994; Nun 1994) argued that expelled peasants would not be integrated into the reserve army of labour but would instead enlarge a marginal population (marginal mass or marginal pole) that is permanently unemployed and reproduced through various activities within what has been called the ‘informal sector’ (Kay 2006: 459–62). Following that trend of thought, Cristóbal Kay has recently argued that as a result of the modernization of agriculture during the last thirty years, which has entrenched seasonal work as the main type of occupation in the countryside, ‘most of Latin America’s peasantry appears to be stuck in a state of permanent semi-proletarianization’ (Kay 2000: 132). Indeed, the particularity of the process of industrialization and agricultural modernization in Latin American countries makes it difficult to talk about proletarianization as the main or the only tendency in the countryside, unless by proletarianization one simply refers to the generalization of experiences of wage labour within various sectors of the peasantry. On the contrary, even in cases such as Brazil where the process of proletarianization of rural direct producers has progressed more rapidly than in other countries of Latin America, the peasant responses to the restructuring of agriculture impede a linear understanding of the process. Hence, land struggles in the context of incomplete proletarianization are products of dynamic processes of depeasantization/semi-proletarianization/repeasantization. In this context, rural direct producers, in response to the instability of their wage-earning activities, shift back and forth between the condition of semi-proletarianized rural workers and peasants, combine both for an extended period, and often seek to regain their peasant condition. Alternatives to impoverishment and social marginalization In contrast to how past peasant rebellions were portrayed by a previous generation of scholars, the social composition of both the

new forms of rebellion  |  77 MST and the EZLN is very diverse. Indeed, most scholars of peasant rebellions differentiate between peasants and rural wage labourers, associating the latter with the proletariat. As the previous discussion highlights, this clear-cut distinction can no longer be made in Latin America, as the great majority of rural producers combine different activities and class experiences, and move from one condition to the other.6 Nevertheless, some distinctions between the social composition of the MST and the EZLN have to be drawn if we want to understand the specificity of their struggle for land. Since the early 1980s it has been possible to identify two fundamental waves of militants. Most of those who make up the first wave struggled for land in the 1980s, have a family history of land possession, and are thus from an unambiguously peasant background. The first wave of Sem Terra were mainly land-poor peasants, landless peasants (sharecroppers or squatters) and landless rural workers who, in the 1970s, because of land concentration and the mechanization of agriculture, had to migrate to other rural areas or to the cities in search of employment. An important proportion of the people who joined the MST in the 1980s were thus former peasants or rural ­workers with access to land through a family member. Especially in the early 1980s, Sem Terra had experiences with subsistence agriculture and non-monetarized relations of production somewhat similar to those of Zapatista indigenous peasants. However, this does not apply to all the members of the MST, since many of them come from family farming, which, especially in the south, is much more integrated within the circuit of modern capitalist farming. The second wave of MST militants is probably more diverse than the first wave, although the proportion of landless peasants, sharecroppers and the like is lower than in the first wave. This second wave of Sem Terra is much more clearly made up of landless rural workers, often with no family history of land possession, while the proportion of urban dwellers with little or very distant connections with the countryside is now growing. This last tendency directly contradicts Wickham-Crowley’s argument (2001 [1989]: 151) that a peasantry that has been landless for some time will tend not to participate in radical movements. In the case of the current ­second generation of Sem Terra, it cannot be said that their struggle represents a reconnection with a lost peasant past. Their struggle ­represents more a

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­ econnection from a current experience of urban marginalization. d ­Regardless of the differences between the two waves of landless ­people, both share the objective of finding a space for subsistence within a peasant economy in the midst of a profound unemployment crisis.7 The achievement of this goal depends on gaining access to land and, at least in the beginning, producing food for selfconsumption. Once this initial phase of survival is completed, MST settlers become much more preoccupied with finding ways to better integrate into the market through the creation of cooperatives, the diversification of production or through participation in the niche market of agro-ecological production. In contrast, the EZLN is a movement made up of subsistence indigenous peasants and their semi-proletarianized kin, who ­migrate temporarily to work in farms and ranches or cities of Chiapas. The ­Zapatista movement has enrolled communities in the Lacandona ­jungle, the north, the highlands and the Fronteriza regions of Chiapas. The EZLN has not been able to set up alternative political structures in the non-indigenous regions of the state, such as the Soconusco and Central Valley, which are more integrated into the market and where contingents of rural proletarians are larger. One of the early discussions around the Zapatista uprising in English-speaking academic circles was the debate around whether the Zapatista rebellion was mainly an indigenous or a peasant rebellion. Some authors argue that the Zapatista movement is an identitybased movement (Burbach 1994; Gossen 1996). Others emphasize that class still plays a central role in defining the movement (Veltmeyer 1997; Petras and Veltmeyer 2001). The great majority of authors, however, prefer to highlight that identity and class are two fundamental and inseparable social categories that allow us to understand the character of the Zapatista movement (Nash 2001; Harvey 1998; Otero and Jugenitz 2003). Following this latter trend, I argue that the EZLN is an ‘indigenous peasant movement’ whose membership is essentially made of indigenous subsistence peasants and their semiproletarianized  kin. Many authors (Leyva Solano and Ascencio Franco 1996: 105–6; Márquez Rosano and Legorreta 1999: 11; Villafuerte et al. 1999: 107) have pointed out the existence of two logics within the Chiapan countryside: the ‘peasant logic’, associated with subsistence farming,

new forms of rebellion  |  79 and the ‘accumulation logic’, associated with commercial farming. Historically, peasant or subsistence logic marked the agricultural practices of indigenous peasants while the accumulation logic dom­ inated among Ladino8 landowners. According to the great majority of studies, based on a comparison of data from the 1990 agricultural census with the previous decades, the main tendency in the Chiapan countryside was towards the encroachment of the subsistence logic by the logic of accumulation (Leyva Solano and Ascencio Franco 1996: 89, 92, 128, 137; Villafuerte et al. 1999: 108, 110). Traditionally in Chiapas, as in many other parts of Mexico, the peasant community, which relies to a great extent on female unpaid labour, assumes part of the burden of the survival of their members who work for a wage and thus makes up for part of the reproduction of the agricultural labour force (Otero 1999: 62). Historically, in order to increase the monetary income derived from the sale of agricultural products, men had to seek wage labour outside indigenous regions. Most of them left their community for short periods of time to earn money for the rest of the year, during which time women and children worked the family plot. Thus, a significant proportion of Zapatistas have had – and still have – experience with wage work in fincas and ranches9 but also in urban centres of the region (Palenque, Ocosingo, Comitán, Villa Hermosa), where they seek any employment10 they can find. Hence, in the face of difficulty, the response by indigenous peasants in Chiapas has been to pull back from the market and reinforce the communities, which are built around kinship networks (Earle and Simonelli 2005: 21). Data from the national census of 2000 suggest that, as a result of more than a decade of economic stagnation, an important tendency towards subsistence agriculture can be observed in many indigenous regions of Chiapas. According to the census of 2000, in Los Altos 45.5 per cent of all households do not receive any income. This proportion rises to 68.6 per cent when we add households with less than half a minimum salary. In the north, these proportions reach 48.7 per cent and 65.4 per cent, respectively. In the jungle, they are 46.3 per cent and 60.4 per cent (INEGI 2000). In a recent article, Villafuerte has modified his earlier view on the subordination of the ‘subsistence logic’ to the ‘accumulation logic’ within Chiapas agriculture (2005: 462). He now argues that Chiapan agriculture is going through a ‘terminal crisis’,

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in which the rise in production for subsistence is among the most important indicators (ibid.: 470–2). In sum, the tendency within the peasant economy is thus not towards the expansion and generalization of commercial agriculture. Rather, the phenomenon that can be observed is a ‘retreat movement’ towards subsistence agriculture and activities. More and more peasants, particularly in indigenous regions of the jungle, the highlands and the north, are retreating, as much as possible, from commercial relations – dedicating only a minimal portion of their activity to this purpose.11 However, being subsistence peasants does not mean that the Zapatista social bases live outside capitalism or are disconnected from the international and national market economy. Zapatista indigenous peasants felt their socio-economic situation worsen during the neoliberal restructuring of the countryside of recent decades. The adoption of neoliberalism by the Mexican state affected subsistence peasants, even if they were weakly connected to the market. However, they were affected by the modification of prices more than by the appearance of the imperative of competition in their local market. The price of their main source of income – cattle, chillis, coffee or maize and bean surpluses – dropped owing to the liberalization of prices, while the price of consumption goods kept rising because of inflation. The following testimonies from Zapatistas from Santa María express this process clearly: Moises: I started by looking at my situation, at my family’s ­situation, at my community’s situation. We have nothing. We live in poverty. It was time we did something. We had to do something. Juan: I also saw that the situation was very bad. It was even worse than before. Before, by selling a little bit of maize, it was possible to buy the things we needed … some clothes … not a lot, but at least something. Today, this is not possible any more. If you sell maize, you may get 700 pesos. With 700 pesos you can buy clothes, cooking oil, sugar, and you are left with nothing … It’s not enough … Before you could get more for the money we got from selling maize, frijol or chilli.

Most of the indigenous subsistence peasants are ejidatarios whose plots are subject to demographic pressure and decreasing fertility.

new forms of rebellion  |  81 The semi-proletarian members of the EZLN are mostly young males without rights to land in their communities, who subsist on their parents’ plot and contribute to the family household in labour or with monetary income from their temporary wage work. Hence, contrary to García de León’s opinion that the support for the EZLN comes from the ranks of the middle-income peasants and not from isolated poor peasants (García de León 2002: 514–15), the ­majority of Zapatistas are subsistence peasants and fewer can be found within the ranks of market-dependent indigenous peasants. From the testimonies that I collected from Zapatistas during fieldwork, the middle-income peasants – who in Chiapas would be the more market-dependent indigenous ‘peasant/ranchers’ – joined the movement in the first years of the conflict. Many of these more market-dependent p ­ easants thought that they would improve their situation by benefiting from the concessions that the state would eventually make. When the policy of resistance was decided, many of them abandoned the EZLN. The fact that the EZLN is made up of poor subsistence peasants explains why so many of the choices that the movement has made on issues of land tenure focus on agricultural production, and microdevelopment projects are geared to reinfor­cing self-subsistence and self-reliance (see Earle and Simonelli 2005). The MST and the EZLN: defensive reactions or progressive struggles? Most authors have highlighted that peasant rebellions are often accompanied by – or rooted in – profound moral outrage responding to a sudden increase in levels of exploitation or insecurity. Scott emphasizes the suddenness of the shock these changes create because they are more likely to be seen as a ‘sharp moral departure from existing norms of reciprocity’ (1976: 194). In the case of Latin America, Eckstein has noted that peasants will take the risk of direct confrontation only when the injustice against them is perceived as intolerable, and when local and national institutions and cultural conditions, such as strong kinship and ethnic and cultural bonds, lead peasants to struggle collectively (Eckstein 2001 [1989]: 15). However, because peasants revolt it does not mean that their objectives are necessarily revolutionary ones. Scott’s view of the peasant village dynamic, for instance, led him to argue that peasant revolts were

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‘best seen as defensive reactions’ (Scott 1976: 10). According to Scott, the moral claim to subsistence is not revolutionary because it rests on the norm of reciprocity that links poor peasants with the ruling elite in the village or the region, which obliges the ruling elite to secure and promote the well-being of the lower classes (ibid.: 189). As we have seen, Migdal, in contrast to Scott, did not see peasant rebellions as a priori conservative or even inclined towards reforming the traditional order. As has been the case with past peasant rebellions, the land ­struggles of the MST and the EZLN also come to the fore through a moral discourse. This discourse is the foundation of the Sem Terra and Zapatista demand for land. In both cases, we find a conception of justice, based on a moral framework in which land is understood as a right that does not necessarily depend on – or which goes beyond – the existence of a legal framework. In other words, in a fashion that is reminiscent of Scott’s argument, for the Sem Terra and Zapatistas, subsistence needs and the right to a dignified life take precedence over legality (Meszaros 2000; Van der Haar 2001). However, the struggles of the MST and the EZLN go far beyond the defensive character that James Scott (1976) attributes to peasant revolts. Indeed, in Brazil and Chiapas, one of the first institutions of the capitalist society to be challenged by the struggle of the MST and the EZLN is private ownership of land. The legitimacy of private ownership of land, particularly if it is perceived as constituting a latifundio, is assessed through a moral understanding of justice. Land concentration, regardless of its legal character, is considered unjust because it blocks the access of poor people to a decent livelihood. Within this perspective, for the Sem Terra and the Zapatistas, the right to land is associated with a right to live with dignity, understood as a fundamental human right and thus as having supremacy over property rights. Moreover, this claim to the right to land for subsistence reasons is not directed at traditional landlords or village elites, as Scott would have it. The land struggles of the MST and the EZLN are not struggles demanding that elites live up to their moral obligations towards their subordinates. On the contrary, both movements seek to fundamentally transform or even transcend that relationship by empowering their membership through the creation of ‘autonomous rural communities’ (Robles 2000; Burguete Cal y

new forms of rebellion  |  83 Mayor 2003). These ‘autonomous rural communities’, which practise self-governance over a great variety of issues and break away from traditional forms of subordination, allow their members to secure and protect their access to land and hence resist the full commodific­ ation of land and monetarization of relations of production. More importantly, this non-correspondence between the characteristics of the land struggle of the MST and the EZLN and Scott’s conclusions highlights one of the major limitations of the conventional studies of peasant rebellions in general. Most scholars of this specific literature continued locating peasant rebellions within rural contexts in which the subordination of peasant to traditional landlords was one of the central forms of exploitation and domination. Scott, more than any of the others, is a good example of this reliance on an underlying feudal-like model. The consequence of the adoption of a feudal model to analyse ­peasant rebellions is to overemphasize the conservative character of peasant rebellions, by arguing that such rebellions aim mainly at re-establishing a social order ex ante, characterized by a submissive relationship to landlords. The feudal-like model is inappropriate to analyse the land ­struggle of the MST and the EZLN because traditional ‘landlords’ – i.e. those who extract rent from tenant farmers or labour services from squatters in exchange for usufruct rights – have lost most of their economic and political power (Kay 1995, 2000) or are far from being the main class enemy of these movements. In Brazil, in addition to the fact that non-agricultural corporations own significant amounts of land for fiscal purposes, traditional landlords have transformed themselves into large capitalist farmers or have used their access to land to venture into other economic activities (Palmeira and Leite 1998: 122–5). As for the existence of a feudal-like peasant culture, in southern Brazil where the MST originally surfaced, there is no entrenched history of common peasant culture establishing social limitations on the power of landlords. In Chiapas, in the Lacandona jungle, the region that gave birth to the EZLN, traditional landlords were almost absent, although reminiscences of serf-like relationships persisted in the outskirts of the jungle until the 1970s. The original Zapatista rebel communities of the Lacandona jungle, and even most of the indigenous peasants of the highlands, were also not inserted

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within a rural context that resembles the traditional image of the quasi-feudal landlord/tenant model. Indigenous peasants moved into the Lacandona jungle from the 1950s onward and established ejidos of subsistence peasants, which complemented their income by selling their coffee or cattle in the fincas (haciendas) that surrounded the jungle (Leyva Solano and Ascencio Franco 1996: 92). These indigenous peasants from the Lacan­dona jungle were thus subject to exploitation by modernizing landowners, but more as temporary wage labourers or sellers of ­cattle than as traditional tenants. Furthermore, as was seen, the main source of contention of these communities was not the power of large landowners but rather the arbitrary decisions and policies of the state.12 Traditional landlords did not dominate the landscape in two other regions where the EZLN expanded after the uprising of January 1994. In the highlands, beginning in the 1960s, traditional Ladino landlords had been slowly expelled, whereas in northern Chiapas they had modernized their estates by switching to cattle ranching with its characteristic reduced need for labour. In this latter case, which is studied by Aaron Bobrow-Strain (2007), it could be said that the landed class was the focus of the contention, as the numerous land occupations can attest. However, the indigenous peasants who carried out these occupations in the aftermath of the Zapatista uprising in northern Chiapas, as elsewhere in the state, were not in their majority members of the EZLN (Villafuerte et al. 1999: 180–98).13 Bobrow-Strain, following Jeffrey Paige, characterizes these land invasions as classic examples of a ‘land rush’, which occurs ‘when a landed upper class has been critically weakened … [It is] a short intense movement aimed at seizing land but lacking long-run political objectives’ (Paige 1975: 42–3, cited by Bobrow-Strain 2007: 148). Hence, in some degree and notwithstanding the important financial compensations they received in exchange for their land, landowners, even if they were not the principal target for Zapatista grievances, ended up on the losing end of the social, political and cultural transformations triggered by the Zapatista uprising at the regional level. Anti-capitalist impulses and different forms of autonomy In the current context of the profound crisis in peasant agriculture and rural and urban unemployment, and considering the experience

new forms of rebellion  |  85 that Brazilian and Chiapan direct rural producers have had with the market, Marx’s concept of alienated labour (Marx 1992) is very useful to help us understand the roots of the moral and political claim on land put forward by the Sem Terra and the Zapatistas. Because peasants, in all their differences and diversity, are often closer to this original process of expropriation of the means of subsistence and production, they are perfect examples of a class that experiences the genesis of the process of alienation and disempowerment in the course of their lives. Having to seek work in several settings, most members of the MST and the EZLN are also exposed to the insecurity of wage work in a context of high unemployment. Their understanding of the functioning of the market and their demands, which challenge the sanctity of property rights, thus contain clear anti-capitalist impulses. In Brazil, during my interviews with landless people living in encampments or with long-time members of the MST who had been successful in gaining access to land many years ago, the desire to be free of the dependence on someone else’s will in the effort to sustain their families came up again and again. Similarly, in Chiapas, in my conversations with Zapatistas, the issue of controlling the pace of work in the field also came to light. Within this context, gaining and protecting access to land means gaining control over their labour and the autonomy of taking decisions on issues of agricultural production. However, as has been argued, the experiences of members of the MST and members of the EZLN are very different, and so are their more concrete objectives. The struggle of landless people in Brazil, for instance, aims at regaining the right to citizenship, while the struggle of the Zapatistas is also an anti-colonial struggle. In Brazil, one of the most determining experiences of Sem Terra is the prolonged experience of unemployment and underemployment, lived as a situation of complete loss of control over their life and of marginalization from society. Because of the negative perception that the rural population in general had of landless people, joblessness has also often been lived as a humiliating experience. In a collective discussion with acampadas and acampados in the region of Andradina (SP), one acampada summed up the general feeling: ‘The struggle for land is a struggle for a dignified life. We are not “vagabonds”. We are landless. We want to work the land. When you are working

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the land, you are producing, you are contributing to society, you are moving forward.’ In a very fundamental way, access to land is thus a way of regaining the human dignity that is associated with a productive life, but also with the right to participate in a more just Brazilian society. Because many current acampados and acampadas have lived in cities for relatively long periods of time, Brazilian landless people build this moral discourse on the right to land and the valorization – and idealization – of the peasant condition in contrast to urban life. In many discussions with acampados and acampadas, access to land and life in the countryside had the advantage of securing self-subsistence and a peaceful community life, whereas unemployment, poverty, violence, drug abuse and impersonal relationships were seen to characterize city life. Landless people also emphasized the advantage of having access to the means of subsistence in the countryside as compared with the absence of this resource in the city. Many MST members also associated life in the city with the inescapable power of money: Luis: Winning land resolves the questions of employment and housing and also of hunger. In the city, without money you can’t do anything. In the countryside, there is always a way to have something to eat. Dona Lidia: Here I have everything for me to eat. In the city if you don’t have money, you don’t have anything. Here my daughter was able to study. She is a teacher. Do you think that I would have achieved this in the city?

Hence, landless people see access to land also as a way to counter the need for – and power of – money which completely dominates life in the city because this power finds at least some limits when one owns a plot of land. The right to work or to have a decent source of income, both derived from the access to land by landless people, is a right that landless people oppose to the blind functioning of the market. This type of discourse, shared by settlers from the early 1980s and current squatters, is one of the ideological foundations of the struggle for land of the MST. However, this claim on land does not form part of a broader system of customs and traditions that one could associate with a moral economy of the Brazilian peasantry.14

new forms of rebellion  |  87 This strong association between land and work is more a consequence of the political influence of progressive clergymen who adopted the ‘preferential option for the poor’ within the Catholic Church and who were key leaders in the rebirth of the landless movement in the early 1980s (Almeida and Ruiz Sánchez 2000: 14; Cadji 2000: 32; Navarro 2000: 37). Indeed, in the 1970s and 1980s, Catholic priests, reframing Marx’s distinction between use-value and exchange-value, promoted the distinction between ‘land for production’ and ‘land to work’ (terra para producir and terra para trabalhar) and ‘land for business’ (terra para negôcio). Regardless of who introduced the formal idea of distinguishing ‘land for production’ and ‘land for business’, the idea struck a chord with many landless rural workers because of their own lived experiences. However, the MST land struggle is not only for the right to work the land, nor is it only against unemployment and marginalization from Brazilian society. It is also for the right to work autonomously, for the right to control one’s own work, and the product of one’s labour. In many discussions that I had with Sem Terra, the sense of being at the mercy of someone else’s will, of being treated as an object and not as a person, was emphasized again and again. Adão, for instance, expressed this view in the following way: ‘Winning land was a satisfaction because I had always worked for someone else. My work would become the profit of someone else.’ If gaining land was presented as a way out of the humiliation of unemployment and marginalization, it was also seen by landless people as a way to take their destiny into their own hands. Zapatista subsistence peasants share many of the same experiences of alienation and marginalization that Brazilian rural workers have endured. Pedro, a Zapatista from the northern fringe of the Lacandona jungle, for instance, had decided to return to the village after having worked for a few months in a modern car parts factory in Monterrey, in northern Mexico. When I asked him why he came back, he told me that he did not like life in Monterrey, that he preferred life in his village – indeed, that ‘life in Monterrey was not life’. He went on to say how, in his community, he did not have to put up with someone telling him what to do. Life, he argued, was also much slower, much more enjoyable, in his community, regardless of the hard times they had to endure.

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This type of testimony to the value of peasant village life is probably as old as peasant resistance to industrialization and modernization itself. But in the case of indigenous peasants, in addition to the idea of control over one’s life, it also suggests the attachment of indigenous people to a way of life and, most importantly, a way of looking at life (i.e. a worldview) that clashes with the most alienating experiences of modern urban existence.15 This valorization of village life speaks also to the importance of being peasants and part of a community for the constitution of the indigenous identity in regions like Chiapas. For indigenous peoples in Mexico, ever since the conquest, the community has always been a space of refuge from the city, where indigenous people suffer all kinds of discrimination. In addition, many of the features of colonial domination can still be seen today in the different regions of Chiapas. Indeed, since colonial times, indigenous peasants and communities have been maintained in a subordinated position by a landed oligarchy of European descent that controls the local state and the local market. Historically, the ethnic and class domination of Ladinos over Indians was exercised through control of the indigenous labour force. The development of market relations since the 1960s reinforced this subordination, because Ladino merchants were also in a position to buy cheaply the agricultural products produced by indigenous peasants. In turn, they could sell dearly the consumption products that Indians gradually started to need as a result of the growing commercialization of their agricultural activities (Stavenhagen 1975). Throughout the 1980s, with the obvious intention of avoiding the Ladino merchants, many peasant organizations from Chiapas used state credit to attempt to organize their own channels of commercialization or ventured into new activities, such as the sale of art crafts (Nash 2001: 95–102). There were some successful experiences, but the dominance of the market and the state by Ladinos has not been eradicated and many indigenous peasants still see Ladinos, or Caxlanes, as class oppressors. Xochitl Leyva Solano (2005) has recently looked at the development of an Indianist movement16 within independent indigenous organizations in Chiapas since the 1970s, which led to the construction of an alliance with the EZLN, and the creation of a neo-Zapatista network. Leyva Solano argues that the current indigenous discourse emerging from Chiapas is a manifestation of similar ‘claims to recognition’ by

new forms of rebellion  |  89 indigenous peoples in Latin America and that they can be looked at as claims to ‘ethnic citizenship’, whereby particular ethno-cultural groups demand the adaptation of universal rights to their collective particularism (ibid.: 574). In effect, to a great extent the San Andrés negotiations between the Mexican government and the EZLN and the development of rebel autonomous structures of power in Zapatista territory since 1994 are largely about this issue. However, if we seek to understand the Zapatista struggle for autonomy and self-determination within the context of persisting unequal power relations between Indians and Ladinos, the Zapatista struggle can be seen as a decolonization struggle (Burguete Cal y Mayor 1999: 284), as a sort of indigenous nationalism articulating the interests of poor indigenous peasants. This resonance within indigenous communities of the need to right the wrongs of the conquest is why occupations of private land are often presented by Zapatistas as ‘land recoveries’, even where there is no concrete history of community dispossession in the particular area where the recovery is taking place. However, as the land restorations of private fincas by indigenous communities of the municipality of Las Margaritas on the outskirts of the Lacandona jungle can attest, there are also recuperations that were justified more as an act of justice because their ancestors had been exploited as mozos (semi-servile labourers) in those particular fincas than simply because they were indigenous (Van der Haar 2001: 205). The indigenous composition of the EZLN gives the Zapatista land struggle a peculiar character. The Zapatista struggle is not only a  struggle for land as a source of subsistence and autonomy. It is also a struggle for land understood as a territory, as a space for physical, cultural and spiritual reproduction. Hence, as has been highlighted by Starr et al., ‘the Zapatistas have more of a sense of “territory” … [than the MST]’, who ‘still think in terms of “land” [rather] than “territory”’ (2011: 113). In the case of the Zapatistas, then, the struggle for land is a struggle to regain control over their labour and the product of their labour, but it is also a collective struggle to take control of their destiny as a people within a reconstituted Mexican nation. As has been shown, the land struggles of the MST and the EZLN share many of the features that scholars of peasant rebellions have identified. Notably, as has been the case with many previous peasant

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rebellions, the MST and the EZLN frame their struggles around a moral discourse that attacks the unjust functioning of the economy confronting the various sectors of the peasantry. However, in both cases this moral discourse does not arise as a response to the restructuring of traditional relations of subordination between peasants and landlords, but rather as a result of the neoliberal restructuring of the countryside, a phenomenon that endangers the survival of both poor peasants and rural wage labourers. Hence, the members of the MST and EZLN come from the most impoverished sectors of the Brazilian and Chiapan peasantry that have been hit both by the drastic drop in the price of agricultural products during the 1980s and 1990s and by the reduction and growing instability of temporary wage work experiences in the countryside. In addition, most members of the MST and the EZLN have several years’ experience of wage work in the city, mainly in the informal sector, which is badly paid and highly unstable. As a consequence, the experiences of alienation and marginalization from society are probably much more important today than they were forty or fifty years ago, when Moore, Wolf, Paige, Migdal and Scott analysed peasant rebellions. For landless rural workers, poor peasants and subsistence peasants, gaining or protecting access to land is a way to regain some degree of autonomy from the cold functioning of the market. Access to land not only allows families to produce food for self-consumption, it also represents a way to regain control over their own life and hence to be in a position to collectively practise an active form of citizenship. In the case of the Zapatistas, the exercise of this new citizenship requires the recognition of their cultural distinctiveness and the reversal of their colonial subordination. Thus, contrary to what many scholars argued about previous peasant rebellions, the land struggles of the MST and the EZLN are not defensive struggles, even though in the case of the Zapatistas demands include reclamation of some of the rights enshrined in the Mexican Constitution after the revolution of 1910–17. Both the MST and the EZLN build rural communities, organized around popular and participatory political structures, which have reached significant levels of autonomy from the state. For all these reasons, the land struggles of the MST in Brazil and the EZLN in Chiapas should be seen as new forms of peasant rebellions.

new forms of rebellion  |  91 Theoretically, these features render inappropriate the use of analy­tical models that study peasant economies through the lens of quasi-feudal relationships. Marx’s concept of alienated labour appears much more fruitful to analyse the struggles for autonomy by landless and subsistence peasant families currently taking place in Brazil and Chiapas. However, it is still useful to look at the agricultural production of MST settlers and Zapatista subsistence peasants in terms of capitalist and non-capitalist dynamics. As will be shown in the following chapters, for these two movements the existence of spaces of resistance based on subsistence agriculture, which are not completely dominated by the capitalist logic, has permitted the development of responses to the neoliberal crisis of peasant agriculture. These spaces of subsistence have also provided a material basis on which to build something more than ‘economic’ responses. They have allowed the EZLN and the MST movements to envision and implement development alternatives based on alternative models of societies and polities that are rooted in autonomous rural community (Earle and Simonelli 2005; Fernandes 2005; Robles 2000). The right to land, as a means for subsistence and social reproduction, but also as a means to regain human dignity and attain higher levels of autonomy, understood as self-reliance, is at the centre of these development alternatives. Membership of the MST and the EZLN provides or protects the material basis, i.e. access to land, from which to resist the state and the market. The next chaper will focus on resistance to the state, through the creation of autonomous rural communities and popular power structures, while Chapter 4 will focus on resistance to the market.

3  |  THE NEW MODERN PRINCE AND AUTONOMOUS RURAL COMMUNITIES

In the late 1970s and early 1980s, in the context of the debate that pitted scholars who argued that most rural social subjects were becoming proletarianized against those who argued that they still had to be considered campesinos or ‘peasants’, Gustavo Esteva, a ‘peasantist’, argued that in Mexico: [T]he most important characteristic of the rural population is not their increasing proletarianization, but the collective form of their social existence and their collective efforts to remain tied to the land … Moreover … in response to the forces working for their de-peasantization and proletarianization, the collective resistance of the peasantry to these forces has succeeded in strengthening their peasant class consciousness and in some cases, even the objective conditions of their class. (Esteva 1978: 708–9, cited by Harris 1978: 21)

Esteva also added that the vigour of peasant organizations, exemplified in the growing number of struggles for land, suggested that the peasant population was in a process of becoming a ‘class for itself’ and that it was assuming ‘growing importance in national politics’ (ibid.). Although the process of proletarianization of the rural population in Latin America has accelerated in the past thirty years (Kay 2000, 1995), Esteva’s conclusions about the collective efforts of peasants to struggle against their depeasantization as well as their growing class consciousness can still be seen to apply to the MST and the EZLN. In fact, in this chapter, taking my inspiration from E. P. Thompson’s idea, I will argue that, in the case of the MST and the EZLN, the class consciousness of landless rural workers and indigenous peasants is politically and culturally constructed through the process of struggle for land itself, and through the experience of creating or strengthening relatively autonomous rural communities.1 Moreover,

the new modern prince  |  93 this process of constructing class consciousness through the experience of the political empowerment of marginalized sectors not only informs the resistance of these sectors to the established social order but also inspires the transformation of social relations of power within and across communities. These transformations include the democratization of political power, higher levels of political participation, and the modification of gender relations. In the case of both the MST and the EZLN, all these processes together represent a response to the experience of exclusion from, and discontent with, traditional and state institutions on the part of marginalized people. The movement as a new type of Modern Prince Antonio Gramsci’s (1975: 577) notion of the ‘extended state’, which distinguishes political society from civil society in an attempt to grasp the complexity of class power in liberal democratic capitalist societies, is useful to understand the process of politicization of the grassroot membership and creation of autonomous communities by the MST and EZLN. In Gramsci’s thought, political society is constituted by state institutions such as the government, the legislative bodies, the judiciary system and the administrative apparatus of the state.2 In contrast, civil society is constituted by institutions such as the school, the Church, the mass media and the voluntary civic organizations that produce and reproduce bourgeois culture and values. Ultimately, bourgeois hegemony rests on what Gramsci calls the ‘common sense’ of society, which consists of the values, norms and institutions that are so internalized that they are understood as natural and organize our daily life. Thus, this hegemony can be challenged only by diffusing a knowledge or ideology that allows the development of the ability to self-reflect on the institutions, values and practices that structure everyday life. This distinction leads Gramsci to rethink the role of the political party or the ‘Modern Prince’, as he called it. For him, the party plays the role of an initiator and promoter of a revolutionary counterhegemony within civil society, leading or accompanying popular struggles and articulating, giving meaning to and diffusing the hegem­ony of the subaltern classes. Accordingly, the party is expected to be active not only in political society but also in civil society by challenging the bourgeois hegemony and contributing to the

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emergence of autonomous, active and politicized citizens who are capable of governing themselves. The party carries out a function of education, political formation and empowerment of its militants and individuals in general, for it is one of the institutions in which the exercise of popular power is learned (ibid.: 428, 447). If, for Gramsci, the political party is the ‘collective intellectual’, the militant is the ‘organic intellectual’. The organic intellectual performs basically three roles. The first is the hegemonic role, which consists of achieving the acceptance of the interests, ideas and values of the class he/she represents by other members of that class and society in general. The second role consists of raising the class consciousness and intellectual capacity of the ‘masses’. The third role is that of the domination/coercion that is synonymous with the ability to govern, i.e. exercise power and control state institutions. In line with the importance of everyday life, all these roles are learned through practice, i.e. through the direct participation in the struggles of the subaltern classes. In Gramsci’s thought, since one of the main objectives is to challenge the dominant hegemony, the party member is understood less as a disciplined soldier than as an autonomous organic intellectual. The militant should not merely be capable of reproducing and propagating an ideology, but of critically responding to the historical circumstances (ibid.: 134, 160). In this sense, Gramsci moves away from a strictly Leninist ‘vanguardist’ understanding of leadership and even challenges the need to separate the rulers and the ruled. As this chapter will show, participation in the MST and EZLN, as it begins with questioning private property, one of the foundations of the liberal order, interferes with the bourgeois hegemony within civil society that seeks to depoliticize social and economic problems. Later, through their various political experiences, the Sem Terra and the Zapatistas, by solving problems and planning actions, learn to mobilize and organize, and challenge their exclusion from the polity. As they become aware of their rights and exert pressure on, negotiate with or confront state authorities from the various levels of government, they learn to question the state, demystifying it and, as it were, depriving the king of his royal robes. Hence, the MST and the EZLN play the same role that the Modern Prince does in Gramsci’s thought. By empowering peasants and landless rural workers, they

the new modern prince  |  95 are educators in citizenship, class power and self-government for the subaltern classes. Therefore, if we recognize the class character of these experiences of construction of popular power, the politicization happening in the territories that they control is the beginning of what scholars of new social movements call ‘new forms of doing politics’ or ‘the transformation of the dominant political culture’ (Calderón et al. 1992; Alvarez et al. 1998; Zibechi 1999). However, the MST and the EZLN are not exactly a replica of the political party that Gramsci had in mind. These movements do not seek to take state power themselves and, as we will see in Chapter 5, have very different strategies towards institutional politics. What is new about these movements is that they have focused primarily on creating autonomous rural communities and developing alternative power structures to the state that become a fundamental source of strength in their confrontation with the state. Wendy Wolford (2003b, 2010) argues that the MST capacity to maintain high levels of participation is due to two factors. The first is its ability to create an ‘imagined community’ organized around ideas, practices, symbols, slogans and rituals. The second, more important than the first, is that the MST has the ability to remain an effective mediator between the state and settlers. The same can easily be said about the EZLN. However, although ideological and cultural factors lead to high levels of participation within the MST and the EZLN, I argue that this participation also derives from the maintenance of an organizational structure that encourages participation and creates not only an ‘imagined community’ but real and concrete ‘autonomous rural communities’ which are easier to mobilize than the membership of other organizations. What distinguishes, in my view, the MST and the EZLN – and many other peasant movements – from other types of social movements is that their members control a geographic space, a determinate territory: the autonomous commun­ ities, municipalities and Juntas de Buen Gobierno (Good Government Councils, JBGs) in the case of the EZLN, and the encampments and settlements in the case of the MST. In other words, participation in these organizations implies living in a community with its own rules, its own norms, its own values and its own political institutions.3 It is the Zapatistas and the Sem Terra themselves who make decisions regarding education, health, micro-development projects

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and infrastructure in their communities. In turn, each of them is connected to a network of communities that have shared political autonomy over a territory. Moreover, Zapatistas and Sem Terra take these decisions according to objectives and mechanisms that they themselves decide upon, mostly through participation in community assemblies that seek either consensus or majority rule.4 In order to capture the politicization process within peasant movements, Bernardo Mançano Fernandes, focusing on the case of the MST, has developed the concept of ‘socio-territorial movements’ (2005). Fernandes explains that ‘Territorialized movements are those that are organized and act in different places at the same time, made possible by their form of organization, which permits the spatialization of the struggle for land’ (ibid.: 326). Fernandes distinguishes socio-territorial movements from ‘isolated movements’, because the latter remain marked by local interests and circumstances and their geographic influence is restricted to a fairly limited territory (for example, a municipality or a small number of municipalities). In contrast to isolated movements, socio-territorial movements ‘possess a political dimension that overcomes the limits of daily problems and issues of place’ (ibid.: 327). Socio-territorial movements are thus able to spatialize the land struggle and insert the specific interests of their member communities into a broader process of struggle. Socio-territorial movements in their struggle against capital and proletarianization also use the space they control as ‘a space of political socialization’ (ibid.: 321), where the movement creates and re-creates itself through the experiences of its members. Fernandes’ concept of socio-territorial movements is extremely useful for analysing the MST and the EZLN because it emphasizes the importance of the control of a territory by these two movements for the politicization and mobilization of their members. Such territorial control is at the base of the development alternative of both movements. However, there are two important distinctions that need to be made in the case of the Zapatista movement. First, in contrast to the MST, which creates rural communities ‘from scratch’ in the form of the encampment, the EZLN had to convince pre-existing rural communities to join the organization. Secondly, the Zapatista struggle for land, following the indigenous conception of land which links it to a territory around which history and culture are built, has much

the new modern prince  |  97 wider implications than the struggle for land of the MST.5 However, beyond these differences, the control of rural communities by the MST and the EZLN has allowed these two movements to develop their own autonomous structures of decision-making, structures that have given rise to a highly politicized and mobilized grassroots membership. Hence, as the Modern Prince did for Gramsci, the movement becomes a school of government for subaltern classes, as the movements replace or take on several roles and functions of the state. The organizational structure of the MST and the making of its militancy Gaining access to land is obviously the main objective of the people that join the MST. However, joining the movement is not like signing up for any type of organization. It implies becoming immersed in a political community which requires levels of participation that very few acampados imagine before adhering to the movement. For many, their perception and values change through the process of occupation of land, as does the way they value land itself. After a long conversation with Jacir Suares, an assentado from settlement Pirituba Area 5 in the municipality of Itapeva in the state of São Paulo, in which he told of the vicissitudes of the struggle for land of his acampamento, I asked: ‘Would you sell your land now?’ He replied: ‘For me, land was always someone else’s. I think that’s why I didn’t value it. After conquering6 a piece of land, I value it. Before I would have sold my land. Not today. With the struggle, all that I have, I have because we conquered the land. Land is the beginning of everything … Who could have said that everything starts under a plastic tent?’ The tent that Jacir was referring to is one of the symbols of ­struggle of the MST. Encampments made of hundreds of plastic tents can be seen on the fringes of federal and state highways all over Brazil. It is under these tents that landless families, men, women and children live and organize for several years while they occupy unproductive latifundios.7 Life in these encampments is very harsh. Braving all kinds of weather and illness, on a daily basis they must make ends meet with a scarce supply of food and irregular sources of drinking water. On top of these hardships, in many regions they

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face constant intimidation and violence from gunmen paid by local landowners. Families live under these conditions year round, without any guarantee of achieving their goal of winning land. Other than the sheer will of wanting to find a way out of their marginalized situation in the countryside or in the city, what are the factors that make landless people endure these conditions for as long as they do? The period of encampment and land occupation, made up of countless experiences of camaraderie, solidarity, common suffering and empowerment – often the first experiences of that kind for most acampados – helps to explain their determination.

The period of encampment and land occupation  Understanding the struggle for land in terms of universal human rights and human­ istic values that establish limits to the capitalist functioning of the economy is probably the first step in the formation of political consciousness among landless rural workers envisioned by the MST. But it is through the actual everyday experiences and practices in encampments and land occupations that landless families are transformed into an organized force of the poor. The occupation constitutes a period of ultra-politicization (Romano 1994) of everyday life, because almost all aspects of acampados’ lives proceed through participation in different types of committees. On the first days following the creation of an acampamento, several camp-wide committees are created to take care of important issues and services such as security, infrastructure and sanitation, education, health, food, production, etc. In these committees, the people that have volunteered to serve discuss the problems that arise, the possible solutions and the steps and resources needed to address them. Each committee makes proposals on a consensus basis and has a coordinator who liaises with and reports to other committees or the political structures of the encampment and the movement (see Starr et al. 2011: 109–10). Fernandes refers to these daily interactions as the communicative space of the movement (2005: 321) because it is in this way that landless people share their life experiences, forge personal relationships and confirm their common interests and goals. Through their participation in these task-based committees and the political decision-making structure of the encampment and the movement more broadly during the period of occupation, MST

the new modern prince  |  99 grassroots members learn how to solve concrete problems, make connections between their individual situation and the larger social and political environment, and reflect and work collectively. To refer to the function of the political structures, Fernandes uses the term ‘interactive space’, meaning a space where life experiences are slowly systematized into class consciousness and where a process of political empowerment takes shape. In this regard, the MST differs from many other organizations. Being a Sem Terra means not only being part of an organization but, more importantly, living for a relatively long period of time in a community with its own norms, values and objectives. This feeling of ‘belonging’ to a community of Sem Terra takes form gradually through daily interactions, which, because of the conditions of the struggle, lead to solidarity and cohesion, which facilitate participation in the political structure of the encampment and the movement. The kind of feelings that the close daily interactions among individuals and families within the encampment generate is expressed vividly by Jacir Suares: The process of struggle is a learning process. It’s where you learn what camaraderie means. When you are squatting you support each other all the time, morally, emotionally and materially. ­Before, I only valued what was mine. Now I value more what we have in common … The MST is the best thing that has ever happened to me. It’s what allowed me to conquer land … The MST is not only a movement, it’s also people. It’s my family.

Like the great majority of assentados and assentadas I interviewed, Vanesa, from assentamento Belo Monte in the municipality of Andradina in the state of São Paulo, told me that what she remembered most about the period of the encampment was the communitarian way of life: During the time we were acampados, it was nice … The way of life was nice. We constantly visited each other’s tent. We looked out for each other, for each other’s children. People were close to each other. The encampment creates a community with the same common objective: land. When we obtain our plot, the common objective disappears.

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José Estevan, from assentamento Fazenda Anoni in the municipality of Sarandi in the state of Rio Grande do Sul, talked about an even more powerful gesture that must have greatly reinforced the strength of interpersonal relationships among landless families: ‘What I remember the most about the experience of the encampment was the practice of solidarity. For example Irene, my wife, breastfed a baby that wasn’t hers and whose mother could not breastfeed herself.’ Obviously, because of the often violent response from large landowners and state governments, the history of an encampment and land occupation often includes stories of encirclement by, and confrontation with, police forces or gunmen. For instance, Sadi Maurer, from assentamento Rondhina in the municipality of Joía in the state of Rio Grande do Sul, commented on the relationship between camaraderie, solidarity and danger and, like Vanesa, pointed to the difference existing between the period of encampment and the period of settlement. He stressed that ‘difficulties form consciousness, conflict creates tension, and tension creates camaraderie, solidarity … With the PT government, tension has declined … Once we are settled, the level of tension drops, but then internal problems start emerging.’ Practices and experiences during the period of encampment and land occupation can be extremely powerful in terms of the impulse they give to fostering the social cohesion and the collective identity of the group of landless people involved in the common struggle. But these emotional ties are also given a political meaning by the participation of each acampado and acampada in the political structure of the encampment and the other levels of the movement. The núcleo (nucleus), made of ten to fifteen families, is the basic unit of the political structure of an encampment. These núcleos name representatives (always a man and a woman) to a higher and more specialized level, called teams and sectors. The teams are in charge of taking care of practical matters such as security, food, wood, ­barracks, work and sports, while the sectors are responsible for planning the functioning of the encampment with respect to specific issues such as education, health, agricultural production, political education, gender relations, discipline, women’s affairs, ­human rights, communication, and youth and culture. A coordina­ting committee, made up of representatives nominated by each núcleo, oversees encampment life. This committee, in turn, elects a direção (an executive

the new modern prince  |  101 committee) that has to be ratified by the encampment’s assembly, the body that constitutes the highest decision-making level (Almeida and Ruiz Sánchez 2000: 16). At all these levels, decisions are taken through discussion and participation, making life in the encampment a succession of constant meetings. At the state and national level, the MST is organized in a manner similar to the structure that obtains in the encampments and settlements, i.e. through a series of sectors and committees. Encampments and settlements elect members to the different regional sectors and to the coordinating committee, which, in turn, names representatives to the state coordinating committee, the body responsible to the grassroots membership (Fernandes 2000: 184–5). Out of these state-based organizational levels are carved different national sectors and a national leadership of around thirty members. This measure mirrors a practice that is observed throughout the organization of establishing collective rather than individual leadership. Thus, in an encampment, most political decisions are made by acampados and acampadas, while strategic decisions are taken in consultation and coordination with regional, state and national leader­ships. For instance, the ins and outs of the decision to occupy a specific latifundio are discussed in the encampment in conjunction with the regional, state and national leadership. These upper levels often provide technical information (e.g. facts about legal ownership of the property) and global strategic assistance and analysis (e.g. mobilization of allies and resources, media coverage, etc.). In many interviews that I conducted during my fieldwork, accounts of the various times acampados and acampadas had to move from one property to another were a common feature. In all cases, people remembered the direct discussions and the negotiations they had with state and police officials with respect to the terms and location of their displacement. Hence, the movement, although highly institutionalized, maintains an important level of local autonomy within the organization. As often happens in any organization, however, the balance of power between the different decision-making levels is constantly negotiated in light of political victories or defeats. For example, as we will see with the case of the selection of an electoral candidate in Rio Grande do Sul in Chapter 5, decisions that are taken by the leadership that are introduced either too rapidly or

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with insufficient attention to participation from the grassroots might be confronted with opposition or might very well not be followed. The negotiations, discussions, decisions and actions undertaken during the period of land occupation make up a concrete and practical process of political education and empowerment. Luis Sinecio da Silva, from the assentamento Sumaré II in the state of São Paulo, pointed to this practicality very succinctly: ‘Through participation in the assembly people learned how to speak. They learned to be citizens.’ In the case of many encampment and settlement members of the MST, the education and empowerment process is reinforced by the formal political and technical training offered at various MST training centres, such as the Instituto Técnico de Capacitação e Pesquisa da Reforma Agrária (Technical Institute for Training and Research of Agrarian Reform, ITERRA) in Veranópolis in Rio Grande do Sul, which offers state-recognized courses in education, pedagogy, cooperative administration, agronomy, social communication and community health. Finally, this formal system of political and technical training is enhanced by participation in numerous state and national mobilizations, marches, encounters, forums and congresses, where landless people exchange information about their experiences among themselves or with members of other organizations. Over time, MST members also acquire a sense of their ‘imagined community’. This sense of belonging is constantly reinforced by cultural practices and symbols, locally referred to as mística. Mís­ tica helps to maintain the movement’s cohesion and activism. The movement, over the course of its different moments and actions, builds its ideology by encouraging certain values, such as humility, honesty, conviction, perseverance, sacrifice, gratitude, responsibility and discipline, and by discouraging others, such as individualism (spontaneism) and immobility (Wolford 2003a: 508, 510).8 In turn, the relative positive and negative weight that is given to these values informs the type of alternative rural communities the MST hopes to create in the settlements. The entire process of politicization of landless families has provided the MST with a constant renewal of leaders who emerge directly from the grassroots membership, have experienced the vicissitudes of life in the camps and settlements, and who thus identify completely

the new modern prince  |  103 with the values and practices of the movement. Although differences of perspective and approach among leaders do exist within the MST, these are not due to different political or ideological backgrounds. They are more often related to different experiences of struggle marked by regional and cultural characteristics (ibid.) and divergent points of view on issues of tactics and strategy. Thus, for instance, leaders may have varying opinions on whether it is better to adopt a ‘defensive’ or an ‘offensive’ posture with regard to aggressive actions against the movement (Fernandes 2005: 324).

From encampment to settlement: the cooling of political activism  Since at least the early twentieth century, political scientists, notably Robert Michels (1962), have underlined that political parties and social movements, as they become more institutionalized and their leader­ship becomes more professionalized, tend to rely more on their bureaucratic structure than on the mobilization and participation of their membership. More recently, social movement theorists have also noted that with time social movements tend towards demobilization (Tarrow 1998) or adopt more conventional tactics (Taylor and Van Dyke 2004), especially once the main goal of the movement is accomplished. Similarly to what happens to other social movements, maintaining high levels of participation and mobilization is much more difficult to achieve in the settlements than it is in the encampments. The first years of settlement building are marked by the continuity of the ultra-politicization that is characteristic of the period of occupation (Romano 1994: 257). However, this period is only temporary because once most of the infrastructure is put into place, private domestic preoccupations often become more important to settlers than collective political goals. Very often politics within the settlement becomes routine and less participatory (Abramovay 1994) since the number of actions that demand everyone’s mobilization decreases. The forms of participation also change and become more specific, each settler attending meetings geared only towards the issues (education, health, production, etc.) that most interest her or him. MST members presented many explanations for this cooling of political activism once people are settled in a rural community. Some mentioned that after achieving their long-desired goal of

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­ inning land, the Sem Terra, now turned settlers, lose the comw mon objective that originally kept them united. Some settlers from settlements that were established prior to the creation of the MST, such as those in Sumaré, for example, either explicitly expressed or suggested that settlers were ‘tired of struggling’ and that participation and consciousness-raising (concientização) had been reduced to a minimum. Obviously, political participation and mobilization vary from settlement to settlement and depend on a variety of factors, but it is fair to say that these processes do not reach the levels that are generated in the encampment settings. MST’s most active members, and the leadership in particular, take this relative ‘demobilization’ seriously and have started to search for a path towards solutions. Like many others, Rosevaldo, from assentamento Belo Monte in the municipality of Andradina in the state of São Paulo, suggested that the spatial organization of the settlement could make some difference. Referring to discussions that have been going on within the movement around the best way to organize the settlements in order to facilitate community building, Rosevaldo argued: ‘We need a new model of settlement, a model that would create more convivência [community life]. We need the agro-villa type of settlement.’9 Of course, the main idea behind this proposal is to reproduce what Vanesa referred to as ‘the encampment’s way of life’, i.e. a mode of existence that is seen as more communitarian than the settlement way of life. Although there is an element of truth to this, the organization of space per se does not seem to be the determinant factor behind decreased or increased participation. Assentamento Sumaré, for instance, where a settler mentioned that ‘people were tired of struggling’, is organized as a quite dense agro-villa, since many sons and daughters of the original settlers have built their home on the plot of their parents. The levels of participation were, however, quite low. Explaining the decrease in participation by taking into consideration the day-to-day preoccupations and imperatives of settlers points to more important obstacles to sustained participation. Indeed, the major transition in the life of a Sem Terra-turnedsettler is the beginning of the struggle to remain on the land and produce enough material subsistence to survive and improve the standard of living of the family. This new struggle generates many

the new modern prince  |  105 more contradictions than does the struggle for land in encampments because, unlike encampments – which, to a certain extent, function on the margins of the market economy – settlements find themselves much more inserted in capitalist relations. As Abramovay argues, the world of production cannot be seen as ‘some sort of continuity or reproduction of the wonderful world of the struggle that goes on during the period of land occupation’. The reality of the world of the settlement, he argues, ‘is the reality of the capitalist society: market, money, inequality, depersonalization of economic relations … a world that tends to reduce the weight of the local communitarian sphere’ (ibid.: 316). As we will see in the next chapter, one of the main preoccupations of settlers very quickly becomes which cash crop to plant in order to repay the start-up production credit that the state provides for settlers. Under this pressure, work on and outside the farm sometimes also leads settlers to disengage from the political process of the settlement. Hence, many settlers justify their decision to stop participating actively in the MST by referring to the specific role that settlements have to play, which is to prove that the agrarian reform is working. Ulises, for example, from assentamento Sumaré 1 in the state of São Paulo, commented: The MST is taking care of land occupations, mobilizations, et­cetera. We have to prove that the settlements are functioning. That’s our contribution. We need to concentrate on our settlement and on the local level, opening up institutional and political channels. Our relationship with the MST is now to focus on production, programmes and credit.

Regardless of this supposed ‘division of tasks within the struggle’, the establishment of encampments in regions where settlements exist is, however, a factor that can contribute to sustaining participation and mobilization of settlements, as settlers often support encampments with recruits, food and people for mobilizations. During my stay in Itapeva, São Paulo, I witnessed the atmosphere of excitement and enthusiasm that the preparation of a nearby encampment generated on the part of many settlers. The settlers were eager to share their experience of encampment struggle with the new Sem Terra embarking on the process of occupation. But beyond these real and

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symbolic ties between the MST members involved in different phases of the struggle, the day-to-day preoccupations of settlers are quite significantly different from those of squatters. Wolford (2010) has argued that once land is conquered and the struggle for production begins, the state slowly takes back the space lost to the MST and many settlers do not see the use of the movement or begin to disagree with its general objectives and ideology. She contends that ‘the MST has created a historical tradition with elite notions of membership, horizontal ties between members, and a sense of autonomy’ (ibid.: 77). Moreover, according to her, ‘The sense of historical justification lends itself to the idea that membership is a privilege that should be extended to those who fulfill the appropriate criteria. Settlers are expected to be a combination of the traditional peasant and the conscientious socialist/citizen’ (ibid.: 79). When they do not live up to this model, they are left out of the movement or move away from it. She is partly right. Not all the people who participate in land occupations, or end up living in settlements with MST membership, can be said to be fiercely committed to radical social change in Brazil, and thus ready to participate in the MST political structure of their settlements. Many of them, and this is recognized by the movement itself, are simply seeking land and are not interested in continuing with their militancy after gaining access to land. There are, however, many others who participate more or less actively in the movement, from simply joining marches and protests from time to time to becoming a delegate or a leader of a sector or any of the numerous militant bodies at the regional, state and national level. By not looking at these members of the MST, which she discards because she considers them ‘model MST members’, Wolford ends up painting an incomplete picture. Moreover, she draws these conclusions from an atypical settlement in the north-east of Brazil that is ill suited to assessing the potential that mobilization and politicization have for landless people and smallholder families, because half of the families of that settlement did not go through the process of acampamento and land occupation. Regardless of all the obstacles to sustaining levels of participation that are as high as in encampments, many settlements are nevertheless able to maintain relatively good levels of participation in the first

the new modern prince  |  107 few years after being established. Considering all the pressure that needs to be exerted on state agencies in order to acquire services and infrastructure, MST settlers quickly realize that their struggle is not over. Many come to realize that, as they were during the time of the encampment, political organization and mobilization are still fundamental to guaranteeing the constant development of the settle­ ment. Hence, settlements maintain the same political structure and practices of decision-making to which they were accustomed during the period of encampment. The major differences between political participation in a settlement and participation in an encampment are that in a settlement meetings are much less frequent, many negotiations with the state have permanent consequences, and many  involve a substantial amount of funding. Meetings do not occur on a daily basis but either monthly or when an issue arises. Negotiations with state authorities around the establishment of a school in the settlement, for instance, can result in very long, difficult and conflictive battles because they must take into consideration not only the construction of the facilities but also the elaboration of a curriculum, the selection of the pedagogic orientation, teachers and form of administration. The negotiation process often involves countless meetings of the education sector and the general assembly of the settlement and requires the participation of all families. In the case of changes to the family-farm agricultural credits and new state programmes, the meetings are called by the production sector and matters are also discussed in the settlement assembly. However, if there are specific negotiations with the state, they often end up being led by a small group of people who have developed expertise on the particular issue at hand or have a mandate from the settlement assembly to represent them. Here, as we will see later in this chapter, tensions and conflicts may arise between the grassroots membership and the leadership of the settlement or the movement. The quality of political participation and mobilization within settlements will thus depend on a variety of factors. An important factor is the number of actions required to keep developing the settlement and the amount of effort required to maintain the adequate functioning of political structures and decision-making practices. The following comments from Dona Lidia, from assentamento Sumaré 2 in the state of São Paulo, represent the vision of someone who sees

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the decision-making structures of the settlement as responsive to the demands of the settlers: Everyone goes to the meetings, at least one person per house. Every­one can speak, everyone speaks. If we have problems, there is the possibility of people helping to find a solution. That’s where problems get solved. Things are not hidden … I heard about R$8,000 for the construction of a ‘women’s house’ for the community. I have not seen the money yet. I will bring up the issue at the next meeting.

Obviously this image depicted by Dona Lidia is not the only one circulating, as many settlers have a completely opposite view of the power structures within their settlement. I will deal with these differing views later in this chapter. But the most important factor influencing the maintained participation in settlement is whether a settlement comes out of the experience of occupation or not. Indeed, a study sponsored by INCRA and FAO observed that the great majority of the more developed settlements throughout Brazil were those that had gone through a process of mobilization before winning land and that had consolidated their organization after being settled (Bittencourt et al. 1999: 39–43). One of the main challenges for the MST, therefore, is to keep its decision-making and representative structures in the settlement functioning so as to facilitate mobilization when required. Simultaneously, the MST, as an organization, needs also to remain a successful mediator between the settlers and the state (Wolford 2003b: 513), something it cannot be without mobilized forces. The organizational structure of the EZLN and the making of its militancy Twenty years have passed since the military uprising in 1994, and even though the Mexican state relaxed its political persecution of the EZLN and its military incursions into Zapatista communities following the election of Vicente Fox in 2000, for an indigenous family to be Zapatista still represents a major act of defiance of traditional author­ities and the Mexican state. As a response to the state’s decision to withdraw its signature of the San Andrés Accord on ­Indigenous Autonomy (see Chapter 5), the Zapatistas decided in 1997

the new modern prince  |  109 to adopt a position of ‘resistance’ in relation to the state whereby they agreed to refuse any programme or funding from the state, until it reversed this decision. Since then, Zapatista communities have relied only on their own resources, on micro-development programmes from alternative non-governmental organizations (NGOs), and on don­ations from international solidarity groups. Taken together, these resources are difficult to evaluate financially but the amounts that they generate are modest. Furthermore, the general health of the Mexican economy, the low prices for agricultural products, and the poor and scarce employment opportunities for peasants have not improved in the past decade. On the contrary, the crisis of the Chiapanecan countryside, an area dependent especially on ­peasant agriculture, has only worsened. Thus, the same question that was raised above for the Sem Terra can be raise for the Zapatistas: what accounts for the determination and endurance of Zapatista communities?

Joining and staying in the EZLN: a commitment to resistance   In the overwhelming majority of the discussions I had with Zapatistas, the term compromiso (commitment) recurred again and again. The term is used to explain the decision to remain in the EZLN organization despite political repression, harassment from opposing factions within communities, and the harsh conditions that the resistance position implies. Commitment is what gives meaning to participation in the organization but also to the Zapatistas’ relationship with their community. As Marco, the health promoter of Santa María, told me: ‘If I get out [of the struggle], I might improve my personal situation but the community will stay in a mess.’ He then went on to explain his commitment: My brothers are working in the United States. They have offered to help me to get over there … Up to now, I have said no because I don’t want to leave the community without a health promoter and the region without a coordinator … It’s been now seven years [in 2004] since I took up this commitment.

Marco contrasted his commitment to that of the local Zapatista education promoter, who, because of money difficulties, had had to ask permission to leave the community: ‘He was trained by the

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organization and he left the school to work outside for a while. He left the community, and the children got discouraged … He did not live up to his commitment.’ It is true that there are important costs involved in taking on a position of authority or responsibility within the EZLN. For instance, people who take on responsibilities tend to fall behind in their agri­ cultural work and have to rely more on other members of their family, especially their wife and children. However, for many of these militants, a feeling of service to the community and a strong identification with the EZLN and the struggle come with their commitment. In my conversations with EZLN members, it was easy to note a sense of pride among them and a conviction that they were building something important, which, as my interviewees put it themselves, ‘is bearing fruits even though it’s going slowly’. When I asked why the other inhabitants of the community did not join the organization, the Zapatistas answered very much along the lines of Daniel’s explanation: Because they are afraid. Because, even if they agree with our objectives, they prefer to receive the government’s money or the projects of the government to buy their booze … They don’t care about being dependent on the government … What is most difficult to understand for people that are not in the organization is the idea of resistance. They ask, ‘Why should we not receive projects or money from the government?’

The term resistancia (resistance) is another key expression in the vocabulary of Zapatista militants. It is used to celebrate their commitment to the organization and its goals, but also helps to explain why the Zapatistas have decided to refuse any relationship with the state. They often use the term after portraying all government policies as ways to co-opt and divert their struggle from radical social change and autonomy. Similarly to the ways in which they speak of commitment, Zapatistas speak of resistance with pride, wanting to demonstrate that they have been right to take the position they have adopted. What is also most noticeable is that the period of resistance is not circumscribed in space and time. I was told again and again in many conversations: ‘We will resist until our demands are met, until we win … the time that it will take.’ Likewise, discussions on

the new modern prince  |  111 resistance often ended with statements such as ‘We’ll see where it takes us’. Daniel, paraphrasing the Zapatista hymn, told me: Our struggle is until we win. If we have to die, then we’ll die because our slogan says it: ‘We live for the nation or we die for freedom’ [Que vivamos por la patria o morir por la libertad] … We are not fighting only for ourselves but also for the people, for the poor.

Most Zapatistas I talked to were conscious of being part of a much larger struggle than the struggle to improve their own daily lives. They were conscious that in order to find solutions to their daily problems they needed to embark on a collective effort to change the way the state treats all indigenous peasants. However, particularly for those living in communities that joined the EZLN after 1994 and did not have much time to develop their collective political structures, the evaluation of the individual costs of participating in a collective effort has to be considered a gamble that necessitates further hardship. Indeed, the posture of resistance adopted by the Zapatistas seems to have been relatively costly for the movement. Many sympathizers have abandoned the movement since the strategy of resistance was adopted. In Santa María, this sector amounted in 2004 to two-thirds of the community. Many abandoned the EZLN because for many indigenous subsistence peasants, programmes and funds from the government, although scarce, are often a crucial source of monetary income, allowing them to buy at least some consumer goods. Many of these ex-Zapatistas still agree with the EZLN’s objectives and the way the organization functions, and often even seek its mediation to solve some intra- or intercommunity conflicts. They could thus probably return to the organization if the political conjuncture changes, if they see that their re-entry might help to improve their situation, and if the EZLN allows them to return. Eric Wolf, in his study of peasant villages in Mexico and central Java, noticed that peasant communities tend to ‘put pressures on members to redistribute surpluses at their command, preferably in the operation of [a] religious system, and induce them to content themselves with the rewards of “shared poverty”’ (Wolf 1999: 148). He also added that peasant communities ‘strive to prevent out­siders from becoming members of the community’, and ‘place limits on the

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ability of members to communicate with the larger society’ (ibid.: 148). Hence for Wolf many peasant communities are ‘corporate organ­ izations, maintaining a perpetuity of rights and membership’, and are ‘closed corporations, because they limit these privileges to insiders and discourage close participation of members in the social relations of the larger society’ (ibid.: 148). He further argued that ‘closed corporate peasant communities’ were not necessarily a vestige of the past, but rather ‘offspring’ of the ‘dualization of society into a dominant entrepreneurial sector, and a dominated sector of native peasants’ (ibid.: 154). Hence, the closed corporate peasant community takes on the characteristics it does because its members attempt to respond to the internal and external threats to their livelihood emanating from the expansion of capitalist relations (ibid.: 157–9). Since the majority of the indigenous communities in Zapatista territory are small communities, which maintain some characteristics of ‘closed corporate communities’, the image that one presents of oneself within the community is a constant preoccupation for the members of the community. Since membership in a community depends not only on land rights but also on adherence to collective social norms, it is very important for an individual to be recognized by the community as someone who respects and follows the established social norms, especially in the case of a revolutionary and semi-clandestine organization such as the EZLN. As has been highlighted by feminist scholars studying the Zapatista movement (Hernández Castillo et al. 2006: 45), social ostracism can be one of the harshest forms of communal discipline. Rumours, gossip and mockery are extremely powerful weapons of discipline. Not only mockery itself, but also simply the fear of mockery can be sufficient to control an individual’s actions. It is very easy for a member of the closed community to use mockery or rumour to make another member feel that she or he is breaking the established social norms of the community. Rumours are often treated as if they were true, even though people know that a rumour can simply be used by its initiator as a strategy, as a means to an end.10 The decision to become a Zapatista and stay a Zapatista, particularly in cases where they have become a minority within their community, implies a significant risk that, in the last instance, can even lead to the loss of land rights and expulsion from the com-

the new modern prince  |  113 munity. This risk is made even more acute since participation in the EZLN does not always bring direct and immediately perceivable benefits. In this context, the views and the perception of the opposing anti-Zapatista majority, reflected in the mockery that arises, acquire even more significance. One’s decision to join and stay in the EZLN is constantly ridiculed by non-EZLN members in an attempt to discredit the individual and/or his/her family. This practice, however, can have an inverse effect as Zapatista families feel that resistance becomes an issue of honour: abandoning the struggle would mean the recognition of defeat or error. Hence in the face of the ridicule of the non-Zapatista majority of the community, a strong element of pride and stubbornness is part of the posture of resistance of the Zapatista minority. In many conversations I had with Zapatistas, they would constantly refer to arguments that would contradict the critiques of the non-Zapatistas living next to them. For example, Pedro, the delegate to the Junta de Buen Gobierno, told me: My father used to make fun of me. He used to call me stupid for being in the organization and not taking the government’s money. He would brag about the money he would receive … But what is it good for? He lives in the same kind of house as I, he eats the same things that we do … All that money is going to buy alcohol … When he goes to get the money, he comes back with alcohol … He can be drunk for days, even a week … And then what? … The money is gone.

Barmeyer, who conducted fieldwork in 1997 in exclusively Zapatista communities when the position of resistance to the state had just been adopted, saw prestige as one of the motivations leading peasants to join the EZLN. He argued that, for certain families, participation in the EZLN was part of a ‘prestige economics whereby individual effort for the benefit of the community was rewarded with prestige’ (Barmeyer 2003: 129). Barmeyer contended that membership attributable to prestige was particularly relevant in the case of landless youths. Joining the EZLN was one of the few options available to landless youths wanting to remain in the region, because their access to land was blocked owing to its scarcity and the reform of Article 27. In turn, this landlessness impeded them from participating in and taking on political responsibilities within the ejido.

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The idea of prestige is helpful in explaining the commitment of certain families towards the EZLN. Pedro was proud of being on the board of the JBG, especially since he had gone to school only until grade two. He saw the head of the municipal council, a person who also had very few years of schooling and had been able to reach the highest political position in the region, as his model. However, although joining the EZLN might mean for some individuals the possibility of occupying a political position of prestige, for most landless indigenous peasants it means more fundamentally the possibility of gaining access to land through the occupation of neighbouring ranches. For ejidatarios, it means the protection of their access to land and the possibility of access to land for their children. Manuel, one of the leaders of Santa María, frankly told me once that he had joined the EZLN in order to acquire land. Having fifteen children and being an avencindado,11 Manuel was just barely able to feed his family by working a piece of land that his cousin, an ejidatario, allowed him to till. He had been offered land by the EZLN in another region of the jungle, but after visiting the place, he decided that the risks were too high. He preferred to stay in his current situation, waiting until another round of ‘land recuperations’ took place. Another term or idea that often recurred in the discourse of grassroots Zapatistas was dignity. After clarifying that they are ‘not fighting for things, credit, houses’, some interviewees would state that they were ‘fighting for a life of dignity’. When I asked some people to specify what a life of dignity would include, they would sometimes come back to issues of housing, education and health (elements that constitute a decent life), but they would always refer more to political demands: that their voice and demands be heard, that they be respected as indigenous people, that they be allowed to govern themselves. The almost fearless commitment to resistance by avencidados as well as by ejidatarios suggests that there is a deeper meaning to the concept that neither the idea of prestige nor the possibility of access to land can encompass. Joining the EZLN means joining a movement that allows more participation in decision-making processes than is permitted in the traditional and institutional structures of power. For many Zapatistas, as for many Sem Terra, joining the EZLN means becoming active political subjects through a process of both individual and community

the new modern prince  |  115 empowerment, two of the foundations upon which a particular kind of popular power is based.

Autonomous communities and municipalities and the structure of the EZLN  The encampments of the MST represent the space where class consciousness and politicization of members are initiated. With the exception of the ranchos recuperados (recovered ranches)12 that were created by the EZLN after 1994, the EZLN, unlike the MST, does not create communities from scratch. Indeed, most of the current Zapatista communities were already in existence when the EZLN was created and began to recruit people. The EZLN has thus built on the previous experiences and traditions of indigenous political participation. Since the implementation of the agrarian reform in Mexico in the 1930s, indigenous communities have been organized as ejidos, the internal governance of which is codified in the Agrarian Law. The formal authority over the ejidos is the Mexican state through its corresponding state agency, which provides different kinds of services (Ibarra Mendívil 1996; Hellman 1988: 84–7; Goldring 1996: 276–7). According to Mexican law, politically the ejido assembly is the highest decision-making body of the community. In theory, decisions must be taken democratically by all ejidatarios, who are the only inhabitants of the community with the right to vote in the assembly. Every several years the assembly elects a comisario ejidal, which represents the executive branch of the ejido and is in charge of its internal and external affairs. Owing to inheritance practices that privilege sons over daughters, ejidatarios are mostly men and the comisarios ejidales often – although not necessarily – come from the more well-off families of the community. The comisario ejidal also tends to be the political broker of the village, and is connected to a network of clientelistic relationships with indigenous regional leaders, the Ladino elite or political parties. Because of demographic pressures and the absence of employment, most ejidos have numerous avencindados, who, together with the ejidatarios, account for different strata within the ejido (Goldring 1996: 279; Nuijten 2001). The EZLN has not abolished the ejido structure. It has created a parallel structure that has reclaimed the initial democratic role of the assembly and has adapted it to the current situation of ­subsistence

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peasants. In Zapatista community assemblies, all members of the EZLN have the right to vote and to be appointed to leadership posi­ tions, regardless of their land status. Women and youths, who were previously marginalized in the original ejido structure, have found in the EZLN’s version of the ejido opportunities and spaces to participate as never before. The result has been that women and youth, but particularly youth, have been among the sectors offering highest support for the EZLN. Barmeyer reports the existence of small groups within the community that are similar to MST núcleos. It is inside these small groups, organized on the basis of gender and age, that community discussions take place, thus allowing overall for the political participation of a larger number of Zapatistas (Barmeyer 2003: 127–8). Within Santa María, I observed that day-to-day community decisions were taken through discussions in informal meetings. Only male ‘heads of households’ participated in this decision-making process, although some men said they consulted their wives before making an important decision. From the conversations I had with men and women and from my observations of gender dynamics within ­couples, some men seemed to consult with their wives, but others clearly did not (gender relations will be explored later in this chapter). Only for important political decisions do all the Zapatista families (men, women, elderly people and children) gather in an assembly.13 Even though, as noted by the literature, the EZLN encourages women’s participation, there are no quotas or any women-specific sector that would allow for more participation by women. Women’s participation seems to depend more on the self-organization of women within the community or across communities than on a real commitment of all Zapatistas. In the Lacandona jungle the EZLN developed within, and parallel to, the Asociación Rural de Interés Colective-Unión de Uniones (ARIC-UU), another indigenous peasant organization. The organ­ izational structure of ARIC-UU thus became the blueprint for the political structure of the EZLN. Similarly to the organizational structure of the MST, every community that was part of the ARIC-UU was organized into different sectors, which, in turn, elected delegates to regional committees and to the organization’s assembly (Leyva Solano and Ascencio Franco 1996: 282–8; Leyva Solano 2001: 22). Zapatista

the new modern prince  |  117 communities are organized in a similar fashion, having several sectors (health, education, military, justice, etc.), each with its respective coordinator (Barmeyer 2003: 135). Those elected are also delegates to the regional and municipal levels of a particular sector, called the comisión. Every community also elects its political responsable, who constitutes the link between the community and the EZLN and is also the community’s delegate to the autonomous municipal council. In communities where all families are Zapatistas, this representative, who is preferably not an ejidatario, participates in the ejido assembly and is consulted on any decision that the ejido wants to take. In divided communities, the representative only looks after the needs and interests of Zapatistas and negotiates with the non-Zapatistas of the ejido. In some cases, when enough Zapatistas are ejidatarios, the representative will be in a position to negotiate with ejido authorities to make sure that ejido decisions do not negatively affect Zapatistas or that certain benefits can also be shared by non-ejidatarios. In theory, the EZLN military structure is made up of five groups: the bases de apoyo (bases of support); the milicianos (militias or reserves); the insurgentes (regular troops); the responsables; and the Comité Clandestino Revolucionario Indígena-Comandancia General (Indigenous Revolutionary Clandestine Committee-General Command, CCRI-CG). The bases de apoyo are the members of the community who do not have military training and who are not within the military structure of the EZLN. Bases de apoyo are nevertheless crucial for the EZLN because they are called upon for mobilizations or events. The milicianos, the insurgentes, the responsables and the members of the CCRI-CG all have military and ideological training. Insurgentes make up the core of the guerrilla organization per se and are the full-time military personnel of the organization. They are organized hierarchically, and obey a chain of command. Milicianos form the second level of military forces of the guerrilla organization, and have less military training. Milicianos and insurgentes participated in combat in the first few weeks of 1994. The members of the CCRI-CG are at the apex of the military and political structure of the EZLN. CCRI-CG members are constantly asked to travel to different communities to attend meetings or to help solve an issue in a particular region or community. Even though the CCRI-CG is ostensibly a clandestine body, members of the CCRI-CG

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are fairly active in their region. This is how a Zapatista from our community summarized the role of a comité: The clandestine committee is chosen by the compas14 of all the communities. They are in contact with the bases de apoyo and they go around to collect the views of the compas [recogiendo la palabra] … To be a member of the committee is a hard job because it means being away from the community. There is no time for the milpa [field]. To be a member of the committee you have to be appointed by the communities. You have to have military training … When they do a good job, they can be appointed again.

Since the creation of the autonomous municipalities in 1994, along with the development of the military structure of the EZLN, the political structure of the autonomous municipalities has also developed with its own assembly and commissions. After the constitution of the autonomous communities began, some of the municipalities quickly reached high levels of organization. By the middle of 1995, numerous autonomous municipalities were functioning in Chiapas, each of them with different degrees of consolidation, depending on the local support for the EZLN. Araceli Burguete Cal y Mayor (1998a), writing when the autonomous municipalities had been in existence only for a few years, distinguished four levels of consolidation of Zapatista autonomies. The lowest level of consolidation was in regions where Zapatistas were in a minority and exposed to constant harassment by their indigenous neighbours. The regions that had reached the second level of consolidation were those where the Zapatistas were able to render justice among their own members but did not have their own infrastructures. The third level of consolidation was reached in regions where Zapatistas had enough support and legitimacy among the population to solve agrarian conflicts, render justice and have the majority accept their rulings. Some of the autonomous municipalities, such as La Libertad, San Andrés and Pohlo, were even able to distribute land. Finally, the most consolidated experiences of Zapatista autonomy were in regions where Zapatistas controlled vast territory, rendered justice, had built their own infrastructure, and had not only distributed latifundio land but also the land of small ranchers and political opponents (ibid.: 142). In 1998, President Ernesto Zedillo ordered a military offensive

the new modern prince  |  119 against these autonomous communities in order to dismantle them.15 This offensive was in addition to the actions of the army and the state police, which were waging low-intensity warfare on Zapatista communities, including targeting the training and proliferation of paramilitary groups. The most horrific consequence of this lowintensity war strategy occurred with the massacre, on 22 December 1997, of forty-five people, mostly women and children, in the community of Acteal in the municipality of Chenalho in the highlands. Following the tactic that the military had used during the civil war in Guatemala, ‘paramilitaries ripped open the wombs of pregnant women who were dead, extracting unborn babies with their ­machetes … to teach a lesson to any insurgents and their supporters in the vicinity’ (Olivera 2005: 618). But every autonomous municipality that was dismantled re-emerged a few months later. These officially sponsored military attacks finally came to an end with the election of Vicente Fox in 2000, but Zapatistas today, especially where they are in a minority, are still subject to political harassment by other organizations. Today, every autonomous municipality has taken over all the services that are normally the responsibility of the state, such as civil registration of births, education, health, development and justice. In the area of education, for instance, autonomous municipalities train their own community educators and develop their own education programme, focusing on their own curriculum and pedagogy, as well as on their own view of Mexican history. In the area of health, autonomous municipalities have established programmes to train both community health promoters and midwives. The former are able to identify and treat the main curable diseases to which the population is vulnerable, while the latter are capable of assisting in women’s pregnancies (see Starr et al. 2011: 104–6). At the beginning of the autonomy struggle, because of the military harassment, both the politico-military structures of the EZLN and the structures of the autonomous communities were somewhat fused. However, in 2000 the EZLN decided to divide its leadership into a poli­ tical ‘civilian’ wing (the autonomous municipalities) and a military wing (the guerrilla). On the one hand, issues regarding the security of Zapatista communities are the responsibility of members of the community belonging to the military wing of the organization. The

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latter assess the security or military threat coming from the federal army and paramilitary groups, as well as from rival organizations, such as PRI or PRD sympathizers or ARIC members, within a given community or from neighbouring communities. On the other hand, members of the autonomous municipal councils and the Juntas de Buen Gobierno are people who have been nominated to take care of the political aspects of the struggle such as intra- and intercommunity conflict resolution. With time, the political structure of the autonomous municipal councils and the Juntas de Buen Gobierno are bound to replace the politico-military structure of the EZLN, but the process is still under way. Since the creation of the autonomous municipalities, balancing the responsibilities, jurisdiction and power between the two wings of the movement has been difficult. Regardless of attempts to allo­ cate more decision-making power to the civilian wing, the CCRI-CG has remained the highest authority in Zapatista territory. No major political decision can be made without its consent. In theory, important political decisions are first discussed by the representatives of all the communities in an assembly at the level of the autonomous municipality. The representatives then go back to their respective communities, where the decision will be discussed by all community members in an assembly. The representative, accountable to his or her community, will then carry forward the community’s opinion to a second municipal assembly, and will subsequently report back to the community on the final decision. One of these community meetings occurred during the period of our fieldwork, after the community representative had come back from a previous meeting elsewhere. However, we were not allowed to attend. In practice, this way of taking important decisions, i.e. through a succession of meetings, is probably the norm. However, the levels of participation in the decision-making process will depend on the history, experience and politics of each particular community. In some cases, according to Barmeyer, the imposition of the will of the majority over the minority within a given community can sometimes include threats and coercion of opponents if the community sees a potential danger in the development of dissent (Barmeyer 2003: 131). Within the EZLN, the fact that communities are organized into groups or commissions as well as the fact that the leadership at

the new modern prince  |  121 most levels is collective and nominated by the communities as a whole have, just as in the case of the MST, also contributed to maintaining relatively good levels of participation. The distribution of political responsibilities among several individuals within the community, and the creation of sectors accommodating the work of these represen­tatives, has allowed for power to be diffused, avoiding its monopolization by a single individual within the community or the organization. Obviously, when certain leaders remain in a position of authority for several years, as has been the case with some members of the municipal council or the CCRI, their opinion can end up having more impact than the opinion of others. It is reasonable to assume that the opinion of Subcomandante Marcos, for instance, has weighed heavily in the discussions that the CCRI has had. Subcomandante Marcos is, of course, the most prominent figure within the EZLN. His analysis and opinions most probably weigh heavily on the internal debates. In many occasions in my discussions with Zapatistas, Subcomandante Marcos’ words were used as a reinforcing argument: ‘Because Marcos said …’, ‘The Sub said …’, ‘Marcos told us …’, ‘Because Marcos saw that …’. The use of these sentence starters is so recurrent that it gives the impression that Marcos is present in many of the meetings that Zapatista delegates have. It gives the impression that all the leaders with a certain level of authority know him personally. Given the complexity of the organ­ ization and the geographic extension of Zapatista territory, this is highly improbable. What this tells us, though, is that Subcomandante Marcos’ figure is so important that many Zapatistas feel the need to justify their position or tell their collective story of struggle by referring to Marcos in some way or other. This can lead to the danger of concentration of power and personalism. That said, Subcomandante Marcos seems to have quite an important margin of manoeuvre in regard to writing communiqués. However, he cannot write whatever he wants. Within Subcomandante Marcos’ writings, at least three types of texts can be identified: those that are of his sole authorship, such as his short stories, those that he has been commissioned to write, and those that are written collectively with the CCRI (VergaraCamus 2000: 95). In discussions with some Zapatistas it became clear that even Marcos’ communiqués that present an analysis of the conjuncture or the features of the system of domination are

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presented to (and discussed with) community delegates before they are released to the press. Up to now, the Zapatistas have also managed to avoid any major corruption scandal. Moreover, by maintaining their posture of resistance towards the state, they have been able to present themselves as a committed organization that, in contrast to what has occurred with so many other peasant organizations in the region, the government has not been able to co-opt. In this way, Zapatistas have also been able to present their politics as an alternative to the strategies that other organizations have followed with only limited results. This success is made clear in Daniel’s words: ‘In all the other organizations and political parties, bosses get rich while the poor stay as poor as before. The other organizations, the only thing they do is to ask the government … They are not autonomous. They depend on what the government gives them. The government can give one year and not the next.’

From autonomous municipalities to the Juntas de Buen Gobierno  In August 2003, the Zapatistas decided to expand the experience of autonomy by creating a higher level: the Juntas de Buen Gobierno. Here, the EZLN deliberately chose the term good government in opposition to the term mal gobierno (bad government) that is used to refer to the state. There are eight Juntas de Buen Gobierno. These councils consist of regional political decision-making bodies that coordinate the activities of five or six autonomous municipalities while they also work with the CCRI-CG. Although women are few at this level, a JBG is made up of an alternating leadership of men and women who belong to different municipalities and who are chosen by their peers to represent their respective municipality at the regional level. The responsibilities of JBG members can be very demanding. The member of the JBG who lived in Santa María, for instance, had to go to the JBG in La Garrucha (a nine-hour bus ride away) every six weeks and sit on the council for ten days consecutively. The creation of the JBGs was intended to help consolidate the political authority and legitimacy of the EZLN over broader geographic areas and allow for better coordination of the different efforts involving Zapatista communities and municipalities. The JBGs have become the highest political authority in Zapatista territory. They

the new modern prince  |  123 have also become spaces of conflict mediation and resolution for Zapatistas, non-Zapatistas and anti-Zapatistas, to the extent that the government of Chiapas sometimes has had to consult with a JBG before carrying out actions in territory of Zapatista influence. In a communiqué that reported on the first year of existence of the juntas, Subcomandante Marcos mentioned that the state government of Pablo Salazar Mendiguchía (2000–06) had cooperated with the JBGs on many issues. The governor himself confirmed this cooperation later. Pedro, a member of the JBG of La Garrucha, mentioned that the JBGs investigate every case that indigenous peasants present to them, and that they render justice according to indigenous communal practices. As a result, community members accused of a minor misdemeanour can sometimes end up spending several days in jail. But when the issue involves a serious criminal offence, such as rape or murder, the case, as well as all the information resulting from the Zapatista investigation, is passed on to the official judicial authorities of the state. However, the authorities of the Zapatista JBGs who conduct an investigation oversee the follow-up on the official state investigation in order to make sure that the official state authorities conduct their investigation and pass judgment in accordance with Mexican law. The JBGs have not displaced the authority of autonomous muni­ cipalities. As we were informed during my visits to the JBG of La Garrucha, a JBG that coordinates five autonomous municipalities, each autonomous municipality has ‘its own way of doing things’. This variation is due to the fact that the experiences of each region are different. Some regions became part of the EZLN while it was still a clandestine organization and benefited from the organizational experiences of previous organizations (ARIC-UU, ANCEZ, etc.). Other regions, such as the region where Santa María was located, joined only after the uprising in 1994. Despite the reasons behind the autonomous municipalities’ differences, however, one of the objectives of the JBGs is to try to bring all Zapatista autonomous municipalities to a similar level of organization by deciding democratically on the distribution and allo­ cation of projects as well as financial support. One of the problems the JBGs are supposed to resolve, we were told by a junta member, is the unequal distribution of donations and programmes that can

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occur between, on the one hand, communities that have established contacts with NGOs or solidarity groups and, on the other, those that are isolated geographically and thus do not have that advantage. This move by the JBGs towards improvement of distribution of resources, however, is not intended to overlap with the power of autonomous municipalities to elaborate and develop their own projects and infrastructures, or with their prerogative to decide on the issues they want to prioritize. We were told, for example, that within the Ricardo Flores Magón autonomous municipality, the priorities for the moment were health and education rather than production. The MST’s democratic centralism and the EZLN’s mandar obedeciendo In an overview of some social movements in Brazil and Mexico, Jeffrey Rubin identified two types of movements: the ‘Che-like movements’ and the ‘Marcos-like movements’. In Rubin’s view, ‘Che-inspired radicalism placed too little value on democratic forms and substance and lacked important kinds of cultural awareness.’ Marcos-like movements, on the other hand, ‘exhibit, in varied and uneven ways, greater concern for democratic procedures, for cultural meaning, for multiple dimensions of power, and for gender, race, violence, and sexuality …’ (Rubin 2002: 44). Rubin sees the EZLN as an example of the ‘Marcos-like movement’ and the MST as a current ‘Che-like movement’. Thus he suggests that the EZLN is more democratic and pluralist than the MST: … Marcos and the Zapatistas speak of a new kind of democracy, a democracy that takes procedure and voting seriously … Marcos has defended a policy of alliances within a complex civil society, no longer broken down into Che’s bourgeois and working class … Marcos calls for a dual Indian–Mexican nation, based on concepts of citizenship and culture, with no revolution of the old sort, led by an armed vanguard, in sight … Marcos argues, in this process the left needs to engage with the reality of difference – in class and worldview and also in race and gender. (Ibid. 2002: 39)

In contrast, Rubin says: MST leaders insist that their success results from their ability to mobilize with great efficiency; centralization and discipline are

the new modern prince  |  125 e­ ssential for combating a repressive rural power structure. Thus the MST eschews internal democracy, imposes a single squatter and cooperative model on vastly different groups of rural sup­ porters, rejects alliances with less radical rural movements, and for the most part marginalizes women and reproduces conventional racial hierarchies. (Ibid.: 46)

Rubin’s views on the EZLN and the MST echo those of several scholars and activists of the alter-globalization movement inspired by a postmodernist interpretation of Zapatismo (Santos 2004: 170), who have celebrated the diversity, plurality and horizontality of socalled ‘new social movements’ and refused the need for a common (albeit vague) political project and strategy. These scholars have drawn their interpretation of the Zapatista political praxis more from Subcomandante Marcos’ early communiqués, which at the time had the clear objective of gathering as much political support as possible (see Chapter 5), than from the actual practice of the EZLN. Although Rubin’s analysis highlights some genuine differences, the distinction that he makes between the MST and the EZLN does not hold. In reality, as I have demonstrated above in my detailed description of the decision-making structures of both organizations, the ways that decisions are made within the MST and the EZLN are not dissimilar. Moreover, when there are differences, in contrast to what Rubin asserts, decision-making is probably more democratic within the MST than within the EZLN. People tend to forget it, but although it has developed a civilian structure, the EZLN is still a guerrilla organization, albeit a very peculiar one. But what is more important than the differences is the fact that within both organizations the community assembly is where the sovereignty of the organization lies, even though many decisions are discussed in smaller groups prior to the assembly. The following section, which analyses the forms of leadership selection and the relationship between leaders and grassroots membership, should illustrate these similarities between the MST and the EZLN. In comparison with the EZLN, the more orthodox image and discourse of the MST has given rise to the criticism, exemplified by Rubin’s typology, that the organization is anti-democratic and hierarchical. To some extent, even early Sem Terra such as Antonhino,

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who participated more actively in the first years of the organization and is now a settler in Nova Ronda Alta in the state of Rio Grande do Sul, recognize this fact: At the beginning, the organization was very centralized and hierarchical. You could say that the national direction thought of itself as the ‘thinking group’ [grupo pensante] … It was probably like that from 1985 to 1990 maybe … Well, it was not totally centralized … There was always discussion … Now, things have changed. There are many spaces and levels of discussion … The movement has grown a lot.

One of the practices that indicates the degree to which an organ­ ization is democratic is obviously the way leaders are elected. On this issue, it is difficult to say that the process of selection of the leadership within the MST is not democratic. In fact, it mirrors the process within the EZLN that was presented above. Claudemir, the coordin­ ator of the cooperative for the region of Sarandi in the state of Rio Grande do Sul, explained the election process that takes place within the MST: The groups núcleos identify more or less three names … by consensus … The names that come up more often are passed on … The delegates meet and the leaders are selected … There is not much contact between núcleos at the base … Someone can be appointed to the regional direction as many times as he/she is selected … There is no term limitation.

From the time of its creation, the MST adopted ‘democratic centralism’ as its guiding principle in decision-making. Within the MST, the national and regional leaderships, elected by the lower levels of the organization, are responsible for setting the general political orientation and strategy of the movement. They normally meet monthly to discuss different issues, and the discussions are then transmitted to the lower levels, where they are discussed again. After a long process of discussion, a decision will be taken and will be binding on all the members of the organization. Refusal to follow a decision can be sanctioned by all kinds of penalties, ranging from suspension of membership to expulsion. Another way of determining if an organization is democratic is

the new modern prince  |  127 by analysing the kind of relationship that exists between the leadership and the grassroots. My experience in following René, a former Catholic priest who accompanied the movement during its first year and who is now a regional leader of the MST frente de masas (mass front, a sector of the MST) in the municipality of Andradina in the state of São Paulo, will serve as an example of the role of leaders within the MST. René goes from encampment to encampment, from meeting to meeting, talking to people within the organization and even outside it. When he arrives at a meeting, he informs the acampados and acampadas of the issues at stake, the latest developments in national politics, and the discussions going on within the movement with regard to these issues and developments. He lays out the way he sees the challenges and engages in what in North America we would call a ‘pep talk’ to keep up the morale of the encampment. His style is very enthusiastic but not preachy. He constantly seeks the reactions of the people gathered. After his talks, acampados and acampadas comment on his analysis, express their approval or disagreement, and even challenge his analysis. Discussion on the issues presented by René will later take place in the núcleos, where the encampment will decide its position and forward it to the regional assembly. Hence René will not be involved in all encampment and settlement discussions, but only in those taking place where he lives. When the day of the regional meeting arrives, René and other regional representatives meet in a room loaned by the local rural union and cooperative. While the style of this venue is completely different, i.e. less enthusiastic and more serious than in the encampment setting, the same issues are brought up, and the opinions that have circulated earlier in the encampments and settlements are conveyed and analysed. In a decision-making meeting, a decision would have been taken by compiling the results of the positions adopted by the different encampments and settlements. Within this process of decision-making, political organizers play the role of facilitators. Some Brazilian scholars use the term ‘medi­ ators’ (Romano 1994; Ferrante 1994), as if the political organizers were external to landless people. Of course, having the advantage of being in possession of more information and bridging the different encampments and settlements, political leaders are able to direct

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and influence debates. However, they do not have the power to impose a decision, although they may try to do so on some occa­ sions. For now, suffice it to say that when the leadership tries to impose a decision, it exposes itself to the possibility of pro­voking a drop in the participation of the settlers, a situation that can have a significant negative impact on the organization’s capacity to mobilize its membership. The testimony below of Terezinha, from assentamento Fazenda Anoni in Sarandi in the state of Rio Grande do Sul, first confirms Claudemir’s description (presented above) and then rejects it, thus expressing the fluidity that exists in political participation: In the cooperative, positions were up for election every two years and in the movement every four years … The way it works is that it starts at the base … The names start circulating at the base, in each núcleo, in each settlement … Names circulate and [those who receive the most votes] take the post … It is not like that any more … A lot of people stopped participating. A lot of people distanced themselves from the cooperatives.

In sum, the term democratic centralism does not, in and of itself, mean anti-democratic decision-making. The democratic or non-democratic character of the decision-making process depends on the actual practices of the participants and, more importantly, on the attitudes and interests of the leadership and the grassroots membership. In the case of the MST, the importance of mobilization in sustaining the capacity of the organization, as well as the politicization of the grassroots membership that develops during the period of encampment, can make top-down decisions very problematic and difficult to impose, as I will show in Chapter 5 with the case of the selection within the MST of a candidate to the state legislature of Rio Grande do Sul. One of the most celebrated features of the EZLN is the fact that, in contrast to previous guerrillas in Latin America, Zapatista commun­ ities democratically elect their leadership instead of having leaders appointed by the military hierarchy. The leadership is also said to be accountable to the membership. The idea expressed by the words ‘gathering the view of the compas’, used above by a Zapatista, summarizes the role of a Zapatista regional leader and suggests that it is

the new modern prince  |  129 very similar to how René, the MST leader, carried out his role. The members of the CCRI go around from one community to another, talking at meetings and presenting the different options open to the movement in order to get a sense of the attitude of the inhabitants of the different communities that make up the movement. Similarly, the role of the representative of a community is to express accurately the will of the community at higher levels of the organization. When I asked Carlos to describe the process of decision-making within the movement, this was his answer: An idea is going to come from the comandancia [the CCRI]. Then it goes down to the different political levels, the Junta de Buen ­Gobierno, the autonomous community, where there are representatives from each community. It gets discussed a first time. Then it arrives at the communities and is presented to the people by the representative. The idea is discussed and everyone can comment and oppose it. When the discussion in the community is finished, the decisions of the communities start their way up the different levels of authorities, the autonomous municipality, the Junta de Buen Gobierno and the comandancia. Once the process is finished, the decision is taken and no one can go against the decision. We have to stand by the decision.

What Carlos was describing to me is what Zapatistas call mandar obedeciendo (rule by obeying). Kathleen Bruhn (1999) understands the principle of mandar obedeciendo in terms of accountability, close supervision of elected representatives by the community, and revocation of leaders. Bruhn is not mistaken, but her reading denotes a Western, liberal and institutional perspective, where representatives are given a series of prerogatives. For the Zapatistas, the fundamental objective behind the idea of mandar obedeciendo is for sovereignty to truly be in the hands of the ruled and not the rulers. This means that the political authorities should govern in accordance with the will of the majority. Political authorities have to be seen as delegates of the community rather than its representatives since they are ‘at the service of the community’.16 Unlike political representatives in liberal democracies, political authorities are not invested with the power to take decisions. The approach thus implies a different understanding of the legitimacy of the authorities, not as originating from a specific

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moment (an election, for instance), but rather depending on the relation that the authorities maintain with grassroots membership. This means that every important decision must be made by consulting the community through some sort of deliberative processes. Taken to its limits, mandar obedeciendo implies self-government.17 In the case of the Zapatista bases de apoyo, the consequence is similar to those of the MST membership. If a political decision is made through democratic and deliberative processes that have allowed everyone to have a chance to convince the majority, the decision of the organization must be obeyed. Hence, mandar obedeciendo is in fact what the old left and the MST call democratic centralism. However, not all decisions take the same path. The EZLN is still an indigenous peasant movement with a guerrilla movement at its core. Political-military decisions are orders from the comandancia and are followed as such. Disobeying this kind of order can lead to disciplinary measures that range from the temporary suspension of political responsibility to the revocation of political responsibility or, ultimately, to expulsion from the organization.

The challenge of the specialization of leadership  As mentioned earlier, for Antonio Gramsci one of the most important tasks of the Modern Prince is to form ‘organic intellectuals’ that are directly linked to a class and can animate and disseminate the counter-hegemony of the movement within the respective class and civil society more broadly. For him, everyone has the potential to become an organic intellectual and the Modern Prince has to work at creating the conditions for that to happen. Ideally, every member of the movement, especially coming from the grassroots, is supposed to take up a position of leadership if and when the circumstances arise. The way the MST and the EZLN organize their membership and participation resembles what Gramsci envisioned. The process of politicization that occurs within the movement sets the ideological foundations for developing the potential of its members, but the organizational decision of adopting rotating leadership creates the practical conditions for that to occur. However, there are many obstacles to the generalization of leadership ability, and leadership specialization is one of them. MST settlers constantly reminded me that the period of occupation was a period of strong unity and solidarity because the common

the new modern prince  |  131 objective of fighting for land, the availability of time and the pressure on the encampment exerted by external actors (landlords, gunmen, local authorities and police, etc.) were conducive to politicization. By contrast, they also overwhelmingly highlighted the fact that the settle­ ment became much less politicized as time passed and as people became more and more occupied with cultivating their family plot. Some Brazilian scholars have observed that, as time passes, a sort of ‘specialization of the leadership’ arises, sometimes through the ‘accumulation of positions and representations … that confer status and power’ (Zimmermann 1994: 220). Other researchers have also identified a differentiation between grassroots membership and leaders (Romano 1994; Ferrante 1994). This specialization is not necessarily voluntary because, as João Estevão of the assentamento Fazenda Anoni in Sarandi Rio Grande do Sul explained: ‘leadership positions are not much sought after because people think they require too much time, time which they prefer to dedicate to working on their plot. Sometimes the leaders have their position because nobody else wants it.’ To avoid this accumulation of positions, some settlements have enforced a ‘rotation policy’, which constitutes, in principle, a political guideline for the movement. In the cooperative Coopavi in Paranacity in the state of Paraná, for instance, leadership positions of the settlement and the coordination of núcleos are rotating positions. Each year the direção (board) of the cooperative changes and every three months the coordinators of the núcleos are replaced by other members. Each settler must take on the role of coordinator at least once. This, however, is surely not what occurs in all settlements. Even if efforts are made to avoid ‘specialization of the leadership’, in some settlements the settlers gradually end up seeing the MST as a union, as an ‘organization that would help them navigate the political waters not re-direct them … or as a service organization that represented the settlers rather than a social movement of which they were members’ (Wolford 2003a: 210). During my own fieldwork, I observed this phenomenon mainly in the older settlements, such as Sumaré I and Fazenda Primavera, both in the state of São Paulo, and Fazenda Macali in Rio Grande do Sul. In these settlements, the struggle for land had been carried out before the creation of the MST and was marked by more informal and personalist leadership. In Sumaré I, for instance, no formal structures of decision-making

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or selection of leaders seem to exist. According to Calixto da Silva, one of the original leaders of the struggle: Decisions are taken collectively. In some places, it’s the direção that takes decisions. Here there is no direção, there are persons that represent the settlement. When we have to take a decision or implement a project, we call a meeting, representatives and ­people together. I am the coordinator of the community [CEBs]18 and there is a coordinator for the settlement. João Lorenço was chosen but since he is too busy now, Aparecida was chosen … She was chosen in a meeting … Many times, when there is an administrative procedure to make or a negotiation to carry out, other people accompany the coordinator.

Calixto’s description of the way decisions are taken in his settle­ ment points to a highly informal power structure that favours long-time activists and the reliance of the community on certain individuals. Sirlene da Silva, daughter of João Lorenço, a lifelong activist of the MST in the region, has this to say about assentamento Sumaré 1: The settlement is not organized. The organization is only for certain things, such as demands to the municipality. The youth are demobilized. Hilario [son of Calixto] is one of the few who participate. He is working to set up a cooperative … There are no committees, except for health … When someone organizes something or has an initiative, people are accustomed to consider the person who had the idea as the person responsible, the one that will take the decisions.

The danger of leadership specialization is thus real in some MST settlements. However, it is easier for specialization of leadership to arise where no formal mechanisms and structures of political participation and representation exist. In Fazenda Anoni, in Sarandi in the state of Rio Grande do Sul, for instance, even if the settlement is almost as old as Sumaré I, the MST structures were adopted early and continue to function, regardless of the division that has arisen recently around the selection of candidates to the state legislature. Specialization of leadership is also a danger within the Zapatista movement. Considering the double structures (civilian and politico-

the new modern prince  |  133 military) on top of the ejido structure that continues to function, power is probably as diffused within the EZLN as it is in the MST. Many opportunities exist for anyone who wants to take on a position of responsibility to do so. In some regions where Zapatistas are not yet consolidated or have lost supporters, there might even be more positions than people to fill them. Even in Santa María, where Zapatista families were in a minority, no single individual monopolized power and no one person accumulated different functions. However, a difference in terms of level of knowledge of the organization and its ideology existed between Zapatistas who occupied positions of responsibility and grassroots members who did not. Zapatistas who have higher positions of authority and who leave the community for extended periods of training or for meetings are the ones that have internalized the Zapatista ideology most profoundly. In the absence of formal spaces for political education, a situation which seems to be the case in communities where Zapatistas are in the minority, in contrast to communities where they are in the majority, the gap between the leadership and the grassroots could potentially widen and thus lead to divergent views within communities. Gender relations and the political participation of women As has been highlighted by many feminist scholars (Radcliffe and Westwood 1993; Craske 1999; Molyneux 2000), in Latin America tradi­ tional gender roles have always been structured by the patriarchal organization of space within the household, civil society and the state, as well as by the male-dominated and racialized conception of nationhood. Broadly speaking, women, because they have been ­assigned to take charge of the reproduction of the family, are restricted to the private space of the home, while men, because they carry out production, dominate the public space (Gonçalves 2005: 156). This sexual division of labour within the household is one of the most determinant elements enforcing traditional gender relations and blocking the public political participation of women. Obviously, this gendered dualism is the result of patriarchal practices and strategies to maintain the subordination of women. This private/public dualism should thus not be seen in terms of a rigid dichotomy, but rather in terms of a continuum or as disputed and intertwined spaces, where the private is constructed publicly and politically. Hence, as Cutbitt

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and Greenslade (1997: 53) argue, women’s subordination and isolation tend to decrease when the boundary between the private and public sphere is blurred through the collective action of women. As I will show in this section and further develop in Chapter 4, the increase in public political participation of women in the MST and the EZLN was made possible because their participation in the struggle for land challenged the traditional sexual division of labour and temporarily blurred the boundaries between private and public spaces. In the 1980s, the literature that focused on the political participation of women in social movements in Latin America highlighted how the political activism of women under authoritarianism was played out in their traditional roles as grandmothers, and ­mothers. The case of the mothers of the Plaza de Mayo in Argentina during the military dictatorship (1976–83) is the most well-known case of this type of motherist movement (Radcliffe and Westwood 1993: 16–17). Breaking with the social boundaries that limited their gender role to the private sphere, women used their private gender role as mothers to legitimize their public-political role as defenders of human rights, challenging the state’s monopoly over violence (Navarro 2001). The case of landless and Zapatista women in some aspects parallels the experience of the Argentine mothers during the military dictatorship, especially in their moments of confrontation with police forces and the army. Very often, landless women who confront attacks on encampments by the police play up their traditional gender role as mothers. Hence, gender roles and patriarchal symbols are often not transformed but acted upon for specific purposes. But this recovery of a traditional gender role in fact transgresses the constructed binary and sees women take on a publicly active political role. This situation is perceivable in the following comments made by Salete, a woman from assentamento Rondinha-group 1 in Joía in the state of Rio Grande do Sul, who remembered: During the time of the encampment, during occupations, women were always in the front row when we would be under siege. Our strategy would be to talk to the police or the army. We would tell them: ‘If you want to kill me, you can, but you will kill a mother, a mother who wants land for her children. If you don’t have a

the new modern prince  |  135 mother, if you don’t have a wife, if you don’t have a sister, you can kill me because I know why I am fighting, why I will die. You, do you know where your wife is right now? I bet she is with another man.’ On the spot we decided what to do. Spontaneously we would confront the police.

Alternatively, landless women used the image of the ‘whore’ to verbally confront and insult the masculinity of policemen. Salete, for instance, also commented: ‘We learned how to talk to the police. We had no arms, so it had to be with words. Our defence was with words. I don’t need to tell you what kinds of words we would use sometimes. Policemen would even end up crying.’ With time, police authorities reacted to this strategy of the landless women and started to use female police officers to confront Sem Terra women during the removal of landless people from the occupation of a property. But Terezinha, an acampada in acampamento ‘Seguindo o Sonho de Rose’ in Julho de Castillo in the state of Rio Grande do Sul, demonstrated in her testimony that women claimed their role of mother not only to avoid aggression but also to legitimize the actions taken by the MST in its struggle for land. This is her recollection of the July 2003 march to São Gabriel, one of the regions of Rio Grande do Sul where many large latifundios still exist: A judge came many times to attempt to remove the children from the march. We, all the mothers, opposed it and didn’t permit the children to be removed. The judge would tell us that we were bad mothers because we submitted our children to those conditions: the march, the cold and all. We answered by asking him: ‘How much money do you make? Do you have a nice house? Do you have a nice car?’ We would go on and tell him that we were fighting so that we and our children could have only a little bit of what a judge can have, that we were not bad mothers who submitted their children to those conditions, but rather that it was a system that forced us to struggle. A system where judges don’t expropriate large properties and impede the distribution of wealth.

In the same way that the police repression of land occupations triggered the growing political participation of women and a reframing of the traditional gender roles of women in the MST, the

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formation of the guerrilla movement and the subsequent military operations of January 1994 generated an internal questioning of the traditional gender roles of women within indigenous communities, which had often been justified through a mythologized understanding of indigenous cultural traditions (Hernández Castillo et al. 2006: 44). Women’s participation in the civil disobedience actions of the EZLN mirrors the experience of Brazilian landless women in times of confrontation with police forces. Indeed, at the height of the milit­ arization of the Zapatista territory between 1997 and 1999, especially during the dismantling of autonomous communities and municipalities during the summer of 1997, women were at the forefront of the confrontations with state police and armed forces. Carmen, a Zapatista woman, remembers the decision that women took: ‘We sent the men off because when the army came in 1994, they took three of our men and killed them. So, we told the men to go and hide and we got sticks and chased the soldiers out. They were so scared that they were slipping in the mud. We asked them if they would treat their mothers and fathers this way’ (Carmen, quoted in Forbis 2003: 250). Women confronting violence, either by confronting police forces non-violently or entering the ranks of the guerrillas, represent an important reversal of traditional gender identities and roles. However, although important progress has been made in the transformation of gender relations, the process of struggle itself and organizational norms are not sufficient to guarantee the full and equal participation of women. Here, however, the MST and the EZLN have taken different routes and, as will be shown, there seems to have been more progress in women’s political participation and transformation of gender roles in the MST than in the EZLN.

The MST: parity, self-organization and sharing domestic chores  Nikki Craske, in her chapter entitled ‘Revolutionary empowerment’, where she compares the revolutionary processes in Cuba and Nicaragua, ­argues that revolutionary struggles, because they ‘represent a ­moment of fluidity in political structures’, allow for significant gains with regard to women’s rights and political participation, and the transformation of traditional gender roles (Craske 1999: 141). However, as other feminists have highlighted (Radcliffe and Westwood 1993:

the new modern prince  |  137 19), once the period of mobilization has passed, women do not sustain their level of political involvement, often retreating into the domestic sphere, and traditional gender roles are reinforced. According to Craske, two elements are crucial for determining whether the gains made during the period of mobilization will be maintained or reversed: the commitment of the revolutionary leadership and, more importantly, the existence of an independent women’s organization capable of pressuring for change (Craske 1999: 140, 144, 160). As was discussed in the previous section, the period of encampment is a peculiar experience for Brazilian rural women. The parity rule of the MST has allowed for more equal participation of women. In terms of political leadership, the parity rule has translated into the generation of a substantial number of female leaders at different levels of the MST organizational structure. Additionally, in every encampment and settlement, and in the movement itself, women have their own sector where they discuss issues that are specific to their situations. However, the parity rule is only an organizational mechanism that facilitates the participation of women. Women’s participation seems actually to take hold only when gender relations, especially those relating to the sexual division of labour within the household, start being modified. Life in the encampment also contributes to a temporary modification of gender roles. Childcare often becomes a collective task of women, and men begin to participate more in the domestic tasks within the tent. Men, especially those squatting alone, are obliged for the first time to do all their domestic chores themselves. All these factors have contributed to the modification of traditional gender roles and have helped to open up space for women to start assuming positions of authority. Salete, who was an acampada in Encrucilhada Natalino during the first occupation in Rio Grande do Sul in the 1980s, remembered: ‘The participation of women was fought for. It was conquered. It had to confront many stereotypes. Today, it has changed a lot. There are many women who have achieved the division of domestic chores.’ In sum, the strategic importance of women’s participation, their increased participation and the numerous women in leadership positions during encampment life all lead to a challenge of the traditional boundaries between the private and public spheres. Because ‘private’ matters, from spousal dispute to domestic violence, can have an

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impact on the levels of participation of any of the spouses, especially women, and hence on the struggle, other female and male members of the encampment will not hesitate to interfere in domestic issues. What is thus conventionally considered the ‘domestic sphere’ is politicized and becomes the public domain of the collective. During the transition from encampment to settlement, the toningdown of over-politicization seems to result in a depoliticizing impact on women similar to that which was noted earlier regarding the participation of settlers in general. After the encampment period, during which women take on many political responsibilities and because the proximity between neighbours allowed for the development of collective childcare practices, some settlers return to organizing their family lives around more traditional gender roles within the household (Gonçalves 2005: 158). Similarly, the traditional boundaries between the private and the public spheres, which are modified during the encampment period, slowly reimpose themselves. In the many cases where male settlers decide to continue milita­ ting within the movement, either through the preparation of other groups or through leadership positions, a reversion to a ‘modified sexual division of labour’ occurs. Traditional gender roles are reestablished and even the women’s work burden is increased as the ‘cost’ of men’s militancy is transferred on to women and older children. Cecilia, from asentamento Sumaré 1 in the state of São Paulo, recalled: ‘When our children were unmarried and my husband was a political organizer, it was the whole family that farmed the land. My husband was never home.’ Similar stories where the husband’s militancy is made possible by the domestic and agricultural work of the wife and children are common. In settlements, the issue of the lower level of participation of women, Vanesa told me, was being tackled by trying to provide childcare services for mothers. However, Vanesa added: ‘Many mothers, including myself, believe that our duty towards our children is more important than participating in the movement.’ Fátima was one of those mothers. When she was squatting with her whole family during the first occupation of Fazenda Pirituba, Fátima did not participate because she had three small children under the age of five. When her children had grown up a little, she started participating in the education sector and in marches. At the time of the interview, she

the new modern prince  |  139 sat on the directive board of the cooperative. She explained where she finds herself today politically: ‘With the MST, I gained consciousness. Now I can’t stay in place. A piece of land is not sufficient. We have to struggle for the people who have nothing. We have to help the people so they too can gain consciousness.’ To explain her previous political inactivity, she noted: ‘Women cannot participate as freely as men because of the tasks at home. This affects their level of consciousness.’ However, many women continue participating within the organ­ ization but often in accordance with their traditional gender roles. Indeed, there still seems to be a clear division of labour along gender lines within the movement. Men dominate overwhelmingly in the  technical sectors, while the great majority of the personnel in  the education and health sectors are women. I came across the case of  a young woman who had successfully undertaken the two years  of training to be a cooperative administrator at ITERRA, one of the state-recognized schools of the MST, but who could not find a place in the production sector and thus ended up switching to the education sector. In a settlement meeting of the production sector I attended in assentamento Rondinha in the state of Rio Grande do Sul, where issues of government programmes, credit and the administration of the co-op were dealt with, the great majority of attendants were men. To address this inequality, many within the MST think that the new ‘micro-villa’ model of settlement, by allowing more communal life and more political activism, could help to maintain women’s participation at a high level. However, here again, it seems to be less an issue of spatial organization of the settlement as a decreased need to be mobilized and participate, as well as the reappearance of the dull compulsion of the imperative of the market, which encourages traditional gender division of labour and roles.

The EZLN: achievements and limits of the Women’s Revolutionary Law  The official recognition of women’s rights within the EZLN came in 1993, when women, after initiating a discussion on women’s rights within the ranks of the guerrilla and Zapatista communities, managed to have the Women’s Revolutionary Law adopted by the EZLN. The law proclaimed the right of women to participate in and reach all ranks within the EZLN, the right to work and receive a just salary,

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the right to decide the number of children they will have, the right to participate in community affairs and hold leadership positions, the right to healthcare and education, and the right to choose their marriage partner. The law also stipulated that women should not be forced to get married, that women should not be beaten by family members or strangers, and that rape and attempted rape should be severely punished (Stephen 2002: 180–93; Eber and Kovic 2003: 23). Although these rights might seem unremarkable in advanced capitalist societies, the Women’s Revolutionary Law questioned several fundamental customs of subordination of women within certain indigenous communities, such as the buying/selling of brides (Olivera 2005: 623), tolerance of violence against women, and the lack of women’s control over their bodies. June Nash reminds us that in many indigenous cultures of the Americas, gender relations are organized under the principles of a complementarity of differences, whereby men and women, each with their own attributes, contribute to the reproduction of life (Nash 2001: 246). With the struggle to pass the Women’s Revolutionary Law, some Zapatista women also started to question this gender complementarity by adopting a more fluid concept of culture and, subsequently, they have argued for the rejection of cultural traditions that maintain male dominance and patriarchy (ibid.: 182, 248). Echoing similar processes within the indigenous movement across Latin America, Zapatista women have hence ‘opted to vindicate the historic and malleable character of their cultures and to condem those “uses and customs” that offend their  dignity’ and have thus struggled ‘for the right to reconstruct, confront and reproduce that culture’ (Hernández Castillo et al. 2006: 66). Beyond the Women’s Revolutionary Law, and in contrast to the circumstances that exist in the MST, there are no explicit requirements or rules within the EZLN regarding the participation of ­women in political structures. Unlike in the MST, there is no women’s sector in the EZLN, although some municipalities have created women’s commissions to promote women’s rights and coordinate women’s  projects. However, considering the traditional subordination of women within indigenous communities, Zapatista women have also made important progress. Women make up a third of the Zapatista military troops (milicianos and insurgentes) and more than half of its bases de

the new modern prince  |  141 apoyo (Olivera 2005). Women have been crucial in all the periods of development of the EZLN. A minority of them has managed to reach the position of comandante in the CCRI-CG, and others have taken on various significant responsibilities. In January 1994, Comandante Ana María was in charge of the taking of San Cristóbal de Las Casas, the most important city in the highlands of Chiapas. Comandante Ramona was the first Zapatista leader to publicly break the military siege and travel outside Chiapas. She was the EZLN delegate to the first National Indigenous Congress (CNI) in Mexico City in October 1996. In February 2001, Esther was the Zapatista comandante selected to speak in front of the Mexican Congress to demand the adoption of the law on indigenous culture and autonomy. Beyond cases like these, because of the clandestine nature of the organization, it is not an easy task to assess the extent of women’s participation in the EZLN. However, there are numerous testimonies and studies that have chronicled and analysed the participation of women and which have underlined the important changes that the uprising has triggered in gender relations (Rojas 1994; Rovina 1996; Forbis 2003). In reality, public political participation within the EZLN probably depends on local circumstances. For instance, as noted above, in Santa María women’s public political participation was minimal. This confirms what many observers have noted to the effect that in many Zapatista communities the recognition of women’s rights seems to be a novelty that was introduced de jure by the EZLN to its member communities. The great majority of male Zapatista leaders are conscious of the importance of women’s rights and of the Women’s Revolutionary Law (Stephen 2002: 191–3), but it seems that only the most revolutionary of them have taken them seriously. Hence, if the political participation of women in decision-making differs from community to community, it is probably the level of women’s self-organization and the pressure they are able to exert on men within the community which will determine their level of political participation. Women’s artisan cooperatives were often the first space, and later the platform, from which women were able to become politically active in their community and region (Nash 2001: 179), although often opposed by male-dominated traditional political leadership (Rus and Collier 2003: 47–8). The organization of micro-projects and

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collectives for women seems to produce the same results as the women’s sector produces in the MST. It also seems to be one of the paths for women’s increased political participation within the EZLN: I proudly belong to the Zapatista organization. I was collectively elected to stay as the regional representative and to supervise the cooperative projects of shops. I am the one who promotes workshops with women with a gender perspective. As women we shouldn’t be left behind. I look after nineteen communities on projects with pigs, turkey, cattle, sheep, and twenty-two communities with cooperative shops. I like it, but because I am involved in this movement I feel that I am no longer able to move around freely; if I want to go somewhere I have to ask permission from my Zapatista superiors. (Twenty-two-year-old Zapatista woman, quoted in Olivera 2005: 621)

As is the case with the MST, the political participation of Zapatista women has implied a modification of the sexual division of labour within the household. Within some Zapatista households, women have been able to share domestic responsibilities with men. Zapatista women have underlined the importance of sharing domestic chores as an essential element for allowing their political participation and for the development of their autonomy (Forbis 2003: 247). When their male partners take on domestic tasks, they are able to leave the community and participate in the different community services (e.g. health, education, the organization of women’s collectives) through which autonomy is materialized. The story of María, a community health promoter, speaks of the difficulties of changing the traditional division of labour within the household: Since the life there [in the camps] is more equal, at first he [her husband] supported my work helping the people here. After I had my first baby, his mother told him that my place as a woman was here in the house to make him his food and take care of my son. He told her that I had an important cargo [political responsibility] and that it was my right, but bit by bit he changed to bad thinking and began to forbid me from leaving the house because I had to make his food. I told him that I didn’t need to ask his permission, but he threatened to leave me. It was like that for a long time, but

the new modern prince  |  143 I talked to my father and some of the women responsables and we had a community assembly. There we talked about this and he was told that he could not take away my right to serve my community. Then he came back to his clear thinking and asked me for my forgiveness. (María, quoted in ibid.: 248)

As is the case with MST women, the latter part of María’s narration confirms the importance of both the support and pressure of other women (and some men) within the community in order for some women to be able to continue their political activism. Apart from their traditional gender role as caregivers, there are many other restrictions to women’s political participation within indigenous communities. An evident limitation is the fact that women are rarely the title-holders of the family plot, a situation which keeps them out of the ejido assembly. But one of the most striking restrictions is the limited mobility women have within their community, not to say their region, which corresponds to a very strict separation of the private and public spheres. In Santa María, for instance, women rarely left their homes. When they did, it was to go to the family milpa, to gather wood, or to go to the river to wash clothes and take their baths. Sometimes women would visit a relative in their home but they almost never came to the village centre, where all the village infrastructure and institutions are located (e.g. schools, ejido house, jail, basketball field) and where men have their ejido or Zapatista meetings. The only public space where women meet is their section of the river. Starting at puberty, this part of the river is prohibited to men because it is where women bathe. Hence, public space is fairly segregated in indigenous communities, and the private and public spaces clearly demarcated for women. If the mobility of women is restricted within the community, it is often even more limited when it comes to moving from one community to another. A woman leaving her community exposes herself to threats that can include sexual harassment and rape, two offences which are rarely duly punished by traditional and offi­ cial justice systems (Nash 2001: 69).19 Of course, these restrictions are reinforced by a series of cultural practices involving men as much as women. Zapatista women who take a position of political authority are subject to jokes, gossip and rumours circulated by

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other women because their activism leads them to leave the community and enter an environment comprised mainly of men. Other women from the community will suggest, for instance, that there are love affairs going on between women representatives and men. As highlighted earlier, in an indigenous peasant community it is very difficult to carry on as usual when one becomes the subject of rumours. According to the testimony of a regional coordinator of health promoters, ‘Many female compas decided not to continue their activism after being subject to mockery and gossip by the other women of their community.’ During my fieldwork, I did not come across such a case and was not able to corroborate this observation. Nonetheless, as is well known, gender roles are sustained as much by women as by men, with women enforcing traditional gender behaviours on other women who are perceived as deviating from those roles. However, the ostracism of politically active women most probably comes as much from men as from women, and, as the following story of Rosita shows, rumours and gossip can lead a woman to abandon her community: Rosita is a 17-year-old Tzeltal woman who spent time working and studying in a city three hours away. She said that every time she came home, ‘I would hear rumors about how I was going there to be with men and not work and learn. It made me cry. My father told me to not listen and remember that I was doing important things, but I didn’t like it [the rumors].’ She finally decided to give up and married a young man from another community, so she could get away from the rumors undermining her work. (Forbis 2003: 248)

Although ostracism enforced by women exists, an explanation of the limited participation of women based on the traditional division of labour within the household and its corresponding gender roles appears to shed more light on the limited participation of women within the EZLN. Women’s lives have improved since the EZLN turned up, everything is better for us indigenous women … but it would be more clearly the case if there was equality for women, but often they

the new modern prince  |  145 have not respected us as women, sometimes we want to go out but our fathers do not let us because women are only there to cook. For our families nothing much of our old habits have changed, although in the organization it did. (Twenty-eight-year-old Zapatista woman from Ocosingo, quoted in Olivera 2005: 621)

This belief that certain tasks are ‘natural’ for women is why, just as in the MST, there seems to be more acceptance of women’s participation in the sector of autonomous education. In effect, an important proportion of education promoters are young women, many of whom are teenagers. These young women are destined to play an active, determining and protagonistic role in their commun­ ities because they have taken on the responsibility of forming the new generation of Zapatistas. I was impressed, for instance, by the attitude of self-confidence among young female education promoters compared to the shyness of the oldest students in Santa María, who were just a few years younger than the education promoters. The political process within the MST and the EZLN has transformed traditional gender roles to an important degree. The militar­ ization of the conflict with the state and the strategic deployment of the traditional gender roles of women for political purposes have led women to take their place at the forefront of the battle – confronting the police in the case of the MST and the army in the case of the EZLN. As highlighted by Craske, Radcliffe and Westwood in the case of other movements, during this period women take on important decision-making responsibilities, but with the ‘normalization’ of politics in MST settlements, women tend to return to their traditional roles. In both the MST and the EZLN, however, when women do manage to be politically active, they continue to be overrepresented in sectors corresponding to their traditional gender roles as caregivers (e.g. education and health) and under-represented in sectors corresponding to the gender roles of males (e.g. production, politics, security or the military). This representation speaks to the strength of the entrenched character of gender roles. Drawing from my fieldwork experience, women’s participation is higher in the MST when compared to the EZLN. This difference can be explained by three other factors that distinguish the MST from the EZLN: 1) the rule of parity across the organizational structure; 2) the existence

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of a separate exclusive sector for women; and 3) an organizational commitment on the part of the MST to gender issues. Autonomy: an alternative form of building people’s power To begin to grasp the significance of the development of an auto­ nomous political capacity carried out within the MST and the EZLN, it is important to refer to the lived experiences of marginalized people with the state in Latin America. People who join the MST often experience humiliation in the face of the Brazilian state. In the southern region of the country in particular, humiliation is a form of prejudice strongly based on class difference. For example, many landless people I interviewed mentioned that before entering the MST, they were not treated as citizens. They were not treated as people with rights or as people with a political voice. The lived experiences of Mexico’s poor indigenous peasants with the state structures are even more humiliating than those of the Sem Terra. For most indigenous people, the institutions of the state are alien to them. Because they often do not speak Spanish fluently, they are discriminated against, are badly treated, or are often defrauded by mestizos or indigenous intermediaries. In this context, the MST and EZLN experiences of autonomy converge: they have both emerged as responses to the exclusion from (and discontent with) state institutions. For Sem Terra and for Zapatistas, autonomy means the construction of a different kind of popular power: one grounded in participation and one capable of opposing state policies and institutions that they consider unjust, undemocratic and unrepresentative. But also, in practice, the decision-making structures of the MST and the EZLN replace the state or, at least, oblige the state to make concessions. The struggles of the MST and the EZLN are not struggles demanding that elites live up to their moral obligation of protecting their subordinates (Scott 1976: 10, 192). As we have seen, and as I will further explain in Chapter 5, both movements seek to fundamentally transform that relationship. However, these experiences of autonomy will retain a radical character only as long as they encourage and allow for the participation of their grassroots members and for the accountability of the leadership. They will weaken if they fail to maintain that focus, as is argued by Wendy Wolford (2010). Having said this, the autonomy of Zapatista communities is very

the new modern prince  |  147 different from the autonomy of the MST encampments and settle­ ments. For one thing, the autonomy of MST encampments and settlements is not asserted as such, although they do take on the function of the state in many areas. Secondly, and more importantly, Zapatista autonomy, unlike autonomy in the MST, is part of the continental indigenous struggle for the recognition of collective and cultural rights and the right to self-determination. Accordingly, for indigenous people connected to the EZLN, land claims are linked to control of a territory and its natural resources. This emphasis on territorial control constitutes a major difference between the EZLN and the MST approach and an extremely important one. Zapatista autonomy, by addressing directly the issue of control of a territory, and hence the control over natural resources by indigenous people, is much more ambitious than the de facto autonomy of the MST camps and settlements. By challenging absolute property rights, Zapatista autonomy challenges the power of the state at its very core. It challenges the state’s monopoly role over capital investment decisions. Wendy Wolford argues that ‘once MST members receive land, the government becomes their landlord, creditor, educator and overseer’ (2003b: 513). Even if the state provides most of the financial resources, contrary to Wolford’s opinion, the state is not the ultimate overseer in the MST settlement. The advantage of the MST, in comparison to many other social movements, is that it is not simply a mediator between the state and the settlers. On many issues, the MST settlers are the overseers, deciding answers to questions that run from the type of pedagogic orientation that will be followed in their schools to the type of healthcare philosophy they prefer to the type of tech­ nical assistance they want. Moreover, political decision-making in the settle­ments adopts the forms and practices established by the MST. In other words, the MST represents and articulates ‘autonomous rural communities’ that, regardless of the ‘normalization’ of political life that characterizes settlements, can foster relatively good levels of social mobilization of the militancy. If we focus on the social relations and practices within settlements, the MST’s replacement of the state is even clearer. If the state is conceptualized as an alienated form of power that is experienced as a sort of external power above the community (and this is the way many MST settlers see the state), Wolford’s statement does not

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hold. It does not hold for two reasons. First, certain expressions of the state, such as its institutions and personnel, are relatively absent from the settlements and state programmes and services are not implemented from above but have to be negotiated with the community and the movement. For instance, the settlement Fazenda Anoni in Sarandi in the state of Rio Grande do Sul fought for many years to have the state fund the construction of a primary school on the settlement premises.20 Once the school was approved, the state wanted the school to function according to the programmes and norms of the Ministry of Education, while settlers wanted to implem­ ent the programme and pedagogy that the MST has developed over its more than twenty years of struggle. The settlers also wanted the teachers to be chosen from the settlement since many of them had followed the MST training programme for educators and had many years of experience as educators during the period of encampment. The objective of the MST with respect to education, inspired by Paulo Freire’s pedagogy of the oppressed, has always been to link it with their struggle for land and to promote the self-esteem of rural people and the emergence of values such as responsibility, collectivism and solidarity. MST pedagogy thus parallels its organizational forms and practices as schools are organized as self-governing bodies where students, teachers and parents are involved in the administration of the school. In the encampment ‘Seguindo o Sonho de Rose’ in Julho de Castilho in the state of Rio Grande do Sul, I attended a meeting on a Saturday where children gathered with educators in the school assembly, discussed the problems that arose during the week, and found collective solutions. As I was told by the director of the school in assentamento Fazenda Anoni, today appropriately called Escola Chico Mendes, ‘The education that is given in the schools of Brazil is not an education that values peasants and peasant life. It is made for the city and promotes urban life.’ Hence settlers wanted to continue implementing the MST experience with education. They demanded that the settlement be given the responsibility for the development of the programme, while the state provided the funding. After many months of negotiations with the Ministry of Education, the settlers won many of their demands. Their pedagogy was accepted as long as they also covered the objectives of the ministry and a certain number of teachers were

the new modern prince  |  149 selected from the settlement. The current programme follows Paulo Freire’s educational precepts, emphasizing rural life and linking theory with practice, through, for example, the maintenance of a small plot where students grow all kinds of vegetables. The governing body of the school is made up of a series of levels, starting with the classroom núcleos to the school assembly, where students have as much representation as the other members. Students are responsible for many tasks, such as facilities cleanliness, sports and the school journal. The second challenge to Wolford’s argument above revolves around the fact that political authority in the MST lies in the hands of settlement representatives at the different levels of decision-making and leadership (núcleos, sectors, coordinating committees, etc.), which are linked to regional and national levels of the organization and not to the state. As we have seen, this authority is based on formal and informal sources of power that are often tied together through an experience of collective struggle and solidarity, from the past period of struggle for land to the present period of settlement. This local focus does not necessarily mean that these types of authority and power structures within settlements and the movement in general cannot, at some point, be experienced as external and alienated forms of power by certain settlers. What it certainly means, however, is that in some circumstances settlement structures might be even more difficult to transform than those of the state since they rely on a communitarian experience of empowerment. When this situation arises, many avenues are possible for discontent among settlers, ­ran­ging from withdrawal from and indifference to the decisionmaking process, to continued participation with the objective of changing the correlation of forces within the settlement. Burguete Cal y Mayor (1998a: 147–50) associates the idea of auton­ omy with the demand by indigenous communities for democrat­ ization at the communitarian and local level. The development of autonomy represents a measure against the usurpation of power by local and regional caciques (local bosses) and a recovery of sovereignty by the community through the recovery of certain forms of participation in the process of selection of representatives, in assemblies, councils and committees. With respect to the Mexican state, Zapatista communities are building their autonomy in ­relation

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to the ­limitations of the current political structures, which, until recently, did not include a specific and particular institutional form that would allow for the participation of indigenous peoples who demand to have certain levels of self-determination over the terri­ tories they inhabit. In this way, autonomous municipalities, as spaces of direct and effective local participation, have changed the logic of local politics and have helped to build a collective political subject, identified with its own political structures and its own political project. A communiqué from the women of the ejido Taniperlas of the autonomous municipalities of Ricardo Flores Magón, on 15 April 1998, expresses this understanding of autonomy eloquently: The autonomous municipality is not in any way arbitrary or an imposition, as some want to make it. It is the result of a broad agreement among communities that make up this Autonomous Region and that have supported our majority organizations. It does not divide or usurp authority. On the contrary, it unites us in a common effort to get out of the poverty we live in, to build our alternative for the future without the need for dependency. We ask ourselves if we need authorization or permission for this. The municipality also neither imposes nor obliges the minorities that have not agreed. (Women from the ejido Taniperlas, reported in La Jornada 1998)

In many of my conversations with Zapatistas, these types of declarations, emphasizing that decisions taken really do come out of a consensus and that all important decisions are taken in assemblies within communities, were recurrent. Similarly, during the fieldwork, I was able to observe a self-identification of the Zapatistas with EZLN political structures – in the case of the autonomous municipality of Ricardo Flores Magón – that is not commonly found among modern citizens and their country’s institutional political structures, which are increasingly seen as corrupt. This self-identification is based on the conviction by Zapatista bases de apoyo that the power that is exercised within and through the EZLN is the power of the people, the power of the poor. It is also due to the concrete results achieved by the movement, especially in the areas of education, health and conflict resolution. Regarding education, like the MST, most EZLN autonomous muni­

the new modern prince  |  151 ci­palities have developed their own pedagogy and curriculum with the help of solidarity groups, NGOs and volunteers. However, they have also had to tackle a much more basic problem. One of the main problems with official schools in indigenous communities has traditionally been the high rate of absenteeism of primary teachers from their post. According to the testimony of many Zapatistas in the community, corroborated by my own fieldwork observations of the ‘extended holidays’ taken by the teacher of the official school, state-appointed primary teachers often leave their post for lengthy periods of time. The fact that, most of the time, they are not from the community where they teach and thus are not ejidatarios seems to be a major reason for their prolonged and recurrent leaves. The very low salaries paid to rural teachers can also be a reason for their absenteeism. Whatever the past reasons for teachers leaving their schools un­ attended may be, many Zapatista communities have sought to find a solution to avoid this problem by forming their own education promoters. The Ricardo Flores Magón Autonomous Municipality decided to train community education promoters who would take charge of elementary education in their home community. A training programme of community education promoters was thus set up. National practitioners, following popular education philosophy, accompanied and assisted with the elaboration of the curriculum and the basic training of educators. The objective is to have at least one education promoter for each community. However, in trying to achieve this goal, communities face many difficulties, such as the very real subsistence needs of teachers or the need for sufficient income on the part of education promoters. Many strategies have been tried, such as providing subsistence support to the education promoter through labour service on the milpa or encouraging young women, who tend to stay in the community more than young men, to become education promoters. For example, Zapatista families had offered to help the education promoter in Santa María (who was landless but working his elderly father’s land) by collectively cultivating his father’s milpa in his place. The education promoter refused the offer, arguing that he was in need of money and had to seek employment in the city. As for cases where young women have been encouraged to become education promoters, their

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continued work in that position is likely to end once they marry. Unless the Zapatista families are able to modify the sexual division of labour within the household, women will still be the sole care providers for children and will be inclined to shift their efforts from being educators of others’ children to the care of their own. In both cases, therefore, the problem demanding resolution remains, once again, securing family subsistence and reproduction. This challenge can be met in different ways but in the long run will probably have to involve a combination of the modification of land tenure and use, the collective work of community members, the transformation of gender roles, and some kind of salary. In a conversation with the person responsible for issues of education in the community, I was told that the autonomous municipality was thinking of giving education promoters a symbolic salary. When I asked where the money would come from, the person could not or would not give me an answer. Considering the demographic pressure on land in Zapatista communities and the scarce resources with which Zapatista municipalities have to work, this challenge will not be an easy one to overcome. As for the area of health, the Zapatistas of the Ricardo Flores Magón autonomous municipality have built a clinic where they provide medical attention for the whole population, Zapatistas and non-Zapatistas, located in Arroyo Granizo in the Cañada of Santo Domingo on the northern fringe of the Lacandona jungle. It is staffed by four people: two Zapatista health promoters who coordinate the work of a network of community health promoters and are in charge of the pharmacy; one voluntary doctor who works twenty days and rests ten days; and a volunteer dentist who comes to the clinic for one month every three months. The clinic maintains a pharmacy with conventional pharmaceutical drugs that can treat the majority of the illnesses to which people are exposed in the region. At the time of the fieldwork, this clinic was about to receive equipment to conduct simple surgery.21 According to testimonies from Zapatistas, a few months after the autonomous clinic opened, local priístas negotiated with the federal government to open a clinic. Soon, the federal government started the construction of their own clinic that would rival the Zapatista one and would be located just beside it. The whole community forced the construction contractor to leave town with all his equipment.

the new modern prince  |  153 The feeling that was conveyed to us by the health promoter was that for years the community had asked for a clinic and the state had never answered their demands. Deciding to build a clinic because the Zapatistas had built their own was ‘too little, too late’ for the majority of the community. The health promoter told me, ‘It only generated frustration and anger within the community.’ After a few months, the construction of the state clinic resumed. The official clinic functioned with a resident doctor for less than a year, when the doctor left the town. At the time of the fieldwork, the clinic was abandoned and the state maintained only a casa de la salubridad (health house) staffed with a part-time nurse. One of the Zapatista health promoters told us that one of the main problems faced by official health facilities in the region was to make sure that doctors brought in from other regions would stay. In addition to building the health clinic, the Zapatista commun­ ities of the Ricardo Flores Magón autonomous municipality also took the decision to set up a community-based health programme in 1996. They sought the support of a Mexican NGO that has helped with the training of community health promoters since 1997. According to the Zapatista regional health coordinator, 120 persons started the training but in 2003 only 35 completed it. Of these 120 persons, 30 dropped out definitively. At the beginning of the programme, 15 of the members of the training group were women, but eventually only four stayed on. According to the clinic’s health promoter, the social pressure on the women from their communities was too strong and only in the case of the four who stayed was their commitment to the programme strong enough to overcome the gossip and mockery to which they were subjected by some members of their community. The challenge of keeping a health promoter in a community differs from the problems that are faced by an education promoter, since the duties of a health promoter do not keep that person away from his or her family and agricultural tasks. Health promoters still have the time to cultivate their milpa and attend to their children. Still, health promoters are like any other subsistence peasant in the community. If they have no access to land in order to survive, they might very well have to migrate either temporarily to nearby towns or states or for prolonged periods of time to central and northern Mexico or even the United States.

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To a certain extent, even non-Zapatistas have acknowledged the popular character of the EZLN structures of power and the organization’s concrete achievements. Moreover, a contest for legitimacy that pits the state structures against the Zapatista autonomous structures of power is currently under way in Chiapas. An incident between Zapatistas and priístas that took place during our fieldwork in Santa María illustrates this point. During a day when we were absent from the community, priísta authorities of the ejido accused the nine-yearold son of a Zapatista ejidatario – a representative on the JBG – of having stolen a calf. Even though the calf was found that same day in a ditch, the father was arrested and put in the ejido jail. Later that night, the father broke the wooden door of the jail and went back to his house. The next day, he went to work on his milpa and carried on with his day as usual. In retaliation for this offence, in the evening, when many men rest and socialize in the centre of the village, priístas put locks on the autonomous school, the only physical Zapatista symbol in the community. At that time, the tension that had been building for days increased, and insults and threats began to be heard from both sides. Zapatistas broke the locks, and the tension escalated until all the Zapatista families (men, women and children) gathered with wooden sticks, ready to fight the priísta authorities, who had been joined by some of their supporters. In the midst of shouts and insults, rumours started to circulate that one priísta was armed with a rifle and was ready to kill the accused Zapatista and that other priístas were going to burn down the school. Luckily, people on both sides calmed down, priístas promised to take the issue to the state authorities, and most of the people ended up going back to their homes. The Zapatistas did not see the conflict ending there, however. Our Zapatista neighbour stayed up that night guarding our cabaña and the school, after returning the machete he had borrowed from me that day and asking me to keep it close to me and to secure the door of the cabaña. The following days were very tense, all kinds of rumours flew about, and the representative on the JBG received death threats. After the conflict, people from both sides raised the possibility that a commission from the autonomous municipality or the JBG might come to try to settle the dispute. What was surprising, though, was that neither the Zapatistas nor the priístas took the idea that the

the new modern prince  |  155 EZLN commission would rule in favour of the Zapatistas for granted. On the contrary, the Zapatistas made a real effort to document the incident, asking my wife and me to help them write a report. As for the priístas, they threatened not to wait for the commission to come but to go directly instead to the autonomous council of the autonomous municipality to present their case and seek punishment for the Zapatistas. The priístas then abandoned the idea, thinking that, since we were foreigners, we had filmed or photographed the whole event, in which case their culpability would be revealed. According to what we could gather from conversations with Zapa­ tistas during our fieldwork, the experience of the JBG was at the time still under evaluation, and it was not guaranteed that it would continue. This new experience of autonomy that the JBG represented, which was further removed from the communities, had to demonstrate to the Zapatista bases de apoyo that the powers of the JBG do not infringe upon or reduce the level of participation in communities and municipalities. Today they are fully accepted by the communities. Experiences of autonomy have been and will be crucial for the development of zapatismo. Such experiences are the Zapatistas’ most tangible result. These experiences are also crucial because, after the clandestine experience of the guerrillas, they represent a second laboratory for the construction of popular power by the EZLN as an organization. They are perhaps even more important than the experiences during the clandestine period of the EZLN because they are public experiments that are confronting traditional and official structures of power. Since 1994, contrary to what had happened before, this struggle for recognition and legitimacy among Zapatista and non-Zapatista communities has been carried out relatively openly. An exhaustive evaluation of the experiences of Zapatista autonomy is very difficult if not impossible to carry out because of the difficulties of doing research in an environment as conflictive and secretive as the one that exists in Zapatista territories. The two developments described above suggest, though, that, considering the circumstances, the results are impressive. First, the movement has expanded outside its region of origin and has now a significant presence in the northern, highlands, and frontier regions of Chiapas. In this latter region, the EZLN has even made headway in municipalities where the indigenous caciques

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linked to the PRI were dominant. The appearance of the EZLN in these regions has generated violent reactions from these indigenous elites, as happened in the case of Zinacantan near San Cristóbal de las Casas (Hernández Navarro 2004). Secondly, the EZLN has been able to develop some institutionalization, with an internal division of labour, and a geographic and political allocation of authority. It has been able to provide crucial services such as health and education and seems to be gaining legitimacy within the regions where it has a presence. For the Zapatistas, the autonomous communities and municipal­ ities and the JBG are also clearly socially and racially differentiated spaces. They represent the political decision-making bodies of the poor and indigenous people. From the perspective of indigenous rights, as I have argued in the previous chapter, these experiences of autonomy fall clearly under the umbrella of the continental ­struggle to reclaim rights to self-determination and self-government by indigenous people (Assies 2000). For the indigenous Zapatistas, this struggle means the end of their political subordination and the revalorization of indigenous culture and practices. However, these changes do not constitute the sole meaning of autonomy. For Zapa­ tistas, from the very beginning the idea of autonomy meant the construction of a structure of self-government within civil society that could be a first step in what Subcomandante Marcos called the ‘autonomization of civil society’ (EZLN 1997b: 147–8). By this idea of ‘autonomization of civil society’, Zapatistas were referring to the creation and development of forms of popular power apart from and alternative to the state, to the creation and development of structures of popular sovereignty organized democratically for and by the poor and clearly identified with an anti-neoliberal revolutionary project. The limitations to the development of Zapatista autonomy, due to the fragmentation of part of its social base and the relative loss of visibility of the EZLN since 2000, can be explained, as I will show in Chapter 5, by the EZLN’s inability or unwillingness to establish lasting alliances with other local peasant and indigenous organizations, national movements and political parties, as well as by its decision of not collaborating with the state. In this chapter, we have seen that the MST and the EZLN perform the functions that Antonio Gramsci attributed to the political party.

the new modern prince  |  157 They politicize, organize and train their membership to acquire the capacity to be ‘organic intellectuals’ capable of self-governement. These movements are able to do this because one of the major strengths rests on the fact that they control real spatially delimited rural communities. In the case of the MST, encampamentos are created from scratch before they become assentamentos, while in the case of the EZLN their inhabitants had to be convinced to join the organization. However, in both cases the MST and the EZLN establish autonomous structures of popular power that facilitate consciousness-raising and the politicization of the membership. They achieve this because they are organized around a series of assemblies and on the basis of rotating leaderships that distri­bute representation responsibilities among several individuals and decision-making bodies across the community. Women have had to struggle within the organizations to be recognized as equals and be able to actively participate, and within their household to modify the sexual division of labour. While the most dangerous moments of the struggle for land substantially modify traditional gender relations, the normalization of politics favours the return to traditional gender roles in Brazil as well as in Chiapas. However, the MST has established a principle of parity in all representative bodies of the organization, creating a women’s sector within the movement, and showing greater commitment to the principle of gender equality, which has produced better results than shown by the EZLN. These experiences of exercise of power by women and men are the basis of the autonomy and mobilization capacity of the MST and the EZLN that allows them to confront, challenge or negotiate with the state. In many areas, the movements also take on the functions of the state. However, in the case of the EZLN, this autonomy is also embedded in a struggle for decolonization and for self-determination rooted in an indigenous nationalism. The development alternatives presented by the MST and the EZLN do not rest only on the construction of a different kind of polity than the one that is at the root of representative liberal democracy. They are also based on the existence, maintenance and possible development of an alternative logic of production oriented towards self-reliance and the satisfaction of human needs. I will explore some of the features of this logic of production in the next chapter.

4  |  RESISTANCE, ALTERNATIVE DEVELOPMENT AND THE MARKET

The previous presentation of how Antonio Gramsci sees the role of the Modern Prince and the role of the MST and the EZLN could give the impression that all that is needed for the development of an altern­ative to neoliberalism is for a movement to recruit individuals and establish the conditions for their politicization and empowerment. This is, however, only one aspect of the struggle. The other aspect, from which the process of politicization and empowerment cannot be separated, is made up of the decisions that the members of these movements have taken to ensure their families’ and communities’ well-being. So having underlined the importance of the MST and the EZLN as movements organized around autonomous commun­ities, I will now turn to how they construct their autonomy against the market. I will focus on the way these different types of peasant households are integrated into the market, organize agricultural production and social reproduction. The way that these are organized allows the members of these movements to resist neoliberalism, by partially delinking them from, or at least mitigating the effects of, the market. I will also evaluate the potential of the forms of agricultural production adopted by members of the MST and the EZLN to generate non-capitalist social relations of production from the existence, maintenance and development of an alternative logic of production and reproduction that is based on subsistence, self-reliance and the search for equality. With regard to agricultural production and the well-being of their communities, members of the MST and the EZLN share the same objectives of food self-sufficiency and community self-reliance. They share these objectives because they organize production around the peasant family unit, a unit which has specific characteristics that allow the communities to consider certain options that other direct producers cannot. However, the ways in which these objectives are met differ greatly in the case of the MST settlers and the Zapatistas

resistance, alternative development  |  159 because their respective development alternatives are embedded in radically different rural and cultural contexts. Thus, my argument in this chapter challenges the idea that there is a universal ‘peasant rationality or culture’ or that everywhere peasants per se are – or are not – market-oriented. My position is that peasants will be marketoriented when they are obliged to enter market relations in order to provide for their families; if this social imperative does not exist, they will not be so oriented. Moreover, as I will demonstrate, and as has been noted by Van der Ploeg (2010: 9–11), it is even possible for peasants to seek to avoid market relations after having experienced years of involvement in the market, either as simple commodity producers or wage labourers. A related argument in this chapter is that, because of the process of class and ethnic consciousness that takes place at the level of the community and at the regional level, peasant agricultural production can form the basis for a non-capitalist development alternative. This possibility, however, does not rest on an inherent cultural or behavioural characteristic of the peasantry. The emergence of noncapitalist development alternatives is – or will be – the result of a process of class formation which combines ideological, political and cultural processes with the creation or reinforcement of social relations of production that privilege the objectives of subsistence, self-reliance and equality over accumulation. The possibility of generating non-capitalist development alternatives rests, however, on a characteristic that distinguishes peasant households from other households: their direct access to the means of production and subsistence, and thus their ability to avoid the market to satisfy at least some of their needs, such as their need for food or labour. How this characteristic is conceived and articulated to other aspects of the development alternatives offered by the MST and the EZLN indicates the extent to which their development alternatives can be considered non-capitalist. In order to explore different aspects of capitalist social relations appropriately enough to be in a position to identify non-capitalist practices, it is necessary to adopt a complex conception of capitalist relations. In addition, as is the case throughout Latin America, because of the diversity of the Brazilian and Mexican countryside, where a variety of capitalist and non-capitalist forms of production

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exist alongside each other, it is necessary to bring together ­studies that have looked at different types of producers. Drawing on the work of Harriet Friedmann, Armando Bartra, Frans Papma and ­others, I will analyse the relations of production and reproduction of MST settlers and Zapatista peasants. To do so, I will pay particular attention to different processes that are specific to capitalism, such as commodity production, monetization, competition and commodity fetishism, which I have presented in Chapter 1. I will also look at gendered aspects of the internal relations of production in the peasant household, which more often than not subordinate women. My analysis of the development alternative of the MST and the EZLN will focus on three aspects of agricultural production: 1) land property and land tenure issues; 2) the focus and internal organ­ ization of production; and 3) the types of relations producers have with the market and the practices they have elaborated to avoid or mitigate the negative effects of the market. Peasant agriculture: moral economy, micro-capitalism or noncapitalist? Many authors have tried to delineate the contours of peasant interests, peasant rationality and peasant culture. Some authors have done so to either justify or reject the possible inclination of peasants towards non-capitalist forms of production and socialism. In parallel, other authors have studied peasant societies to justify or reject the integration of peasants into the market. The first type of debate is more prevalent in Marxist scholarship while the second predominates in scholarship that ponders the existence (or not) of a ‘moral economy’ of peasants that is opposed to the logic of the market. James Scott’s The Moral Economy of the Peasant (1976) has now become a classic in the field of peasant studies. Scott’s main argument, that peasant attitudes and politics are organized around a subsistence ethics, has been taken up and critiqued by numerous authors. Although Scott acknowledges communal practices of reciprocity, he approaches peasant economic rationality through the lens of a market analogy. According to this approach, peasants assess their productive options in terms of risk-taking and risk avoidance. Scott argues that ‘the cultivator prefers to minimize the ­probability

resistance, alternative development  |  161 of having a disaster rather than maximizing his average return’ (ibid.: 18). He contends that peasants accord special value to their survival and the maintenance of their position, prefer to cultivate subsistence crops over cash crops, and resist innovation. All these features, attitudes and practices of peasants are organized around, and inform, what Scott calls the ‘safety-first principle’. However, for Scott, peasants are not completely averse to taking risks, and might very well take risks when their conditions and circumstances allow for it – for example, when the number of family dependants is lower. Scott also clarified that the safety-first principle, while it applied fully to poor and, to a great extent, middle-income peasants, did not apply to rich peasants, who hired labour, possessed large properties and accumulated savings. Thus, Scott’s underlying argument is that if poor and middle-income peasant families had their subsistence secured, they would engage in risk-taking. Risk-taking to improve production, which for Scott most of the time is equivalent to production for the market, was seen by him as inherent to peasant production. Scott highlighted the importance of the village as a key arena of the subsistence ethic of peasants because it is through the shared values and the patterns of social control and reciprocity within the village that the subsistence ethic is enforced collectively. The subsistence ethic constrains the power and wealth of the richer families of a village by generating relationships of patronage and reciprocity that link rich families with poorer ones. However, Scott argued that the village is not radically egalitarian but rather conservative, because: The principle which appears to unify a wide array of behavior is this: ‘All village families will be guaranteed a minimal subsistence niche insofar as the resources controlled by villagers make this possible.’ Village egalitarianism in this sense is conservative not radical; it claims that all should have a place, a living, not that all should be equal. (Ibid.: 40)

Scott’s argument, presented in terms of peasant attitudes towards market risk-taking, reminds us of studies that were preoccupied with the market responsiveness of peasants conducted decades earlier (Bryceson 2000a: 25). However, authors who argued that peasants were as market-oriented as any attacked Scott’s work, particularly his safety-first argument and his emphasis on reciprocity. Samuel Popkin,

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for instance, argued that peasants are not risk avoiders and that they ‘are continuously striving not merely to protect but to raise their subsistence level through long- and short-term investments, both public and private’ (Popkin 1979: 4). Hence, villages are not egalit­ arian but rife with conflicts because peasants individually evaluate market possibilities and patron–client relationships, and they trade off between collective and individual interests (ibid.: 18). Contrasting his views with those of moral economists, Popkin offered his ‘political economy approach’, which sought to explain the rational decisions of individual peasants. Adopting a rational choice perspective which still inspires most mainstream liberal economics, Popkin contended that peasants analysed their environment and made their decisions in terms of costs and benefits (ibid.: 244–5). For Popkin and other liberal economists, peasants are thus micro-capitalists and relations within the village are similar to market relations. No matter how problematic, not least because it universalizes a particular and abstract form of rationality to all human relations, Popkin’s contribution to the study of peasant societies re-emphasized internal rivalries within peasant communities – although many Marxists, notably Lenin, had long underlined class differentiation among peasant communities. Beyond the important differences between their approaches, in essence Scott and Popkin follow a Weberian conception of capitalism (Weber 1958) in which capitalist relations stem from particular cultural or personal inclinations more than from specific conditions which force peasants to engage in capitalist market relations, as I have argued following Brenner and Wood. However, Scott, by drawing on Polanyi and looking at collective practices that impose moral and political limits on exploitation, departs from the classic liberal understanding of market rationality. Scott thus highlights important processes that structure peasant consciousness and politics. As I have argued in Chapter 2, these processes are relevant to understanding the struggles of the MST and the EZLN. Nonetheless, Scott sees ­peasant culture and peasant individual economic rationality as somewhat separate phenomena. Moreover, Scott does not provide many insights into the processes and dynamics that lead to the development of capitalist social relations. As I have highlighted in Chapter 2, because of the influence of structural Marxism, in order to evaluate the ‘revolutionary potential

resistance, alternative development  |  163 of peasants’ it was first necessary to establish the class position of different rural producers. Then, from this class position within  the sphere of production strictly conceived, the researcher deduced the  class interest of each particular sector of the peasantry and hence its inclination or not towards socialism (Otero 1999: 11). This was one of the reasons why the debate around the proletarian or peasant character of smallholders was so central to rural studies in Latin America and elsewhere in the Third World in the 1970s and 1980s. For orthodox Marxists who dominated the field, it was assumed that if proletarianization of direct producers was the main tendency, struggles around wages and working conditions would become paramount. In turn, these struggles would facilitate an alliance between rural proletarians and the urban working class that, under the right leadership, could lead to a socialist revolution. However, if the struggle to remain peasants was the dominant trend in the countryside, the peasantry, wanting to defend its right to property, would tend to side with the bourgeoisie against socialist revolution. The main difficulty that Marxist scholars have had with the social category ‘peasant’ has to do with the fact that the peasant producer combines ‘in one person or family group the contradictory interest of the two predominant classes of capitalism’ (Friedmann 1986b: 188). Because peasants own or have possession of the means of production, i.e. land, their interests are thus analogous to that of capitalists. Simultaneously, because peasants produce mainly with their own family labour, their interests are also similar to those of workers. If, on top of reducing class consciousness and interest to class position, we look at peasant production simply through assumptions relating to other groups, we become incapable of approaching the specificities of peasant production. To approach the specificity of family agricultural enterprise in developed industrialized countries, Harriet Friedmann developed the concept of ‘simple commodity production’ (1980, 1986a, 1986b) and distinguished it from peasant production in the Third World. In an agricultural family enterprise, production is organized through kinship, a division of labour based on gender and age, and the unit combines property ownership with labour power (1986a: 45). More importantly, simple commodity production ‘refers to the contradictory unity of property and labour in an economy characterized by

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the general circulation of commodities (including, of course, labour power and rights to land)’ (ibid.: 53). Friedmann’s emphasis on the insertion of simple commodity producers into an economy characterized by the circulation of commodities is extremely important because it implies a much broader conception of capitalist relations than the simple fact of selling products on the market which has become dominant in many academic circles. Here lies the major difference between simple commodity producers in developed industrial societies and peasant producers in the Third World. For Friedmann: Motivational or behavioural differences between peasants and simple commodity producers (farmers), are not due to inherent rationality of each type of producer. […] the more commercial behaviour of simple commodity producer relative to peasants stems not from motivational differences, but from the individualisation of the household which accompanies commoditisation, and the resulting transformation of communal and particularistic relations, both horizontal and vertical, into competitive and universalistic ones. (Friedmann 1980: 174)

Henry Bernstein has contested Friedmann’s distinction between simple commodity producers and peasant producers. He argues that Friedmann’s view, like that of others who claim the specificity of household production, is based on ‘the notion of the intrinsically non-capitalist nature of peasant farming in terms of its social basis, its “internal relations” and/or its “subsistence logic”’ (Bernstein 1994: 54). Extending his critique to other approaches, Bernstein rejects the argument that suggests that even if they are integrated into capitalist development, peasants are not constituted through cap­ it­alist relations of production (ibid.: 54). For Bernstein the theoret­ ical alternative is to be found in the concept of ‘petty commodity production’, which brings together peasants in the Third World and family farmers in industrialized capitalist countries (Bernstein 2000: 27). For Bernstein, ‘what differentiates the “peasant” of the South and the “family farmers” of the North theoretically then, might not be any intrinsic “logic” of their forms of production or economic calculation (e.g. “subsistence” and “commercial”) but how they are located in the international division of labour of imperialism and its

resistance, alternative development  |  165 mutation’ (ibid.: 27). According to Bernstein, Friedmann’s distinction does not hold because most peasants in the Third World, like their family farmer counterparts in the West, ‘are unable to reproduce themselves outside the relations and processes of capitalist commodity production’ (ibid.: 29), and capitalist commodity production has become ‘the conditions of existence of peasant farming and are internalized in its organization and activity’ (ibid.: 29). Hence, peasant production has gone through a process of commodification that has destroyed non-capitalist practices. To ‘demystify the notion of subsistence production by peasants [sic]’, Bernstein brings up two points. First, he contends that ‘when commodity relations and circuits become internalized in conditions of peasant existence, the spaces and forms of “subsistence” production (for own consumption) are determined by specific modes of insertion in commodity economy (agricultural or non-agricultural)’ (ibid.: 47). Secondly, he points out that ‘the conditions of “subsistence” production are themselves often commoditized, e.g., the purchase of inputs and labour hiring to cultivate food staples for one’s own consumption, although the extent of this varies across different classes of peasants’ (ibid.: 47). Bernstein adds that ‘an important stage of commodification is reached when farmers have to purchase means of production such as tools, seeds and fertilizers, as commodities, rather than produce them themselves’ (Bernstein 1994: 58). Although commodification of peasant production and life is a major process undermining peasant production, my approach to peasant production is closer to Friedmann’s approach than Bernstein’s. First, in the case that I study in this book, the ‘subsistence logic’ is not necessarily inherent to peasant production. It arises, as a preoccupation, from the social and cultural context in which certain  peasants live. For instance, subsistence is a focus for indigenous peasants in Chiapas because the indigenous approach to production (emphasizing the production of use-value), the conditions of production (limited land, dependence on climatic conditions) and the socio-economic context (absence of employment alternatives, absence of the imperative of competition) have all made it a focus and priority of peasants. Social circumstance and conditions of production also explain the subsistence focus in Brazil. However, in the case of Brazil,

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s­ ubsistence is a focus of production mainly because of the socioeconomic context. Before conquering land, settlers have experienced in their daily lives, as rural workers or shanty-town dwellers, years of social marginalization during which subsistence was a constant struggle. After they become settlers, subsistence remains a focus because market conditions do not allow them to compete with more productive farmers. More importantly, MST settlers are not subject to the full imperative of competition because their land is, most of the time, not commodified. In contrast to capitalist farmers, they are not faced with the possibility of going bankrupt and losing their land because of market failure.1 Secondly, the fact that peasants are consumers of certain basic consumption goods or buy agricultural inputs (tools, fertilizer, pesticides, etc.) does not mean that their internal relations of production, or even their relations with the market, take on a capitalist form. As we have seen in Chapter 1, the separation of the labourer from the means of production and the establishment of absolute private property rights are fundamental conditions for the development of capitalism. The imperative to compete, which stems from the market dependence of producers, is another fundamental prerequisite of the development of capitalist relations of production. Marx, in Volume 3 of Capital, particularly in his exposition of the dynamic generated among capitalists by the fall of the rate of profit (1991: ch. 10), showed how competition between capitalists is at the centre of capitalist accumulation, technical innovation and labour productivity. Identifying competition as a major characteristic of capitalist relations of production, Harriet Friedmann contends that competition is another fundamental mechanism that distinguishes simple commodity producers from peasants. Simple commodity producers, in contrast to peasants, depend on the market for their social reproduction. Hence, Friedmann argues that: Competition enforces an adaptive strategy on surviving producers. This involves attempts to lower costs, to invest in larger scale production when necessary, to save from past income in anticipation of required investment (often incorrectly called ‘accumulation’), and over time to develop the productive forces and to increase the proportion of costs devoted to renewal of means of production

resistance, alternative development  |  167 relative to those devoted to renewal of means of subsistence of the household. (Friedmann 1980: 164)

In contrast, peasants are not subject to competition because of their limited interaction with the market and their subsistence focus: While some commodity production is often part of the defin­ ition of the peasantry, competition does not exclusively or even principally define the relation of peasants to each other or to outsiders. Peasant households have important communal relations, in­cluding local exchange of products and reciprocal sharing of labour. For this reason, the village is typically the immediate arena of reproduction. Even asymmetrical relations, such as credit and tenancy, are with particular persons, not banks or corporations, and are not governed by market prices … Peasant households typically do not relate to product markets individually and competitively. (Ibid.: 165)

Friedmann’s approach to peasant production emphasizes the need to analyse the character and the logic of the concrete social relations between peasant households and the different institutions that impinge on their world. Friedmann has emphasized also the need to analyse internal relations of production. To try to elaborate a theoretical model that could help to grasp the dynamic of peasant production in Mexico, Armando Bartra (1982, 2006) has elaborated the concept of the ‘unidad socio-económica campesina’ (the socio-economic peasant unit). Following Chayanov (1966), Bartra highlights three characteristics of the socio-economic peasant unit: 1) it is at the same time a production and consumption unit; 2) labour utilized within the unit does not represent the consumption of a commodity; 3)  labour, oriented at satisfying the needs of the unit, is the organizing element of production (Bartra 1982: 27). Hence, for the peasant, the consumption needs of the family unit determine directly his or her activity as a producer (ibid.: 28). It is not market signals which determine peasant production. Because market signals do not determine peasant production, peasant production does not internalize capitalist profit-maximizing logic. However, ­peasant units are also commodity-producing units, either through the sale of surplus food production or through the production of cash

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crops on a portion of their plot of land. However, even if an important part of peasant production can be transformed into a commodity, it is not produced through commodities (ibid.: 30). Actually, it could be said, agricultural products are not even produced as a commodity. Moreover, the peasant unit’s interaction with the market does not follow strictly capitalist rules. According to Bartra, the peasant market does not have the same characteristics as the capitalist market. It operates through ‘personal decisions between producers rather than through the automatic operation of the market’ (ibid.: 28). Here, Bartra falls back on Marx’s distinction between ‘use-value’ and ‘exchange-value’ to further explain this particularity of peasant markets. The peasant produces use-values that he or she transforms into commodities in order to acquire money with which to acquire other use-values. Within this context, money is not capital; it is simply a means of exchange. Hence, even the monetary surplus sometimes generated by peasant units should not be considered as capital accumulation. It is often the case that ‘a relatively privileged situation in terms of agricultural productivity simply translates into a superior level of consumption for the family and into a relatively minor investment in the family labour force’ (ibid.: 52). This is the case because peasants are not subject to the imperative to compete, since their production is neither fully market dependent nor commodified. Armando Bartra’s theorization, by focusing mainly on the peasant unit rather than on the overarching social formation, might give the impression that peasant units are much more autonomous than they really are. Bartra does not deny, however, that peasants are also subject to various forms of exploitation in their relationship with the overarching social formation. Their access to land is often not sufficient to meet their vital minimum needs, and they are thus obliged to enter the capitalist market. Hence they are subject to exploitation through the labour market, as well as to exploitation through the mechanism of unequal exchange in the market of commodities. What Bartra’s model allows me to underline, though, is that peasants, if they maintain their access to land and are able to resist full commodification, can enjoy more subsistence options than rural proletarians, urban workers or shanty-town dwellers. That said, when peasant production is insufficient to meet the needs of the

resistance, alternative development  |  169 family unit and the household thus has to go through the market to satisfy its needs, monetization can erode the alternatives open to peasant families and lead to further commodification. Starting from the same objective that Bartra started from in the case of Mexico, Frans Papma, also inspired by Chayanov, argues that peasant production in southern Brazil is not fully capitalist and that it follows particular norms and practices that are not fully commoditized. To grasp the dynamic of peasant production in Brazil, Papma has elaborated the notion that peasant production is organized around the household estate (1992). The household estate refers to ‘all property held in common within households, and to the specific duties of household members to contribute to these common possessions and the right to draw from it’ (ibid.: 5). The household estate is thus a family institution to which every member contributes, either with his or her labour on the estate or his or her income outside of it. Somewhat akin to what happens within Bartra’s socio-economic peasant unit, the management of family unpaid labour to attain satisfying levels of consumption is one of the most important goals of the Brazilian household estate. However, since in southern Brazil peasant households are integrated into the market, another important preoccupation of the head of the estate is to administer the inflow of monetary income from agricultural production and/or income from the different members of the estate. Hence, the contribution to the estate can be in the form of either unpaid labour or monetary income. Hence, in contrast to the Mexican socio-economic peasant unit depicted by Bartra, use-values and exchange-values coexist to a much greater extent in the Brazilian household estate. In accordance with Chayanovian demographic argument, conflict within the household estate arises mainly when children become adults and want to form their own families. The right to land inheritance follows the tradition of minorat, whereby parents, at an elderly age, pass on their land to their youngest son (ibid.: 27). However, all the other children are presented with a share of the estate (a certain amount of land, heads of cattle, other animals, pieces of furniture, etc.) as wedding gifts when they marry (ibid.: 30). Since land purchase is most of the time not an option open to peasants, inheritance and distribution of the estate assets become very contentious issues that can threaten the continuity of the estate. Because monetization is

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an important aspect of the relationships within the household, the household estate is under threat of gradual commodification not only from the outside but also from the inside, i.e. by the older children’s claims on the estate which are often made in monetary terms. For Papma, then, peasant households are ‘those in which the contesting of the estate (that is, old-age care and intergenerational devolution of land) interferes with productive practices’ (ibid.: 200). This interference also happens in the case of farmers, but because they have the ability to buy land, it does not have the impact that it has in peasant families. Papma’s work on family farming represents an important contribution to the study of smallholder or peasant production in Brazil because it manages to point to important dynamics that are internal to peasant families. Conceptually, these dynamics place these Brazilian families between Friedmann’s small commodity producers and Bartra’s peasant units. However, since class is not simply an economic category, but rather one that is constructed politically, it still makes sense to speak of Brazilian small-scale family producers, especially those who join the MST, as peasants. The meaning of land and nature Up to now, I have focused mainly on how certain authors conceptualize peasant rationality and peasant production. However, the underlying discussion revolves around the capital/labour dialectic, i.e. whether peasant production is market dependent or not, and whether it is structured by capital or by labour needs. What is missing is the role that land, and nature in general, plays in the process of agricultural production. More particularly, what is missing is an interpretation of the particular meaning that different rural producers give to land. After all, land is the key element in the struggle of the Sem Terra and the Zapatistas, and the commodification of land is a major threat to the survival of simple commodity producers and peasants. A study of the agricultural practices of the MST and the EZLN would not be complete without an analysis of the particular ways their members relate to land and the consequences that this relationship can have for their agricultural practices. As already mentioned in Chapter 1, the development of capitalism is accompanied by the social practice that Marx called commodity

resistance, alternative development  |  171 fetishism. The result of the fetishization process within capitalism is that social relations between human beings become mediated through commodities, of which money is the ultimate form. Through commodity fetishism, value is assigned to objects on the basis of the quantity of money-value they represent more than the concrete use they may have for people. Land, like any other ‘object’ that is transformed into a commodity, thus also acquires the form of an object containing intrinsic value that can be traded on the markert and be valued simply for that purpose. In itself, the phenomenon of fetishism is, of course, not peculiar to capitalist societies. The existence of fetishes, religious or otherwise, has been studied in many societies. Many anthropologists (Godelier 1974; Taussig 1980; Bonfil Batalla 1994; Lenkersdorf 1996) have used Marxian categories to analyse how non-capitalist peasant societies give meaning to and establish limits on the interactions between human beings and nature. They have also studied how these ­societies live through, and make sense of, the social transformations that accompany the expansion of capitalism. In general, these authors highlight the point that the relationship of non-capitalist peasants with land is not analogous to a relationship with just any commodity, and they stress that land in these contexts is seen more in terms of use-value than of exchange-value. In the case of indigenous people, land is also imbued with religious meaning. Hence peasants also fetishize land, but not necessarily as a source of value. Some peasants understand land rather as a source of life itself. Hence, as will be shown, it makes a difference whether peasants view land as a means to produce food (use-value) or as a commodity that is a source of value which can, therefore, be bought and sold (exchange-value). The analysis of the agricultural production practices of MST and EZLN members will begin by examining land tenure and the meaning given to land, because they are the foundations of the forms of production and the source of the non-capitalist nature of the social relations of production. The movements’ position on property and land tenure In Chapter 2, I showed that Sem Terra and Zapatistas challenge private ownership of land because they consider land concentration illegitimate and unjust when it impedes peasant families from having

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access to a decent and dignified livelihood. But how do individual members of the MST and the EZLN see their own rights over a speci­ fic plot of land? Do they see their rights to land in terms of rights over private property? Do they consider land a commodity? Is their land, in whatever form they possess it, subject to commodification? In Brazil, during a collective discussion with acampados and acampadas in acampamento Nova Conquista in the municipality of Andradina in the state of São Paulo, in order to justify the occupation of a large tract of private property, landless women and men expressed the following sentiments: ‘Land is for everyone, not only for a few’; ‘Some have a lot, many don’t have anything’; and ‘Brazil has a lot of land, it has land for everyone’. Clearly, throughout the Sem Terra movement, one of the justifications for occupying a large private property was that land should be considered a common good. When asked about the property rights of the fazendero (large capitalist farmer) whose property was being expropriated for distribution, Vanesa, a settler in assentamento Belo Monte in the municipality of Andradina in the state of São Paulo, answered by explaining that fazenderos were compensated for their expropriated land, that ‘they do not lose everything, the government pays for their land’. Vanesa’s clarification that fazenderos are compensated for the expropriation of their land sounds somewhat apologetic and suggests a contradiction with regard to private ownership of land. In the first instance, the MST struggle for land challenges the concept of land as private property. But in the second instance, it re-creates the concept of land as private property in the form of the individual settler’s small plot. The question that arises is this: apart from its size, is the individual settler’s form of property in any way different from that of the land owned by the fazendero? If we consider land tenure in a strictly legal sense, the answer to this question varies according to the circumstances and choices that settlers make as to the organization of their settlement. MST settlers have three basic choices when it comes to land tenure: 1) family possession under a ‘use concession title’ granted by the state; 2) family ownership through a private property title; and 3) collective ownership through a collective cooperative, organized in the form of a kibbutz, for example. Obviously, land tenure under the third (collective ownership) choice is drastically different from land tenure under

resistance, alternative development  |  173 the second (private property) choice. However, land tenure under the first (family possession) or second (private property) choices legally does not differ that much from the land tenure known to fazenderos. Today, the most common pattern of land tenure for settlers is a combination of the family possession and private property options. Land is granted by INCRA first as a ‘use concession’ (título de concesão de uso) for ten years, at which point this title can be reconfirmed or transformed into a private property title. This practice was adopted after INCRA realized that handing out private property rights was not allowing settlers to retain ownership of their plots. Indeed, at the beginning of the 1980s, as in the cases of Fazenda Primavera in the municipality of Andradina in the state of São Paulo and Fazenda Macali in the municipality of Ronda Alta in the state of Rio Grande do Sul, INCRA gave out private property titles. This facilitated practices of selling off plots or renting them out to third parties and did not impede the general process of land concentration occurring throughout Brazil. For example, in 2003, in Fazenda Macali I, out of the 70 original settler families in 1981, only 9 remained. In Fazenda Macali II, of the 38 original families, only 13 remained. Of 25 plots sold, only 6 were occupied by their owners, while the 19 remaining plots were the property of absentee farmers.2 The property titles, by commercializing the right to land in the settlements, impeded access to land for landless families in need of land. In contrast, in the settlements where land has been distributed through usufruct titles after these initial experiments of settlements, the proportion of families that have exchanged or illegally sold their plots is much lower. According to members of the MST, this proportion does not exceed 10 per cent of the settlers. INCRA and the MST have realized the importance of impeding land concentration in the settlements and of maintaining the settlements so that they are open to the arrival of new landless families. Under the law, there can be no exchange of plots with someone who already owns land. Illegal land transactions still occur, but they remain exceptional cases. The INCRA and the MST agreed to favour usufruct titles over property titles. With respect to credit, for the MST usufruct titles are even more convenient than property titles because they protect settlers from the possibility of losing their land in case of debt problems. In contrast, INCRA’s policy of offering to replace settlers’ usufruct

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titles with property titles after ten years is a recent policy directed at the gradual privatization of land rights. Considering the advantages of usufruct rights, the MST has decided to oppose the government’s latest titling policy, seeing it as a way for the state to avoid its res­ ponsibility of assisting settlers (CONCRAB 1998). Rosevaldo, from assentamento Belo Monte in the municipality of Andradina of the state of São Paulo, told me that the MST leadership would prefer that land be granted as a ‘real use concession’ so that land is not turned into a commodity, but all settlers would have the right to choose the kind of tenure they want, with many opting for the private property title. Ultimately, since it does not grant land titles, the MST leadership can only recommend what it sees as most appropriate for its membership. With regard to land tenure, the leadership cannot intervene between settlers and the state any more strongly than that. The strength of the role that the organization plays in land tenure decisions is, as we will see, one important aspect in which the EZLN distinguishes itself from the MST. In Chapter 3, I showed that with regard to its form of decisionmaking, the EZLN revived the ejido model of organizing communities. Similarly, for its land tenure model, the EZLN has revived the ejido itself, that is the land tenure system inherited from the Mexican agrarian reform, and for the most part has tried not to disturb the already existing patterns of land tenure within communities. The EZLN has nevertheless returned to the original letter of the agrarian reform proposed by Emiliano Zapata during the Mexican revolution. Indeed, in its Revolutionary Agrarian Law, published in a pamphet (‘El despertador mexicano’) that circulates among indigenous communities to publicize all revolutionary measures, the EZLN states: Third. All tracts of land that are more than 100 hectares of poor quality and 50 hectares of good quality will be subject to revolutionary agrarian action. From landowners whose properties exceed the aforementioned limits, from them the excess land will be taken away, and they will remain with the minimum allowed, so that they can stay as small landowners or join the peasant movement of cooperatives, peasant societies, or landed communal associations. Fourth. [Existing] communal lands, ejido lands, and popular

resistance, alternative development  |  175 cooperatives’ lands, although they exceed the limits mentioned in this law’s third article, will not be subject to agrarian action. (Womack 1999: 253)

Hence, although the Zapatista revolutionary agrarian law threatens even relatively small property, the EZLN, in order not to clash with traditional practices and privileges, has decided not to challenge the ejido. This is also because the ejido individual plot is not widely seen or considered as private property since it cannot be sold or offered as collateral for loans.3 In Santa María, distribution of land had been carried out under government supervision when the ejido was created in the late 1970s. It was carried out on the basis of customary law and ejido law, as well as internal discussions. At the moment of allocating the plots, in order not to cause prejudice to any family, land was not distributed in unitary tracts but rather as various tracts located across the ejido so that each ejidatario would have land of different fertility, land irrigated by the river, and mountain land. At the time of the fieldwork, I was told that each ejidatario still has eight hectares of land distributed across the ejido. This arrangement did not change with the affiliation of most families of the community to the EZLN in 1994, although threats of eviction and land confiscation started in 1998 when some priísta families wanted to get their hands on the land of the remaining Zapatista families. The ejido form of property is one of the building blocks of the Zapatista agrarian law. Hence Zapatista communities, like many other indigenous communities in southern Mexico (Moguel Viveros and Parra Vázquez 1998), have opposed the land-titling programme proposed by the federal state called PROCEDE (Programa de Certificación de Derechos Ejidales, Programme of Certification of Ejido Rights). This is how a Zapatista explained how he saw the real objective of PROCEDE: We have tried to convince the community, even priístas, not to accept PROCAMPO or PROCEDE because the money can be used to steal the land. One year the government gives you or lends you money, but who knows if the coming year they [the government] won’t ask you to pay the money back. How are you going to pay if there’s no money? They will tell you, I am going to keep your land. That’s the way we are going to lose the land, we tell them.

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Even though legally privatization of ejido land is not as simple a process as presented by this Zapatista, and must go through an ejido assembly vote (Ibarra Mendívil 1996: 57; Goldring 1996: 271), Zapatistas whom I interviewed saw PROCEDE as a way for the government to privatize land and then later expropriate it from them. They argued that by registering their plot with PROCEDE, they would be given access to credit, but would then have to put their plot up as collateral. They were thus very conscious of the danger of land privatization and preferred to avoid it. Zapatistas were also conscious that PROCEDE would lead to other forms of encroachment on their traditional forms of production, notably monetization. They argued that if they accepted PROCEDE, they would have to pay taxes of about 2,500 or 3,000 pesos a year. If you don’t pay, taxes will start accumulating. Paying taxes obliges you to seek money to pay them. If you stay out of PROCEDE, maybe you won’t have access to credit, that is not a lot in the first place, but at least you won’t have to pay taxes and you will be able to live better than if you accept PROCEDE. Plus, why do we have to pay taxes if the government does not provide any service?

However, both in communities where all families are Zapatista and in communities with split membership, maintaining the ejido structure has also meant maintaining some of its unequal distribution of land. For example, in Santa María, the community where we did our fieldwork, the members of the EZLN who were not ejidatarios were not allocated land. They remained in the same situation as they were in before the conflict. They had to rely on their kinship relationships to secure the subsistence of their family. In Santa María, this lack of change was understandable since the EZLN did not have a presence in the community before 1994 and was able to keep the majority of the ejidatarios as EZLN members only for a short period of time. However, even in the case of communities where the majority or the totality of the community is Zapatista, the literature does not report any radical transformations to land tenure practices. Numerous testimonies refer to collective use of land in Zapatista communities. However, to my knowledge, because of the difficulty of conducting reasearch in Zapatista territory, there is no study that has been able to look into the transformation of ownership rights

resistance, alternative development  |  177 to land and land tenure practices in various Zapatista commun­ ities. It appears, though, that in some communities where the EZLN initially emerged and developed, traditional land tenure practices favouring the family unit have been modified by adopting forms of collective work (Leyva Solano 2001). This transformation through the reorganization of agricultural production, which I will analyse below, seems to be an attempt by certain Zapatista communities to tackle the issue of internal inequalities and lack of land for younger members of the community. In the aftermath of the Zapatista uprising of 1994, peasant communities throughout Chiapas seized the opportunity to occupy private properties that were in the hands of Ladino and mestizo farmers (Villafuerte et al. 1999). The great majority of the land occupations were not the result of planned actions on the part of the EZLN, but ‘spontaneous’ occupations by over 669 groups of landless indigenous peasants affiliated to a broad variety of organizations (Villafuerte 2005: 467). These occupations were carried out by almost all the peasant organizations of Chiapas, be they independent organizations or those affiliated with the PRI. There were also cases in which land occupations by peasant organizations close to the PRI negotiated the occupation with the owner of the property so that the owner could later seek financial compensation (Villafuerte et al. 1999: 140–4). In some regions, indigenous landless peasants not affiliated with any organization carried out occupations on land they had contested for years. Those occupations that were conducted by Zapatistas were called ‘land recoveries’ and the communities created on these lands were called ranchos recuperados (recovered ranches) or fincas recuperadas (recovered haciendas). There are approximately between 300 and 400 of these ranchos recuperados, comprising more than 60,000 hectares, according to Van der Haar (2001: 196), and 80,000 hectares according to Villafuerte (2005: 468). Hence, for the most part, Zapatista membership provided access to new land for young landless families from particular communities, but it did not modify the internal distribution of land within already constituted communities. It is mainly in these new Zapatista communities that were created on recovered lands after the uprising in 1994 that the EZLN has attempted to develop new practices of land tenure, which privilege collective ownership and recall prior experiences of collective ejidos

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dating as far back as the Cárdenas presidency (1934–40) (Hellman 1988: 88–94). With regard to redistribution of land, the Revolutionary Agrarian Law stipulates: Fifth. The lands affected by this agrarian law will be redistributed to landless peasants and farm workers who apply for it as col lective property for the formation of cooperatives, peasant ­societies or farm and ranching production collectives. The distributed land must be worked collectively. Sixth. PRIMARY RIGHT of application [for expropriated land] belongs to the collectives of poor landless peasants and farm workers, men, women, and children, who duly verify not having land or land of bad quality. (Womack 1999: 253)

One such recovered ranch, called ‘Primero de Enero’, was created in the region around Santa María. Primero de Enero represents a case of spontaneous land occupation by landless indigenous peasants who were not affiliated with any organization. The recovered ranch, the property of three Ladino ranchers with an area of 350 hectares, was seized in March 1994 by young indigenous landless peasants from a nearby community. The occupation started with sixty families, all without rights to land in their own community. The group was not affiliated with any organization, although it was composed of PRI and Zapatista sympathizers. The EZLN visited them after they had seized the land and they decided to join the movement. From the very beginning, the land was worked collectively because it was considered insufficient to divide it among all the families. Even though only twenty-two families have remained, they still work the land collectively. The land was never partitioned and only the residential areas were allocated to each family. Recovered ranch Primero de Enero seemed to follow the Zapatista legislation guidelines. Gemma Van der Haar’s research on the recovered ranch Nueva Esperanza in the Tojolabal Highlands region just outside the Lacandona jungle contrasts with the case of Primero de Enero. In Nueva Esperanza, land was distributed to landless families of neighbouring communities, following Zapatista Revolutionary Agrarian Law. However, in contrast to the case of Primero de Enero, land tenure in Nueva Esperanza was not organized following Zapatista guidelines, but

resistance, alternative development  |  179 through a combination of elements of ejido practices and Tojolabal customs. Although Zapatista legislation stipulates that land should be held and worked collectively, land tenure in Nueva Esperanza followed the ‘property arrangement common to most communities in the region … combining individual rights to cultivation plots with general rights to the rest of the territory’ (Van der Haar 2001: 200). At the same time, the collectivist guidelines of Zapatista legislation were implemented on top of individual productive activities. Nueva Esperanza, although not an ejido, adopted the ejido model. Land was allocated to individual families, which shared rights over the resources of the forest, and the community elected its comisariado and other authorities and held assemblies (ibid.: 199). However, instead of being under the authority of the agrarian reform state institutions, Nueva Esperanza was integrated into a Zapatista auton­omous municipality, from which it was obliged to accept some impositions (ibid.: 198–9). Even if these two cases represent different forms of adopting Zapa­ tista guidelines with regard to land tenure, they are both part of the same system, which has displaced the state agrarian institutions. From a short visit to Primero de Enero, I was not able to determine whether collective land tenure was fully implemented or whether there was a different dynamic being created within this particular Zapatista community. However, what was perceptible was the importance that the EZLN had for the villagers, especially since their claims to land were being challenged by a neighbouring community. In effect, although the land recovery most certainly provoked the outrage of the expelled owner, at the time of the fieldwork in 2004, the main conflict of the Zapatistas of Primero de Enero was with a nearby community called El Mirador which had also seized land, joined the EZLN and created a recovered ranch. When all the members of both Primero de Enero and El Mirador were Zapatistas, the rivalries between the two had remained under control. But as soon as part of the population of El Mirador turned priísta, the conflict over land resumed, as this faction contested the boundaries of Primero de Enero. For the Zapatistas of Primero de Enero, the capacity of the EZLN to defend their land claim from rival groups is currently the only guarantee that the conflict will not continue to escalate and threaten their control over their territory. Indeed, probably evaluating the likelihood that they could

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not easily displace the Zapatistas from Primero de Enero, the priísta faction had decided to submit the conflict to mediation by the Junta de Buen Gobierno. The situation has changed since the election of Enrique Peña Nieto (2012). Conflicts have been reported there and in other regions, leading to the assassination of a Zapatista local leader called Galeano in La Realidad in 2 May 2014. In many cases, Zapatista authorities, first those of the autonomous municipalities and now of the JBG through their land and territory commissions, have displaced state agrarian authorities as a land conflict resolution body (ibid.: 199). This is in part due to the fact that the EZLN has refused to enter into negotiations with the state to have their land recognized by the state through the Acuerdos Agrarios (Agrarian Agreements) that the federal state struck with other peasant organizations (Villafuerte et al. 1999: 196). The Acuerdos Agrarios were the way found by the Mexican government to solve the issue of land occupations that arose in Chiapas after 1994. Since land distribution had been ended with the reform of Article 27 of the Constitution, the federal government decided to buy the occupied land from the landowner and sell it to the peasants who had conducted the occupation. The price of the land was negoti­ ated with the intermediation of the state between the landowner and the peasant organization representing the squatters. Once an agreement was struck, the state would buy the land and sell it to the peasants and grant them a co-property title. In exchange, the peasant organization would also sign a document in which they promised not to carry out new land occupations (ibid.: 140–3). Through these Acuerdos Agrarios the state legalized over 322,000 hectares (Villafuerte 2005: 467), the majority going to organizations with close ties to the PRI (Villafuerte et al. 1999: 192–3). Hence, as long as the EZLN has enough strength regionally to enforce the land claims of its member communities, conflicts and grievances over land seized by Zapatistas cannot be solved through official agrarian tribunals and authorities. Instead, they necessarily have to go through the Zapatista civilian autonomous structures, even when they are presented by non-Zapatistas. In summary, both the EZLN and the MST represent and seek to reinforce smallholding. The institutional form of land tenure, either sanctioned legally by the state in Brazil, or by the state or the EZLN

resistance, alternative development  |  181 in Chiapas, is not a form of private property. In MST settlements, at least during the first ten years, settlers have been allocated land under ‘use concession’, while in Zapatista communities land tenure mainly follows the ejido form. However, approaches looking at forms of land tenure to determine if land – titled as private property, as ‘use concession’ or as collective ownership – is seen by those who live and survive on it as a commodity would fail to appreciate that land, for MST settlers and for Zapatistas, has important symbolic as well as material value.

The MST: land, the market and the struggle for life  For Sem Terra in Brazil and for indigenous peasants in Chiapas, acquiring land is the result of a long process of struggle. In the case of the landless people in Brazil, I have already highlighted what the period of encampment and land occupation implies in terms of both hardship and empowerment. Similarly, the stories of indigenous peasants from the highlands of Chiapas and hacienda workers from the regions surrounding the Lacandona jungle, like those of most Mexican ejidos, also tell the tale of how the initial ejidatarios had to battle against a large landowner, a hostile natural ecological system or corrupt politicians and state officials to secure their collective right to land (Van der Haar 2001: ch. 4). Understandably these foundational narratives give land a very charged affective importance and symbolic meaning that shape the way community members relate to the possession of land and its use (Nuijten 2001). The slogan ‘land to the tiller’, although probably a slogan that is as old as modern land struggles themselves, still expresses the attachment to land from both the MST and the EZLN perspective, and ties together land, labour and production in a variety of ways. Wendy Wolford, reframing E. P. Thompson’s concept of moral economy, has recently analysed the contrasting meaning of land for capitalist landlords and members of the MST. She showed how the right to and the meaning of land for MST members were deeply associated with notions of work, community and a sense of following God’s will (Wolford 2005: 254–5). In my fieldwork experience in Brazil and Chiapas, I also came across very similar discourses around private property that sought to establish moral limits on the logic of the market, but I also found that the demand for autonomy

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from the market and the state was another recurrent theme. In both cases, the ability to reach some relative form of autonomy rested on gaining or maintaining access to non-commodified land. Don José Nunes Pereira, one of the leaders of the historical ­struggle of Fazenda Primavera4 in the early 1980s and now a relatively well-off small farmer, told me, in a way that is surprising given that it is now more than twenty years since he fought for his right to land, ‘land is for those who work it … land is to work, to produce, one should not be allowed to sell it, it should not be property’. On the other hand, he stated this after he had proudly showed me the property title granted to him by the Brazilian state. The impression I have is that José showed the title to me not so much because it made him a property owner, but because it proved that he and his comrades had won their struggle and that they had been right to fight, that they had won against a landlord. Moreover, throughout his story José repeatedly underlined that they had fought for that land and that they had refused personal offers from the illegitimate owner in order that all the posseiros of Fazenda Primavera would have land. José reiterated that throughout the process, when they faced difficulties or hesitations, they told each other, ‘The land is ours’ (a terra é nossa) and continued their struggle. Calixto da Silva, a settler in assentamento Sumaré I in the municipality of Sumaré in the state of São Paulo, and like José a protagonist from the first generation of settlers, articulated a similar discourse about land. As Wolford underlined, his thinking showed the influence of liberation theology, the framework that provided the ideological foundation of the first phase of land struggle in the early 1980s: Brazilians are not brought up in their own culture. They are brought up with the North American [read US] culture, the culture of money not the culture of land. If we have a property title, those who are more corrupt, those against agrarian reform, will want to buy it. If someone wants to sell his house, he can. But he should give the land to someone else that wants to work the land … In order to be able to put food on the table, we have to put people on the land … The Brazilian culture is to produce, to plant, not to sell. That culture comes from God. God wants men to work and be free.

Solange Parceanello from assentamento COPAVI in Paranacity in

resistance, alternative development  |  183 the state of Paraná, who occupied land in the early 1990s, used almost the exact same words as José Nunes Pereira, who never participated in the MST: ‘Land conquered through the struggle has to be everyone’s. It should not be for an individual. Land should not be a commodity so people can divide it and sell it. Land is meant to produce. One has to use it. If one doesn’t, then one should pass it on to someone that will work it.’ Apart from the different ideological influences and rhetoric behind these declarations, what is common is the association between land and work, land and production, and land and subsistence. Land, because it can yield food, is seen more as the very foundation of life than as a simple means to an objective. Land is seen as a way to secure self-subsistence and well-being and not as an object for producing monetary or capital wealth. My interview with María Ines, an acampada in an encampment that does not directly belong to the MST but where acampados invited the MST to assist them, provides an interesting contrast. When I was about to leave the encampment, I thanked her and said goodbye. María Ines thanked me back and said, ‘Come back and see me when I have my fazenda.’ When she realized the slip of the tongue she had just made, and realized the MST political organizer was there listening, she corrected herself, saying, ‘Come back to see our assentamento.’ My interview with Ademilson, who illegally bought his land in a settlement, also diverged from the common understanding that MST members have of land. He asserted, ‘It’s not good that people don’t have title. It’s better to pay even during your whole life in order to have a title. Elderly people could sell their right to someone else that could buy it so they would have something to retire with.’ These interventions speak of two understandings of land, one of land as use-value and the other of land as exchange-value, which most of the time coexist in the minds of settlers. Nonetheless, land as use-value was much more prominent in the minds of settlers who lived in MST encampments. In contrast, land as exchange-value was the principal way of looking at land for those who had not been MST activists. Moreover, in parallel to these two conceptions of land, a third one developed out of the struggle for land itself, one which relates land with a personal and a collective achievement and which carries with it a broad range of emotions, memories,

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suffering, joys, and so on. Representing this third conception, Sergio Oliveira Siquera, from assentamento Taruma in the municipality of Joía in the state of Rio Grande do Sul, commented: ‘Land should not be sold. Land was not conquered alone. It was conquered with the organization of everybody, with the participation of everybody. We didn’t conquer one plot of land, we conquered a whole area. If I sell my plot, it’s as if I sell the effort of everybody.’ Also tying up land with collective effort, Ari Marcon and his wife Terezinha, from assentamento Annoni in the municipality of Pontão in Rio Grande do Sul, expressed an emotional attachment to their plot: ‘I value land,’ said Marcon, adding, ‘This land has a lot of blood, it has sweat, it has tears … it has a lot of suffering.’ ‘It also has a lot of joy too,’ Terezinha reminded him. Children of settlers who now have families of their own recognize the importance that land has for their parents. But they are also a generation away from the struggle for that land and they approach it and agricultural production without the symbolic weight it has for their parents. This dual understanding of land was evident in my conversation with Hilario da Silva, the son of Calixto from assent­ amento Sumaré I, who is currently trying to set up a marketing cooperative for the settlement: We have to be realistic. We are going to set up a cooperative within a capitalist system. It has to function like an enterprise. Not simply for the purpose of working collectively, but rather to have an economic return … Our fathers conquered the land through the struggle. It’s everything for them. They want to be buried here. Land allowed them to sustain their family. For them it’s pure gold. Youth [read the second generation] understand and want to maintain this. The land and the assentamento are sacred. But there is also the influence from the city through school. The third generation is really the problematic one because they are really influenced by the city. Many of them work outside. What land represents for our parents, because they went out in search of land and all that … all that can be lost in that third generation. That’s why we have to guarantee that the roots of why our parents went to search for land don’t get lost, that land does not become only a financial instrument.

resistance, alternative development  |  185 Many MST settlers had lived in the city for several years, an experience which made their conquest of land similar to a return to an idealized past in the countryside. MST literature and events seek to convey that idea through what they call their ‘mística’ (cultural and symbolic practices). Even when in practice land can be used as private property and even as a commodity in order to seek profits to improve production, this other cultural and symbolic meaning of land is in the background, making full commodification more difficult. The association of land with labour and with production, as well as the understanding of land as a collective conquest, is what makes the struggle of landless rural workers in Brazil and Zapatista indigen­ ous peasants in Chiapas similar struggles. In their organization’s discourse and in the discourse of the grassroots, Zapatistas have also taken up the idea of ‘land to the tiller’. For Zapatistas, land should go to peasants and not to rancheros or finqueros,5 who in the jungle symbolize the large property owners, even if in most regions their property rarely exceeds the dimensions allowed before 1992. Because of past experiences, rancheros or finqueros are associated with the state and a victory over them is a victory over an entire oppressive system. Hence, as Van der Haar observed in the case of the Tojolabal Zapatistas she studied, land recoveries were presented by Zapatistas as a collective achievement, even if they had not themselves directly benefited from land distribution (Van der Haar 1998: 199). In contrast to that of MST members, though, the Zapatista understanding of land goes far beyond the particular struggle for land of a group of people to become linked with the reproduction of an entire culture that places land at its very core.

The EZLN: land, nature, culture and intersubjectivity  Ever since the conquest, for Ladino landlords land has meant and symbolized s­tatus, power and wealth. For a long time the capacity to appropriate surplus labour depended more on the subordination of indigenous communities through a variety of mechanisms than on the actual ownership of land (Stavenhagen 1975). However, with the expansion of capitalist social relations, and the growing necessity to control extensive areas of land for capitalist agricultural production, the traditional symbolic character of land for the landlord seems to have

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given way to a more capitalist understanding of land as a commodity and source of money. In contrast, for Mayan Indians, land is an integral part of a completely different way of conceiving the world (Bonfil Batalla 1994). The indigenous cosmovisión (worldview) conceives land as part of the community; hence land is constitutive of their identity. Stavenhagen even argues that ‘… it does not matter whether this land is communal, ejido or private. In any case, it will be a property but not a commodity. It is a means of production, but it is not capital. It is a source of income, but not rent’ (Stavenhagen 1975: 183). Hence, in periods of hardship, indigenous peasants will try many strategies before selling their land, preferring instead to mortgage part of their future harvest. Ethnolinguist Carlos Lenkersdorf (1996) has pointed out that the Tojolabal culture (one of the seven indigenous nations forming the EZLN) is constructed around a communitarian, collectivist and natural­istic understanding of life. A fundamental characteristic of the Tojolabal language is the absence of the object/subject dichotomy. Human beings, nature, animals and objects have a life (a heart) and are all considered subjects. Thus interactions between human beings and other beings in their environment are relationships between subjects. This ‘intersubjectivity’ has two consequences. First, it does not place human beings in a superior or external position with respect to nature, animals or objects but rather in a situation of mutual correspondence organized around the centrality of land, understood as the source and sustenance of life. Secondly, it conceives the personal attributes of a human being not as inherent or acquired indefinitely but rather as a process of continuous achievement based on his/her day-to-day practice.6 In the case of the relationship with land and objects in general, the Mayan worldview establishes fundamental limits. Land, the source of life and foundation of the community, cannot be owned, not even collectively. The land has no owner, in contrast to the fruits of human labour (maize, beans, use of trails, etc.), which belong to the labourers. The Mayan relationship with land is thus one where exchange-value is opposed and where usevalue predominates. However, at the same time, use-value is also transcended since land is understood in a much more vital way than as an object of use; it is understood in terms of being the source of life (ibid.: 110).

resistance, alternative development  |  187 The relationship that indigenous people have with land is a fetish­ ized relationship, i.e. a relationship that attributes power to land, a will similar to that of a social subject. For example, when planting, indigenous peasants perform a ritual to thank the earth and ask for a good harvest. During the fieldwork, my wife and I were invited to witness and participate in one of these rituals on the day the land was being sowed. On that day, peasants practise a ritual in honour of the earth’s will to provide a good harvest. The whole family and the helpers go to the field. While the men are planting, women cook a chicken soup, which constitutes one of the finest dishes of the regular diet of poor peasant families. After planting, people gather on the side of the milpa, where one can find some shade in which to have lunch. Everyone has his or her share of the soup and keeps the bones. When all have finished eating, everyone moves to the centre of the milpa, where two small holes are dug, one for the earth to eat from and the other for her to drink from. In the hole to drink, alcohol made of sugar cane is poured at the four cardinal points and the most special pozol 7 (chocolate pozol) is poured into the drinking holes. At that point everyone takes a sip of alcohol. The leftover chicken bones, as well as a chicken breast – ‘the best of the best of the chicken’ (lo mero bueno), someone said to me – that has been set aside for the earth are deposited in the eating hole. Tortillas are also deposited in the hole to accompany the chicken breast. At that point, both holes are covered up and a short prayer is whispered. Similar rituals are carried out on 3 May, the day of the Holy Cross for Catholics, in honour of the Gods who rule the Earth. Ritual participants ask for a good year, good harvests, good health for family members, animals, and so on. This celebration, however, involves greater expense and is more elaborate, as a pig is often killed for the feast and chicken tamales are prepared from very early morning until the afternoon. The rituals are more formal and are thus conducted by traditional principales (traditional religious leaders) or catechists in every home and in some fields. Some families organize a party to which they invite relatives, friends and neighbours. It is believed that the more one spends on this festivity, the more the gods can give back. As many anthropologists have highlighted, at least two mechan­ isms can be at play here: prestige and wealth equalization (Polanyi

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1944; Wolf 1999: 147–59; Halperin and Dow 1977; Nash 1995: 14–18). An extensive literature exists on fiestas in indigenous regions of Mexico and Latin America, but it is not necessary to review it here. What is important to stress for this particular case, however, is that  the two Zapatista families who organized large celebrations were the two families with more influence within the community. One was  the family of the representative to the Junta de Buen Gobierno, and the other was the family that was relatively the most well off in terms of access to monetary income. What the Zapatista relationship with land refers to is an understanding of land for subsistence, for social reproduction and for life, as in the case of the MST. However, Zapatista rituals, ceremonies and fiestas, which are key expressions of the indigenous identity and culture, speak of a deeper relationship with land that would lose most of its meaning if indigenous peoples lost their access to land. The Zapatista struggle for land is thus also a struggle for the survival of the indigenous culture and way of life. This explains why, as highlighted in Chapter 2, the Zapatista struggle implies not only access to land but also the control of a territory over which indigenous cultural, social, political and economic practices can be protected and develop. However, this relationship to land is not frozen in time. It is constantly being modified by indigenous peasants themselves and infringed upon and in competition with a more commercially oriented understanding of land, which can actually be induced by the necessity to improve subsistence margins. For instance, in a conversation with a Zapatista of the community, I discovered that he had bought land from a priísta ejidatario. When I asked him whether it was not a contradiction to buy land from an ejidatario who was as poor as himself, he told me that it was ‘because land should be for those who work it and the man who I bought it from was not working his land and I do’. Whether this Zapatista was being faithful to the slogan ‘land to the tiller’ or not, what appears certain is that he was contributing to the commodification of land, to the extent that he bought his right to land. However, his objective for acquiring more land did not differ from the general objective of a peasant producer. He was buying land not to accumulate land in order to produce for the market, but rather to improve the subsistence margins of his

resistance, alternative development  |  189 family household. Would this situation be different if the community was closer to urban markets or more accessible through means of transportation? Most probably, geographic isolation has contributed a great deal to the subsistence focus of many Zapatista households. Strengthening peasant family farming MST settlers and Zapatista peasants practise an agriculture that resembles what Friedmann calls ‘independent household production’. Such production resists commodification, presupposes land availability, allows for subsistence production with village organization, and demonstrates relative absence of competition (Friedmann 1980: 176). However, MST settlers in southern Brazil, because of their deeper integration into the market, are caught between the peasant condition and that of a small commodity producer. MST settlers in southern Brazil are, however, not capitalist farmers because they organize production as family units and most of the relations of production internal to family units are not commodified. Moreover, many aspects of their production are organized around the production of use-value, and most of them are significantly self-sufficient in food production. Zapatista households, on the other hand, are organized as typical peasant units, as described by Armando Bartra (1982). In both cases, though, the fact that land is not understood as a commodity but as the result of a struggle may have reinforced the patriarchal nature of peasant production. For instance, the decision about what to do with land is the father’s and the father’s alone. Family farming within MST settlements, if it were not for certain modifications in the gender relations within the household and the community, could be considered as a type of reintroduction of the household estate in regions where it had previously disappeared owing to the modernization of agriculture. In Chiapas, it is possible to think that a similar development has occurred since the ejidatario is more often than not the male head of the household. Decisions regarding the use of land (what to plant, rent or sell) are decisions made by the male head of the household. Moreover, in both Brazil and Mexico women tend not to have land titles or at least their name does not appear on land titles. Importantly, however, the state, supported by the MST, has recently adopted a policy of registering the names of both spouses on the land title.

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In southern Brazil and Chiapas, market integration and commodification of social relations do not appear to be occurring through privatization of the land of MST settlers or Zapatista peasants, i.e. through the subjection of their land to capital. However, there are still other ways that the integration of MST settlers and Zapatista peasants into the market can lead to the commodification of agricultural social relations, thus endangering peasant subsistence practices. One of these paths is through the growing importance of commodities in the daily lives of peasants. For Bernstein, once commodities become necessary to fulfil the consumption needs of a peasant household: … commodity production is internalized in the cycle of simple reproduction of the peasant household [and] simple reproduction cannot take place outside commodity relations. In other words, commodity production becomes an economic necessity. To meet its needs for cash the household produces commodities which become, through the circuit of exchange, material elements of constant capital (raw materials) and ‘variable capital.’ (Bernstein 1977: 63, cited by Goodman and Redclift 1981: 89–90)

It is true that the need for consumption commodities generates the need for money, which in turn can lead to commodification of agricultural production. However, this process is not as automatic as Bernstein would have it. Van der Ploeg, citing Friedmann, argues that peasant concrete practices can resist commodification ‘if access to land, labour, credit, and product markets is mediated through direct, nonmonetary ties to other households or other classes; … then commodity relations are limited in their ability to penetrate the cycle of reproduction’ (Van der Ploeg 2010: 6). This occurs to differing extents in Brazil and Chiapas. First, as Bartra reminds us, it is not because peasants have to buy commodities to fulfil some consumption needs that they actually buy them as capitalist commodities. These commodities are bought mainly as use-value, and are often bought only if the peasant family is incapable of producing or unwilling to produce the particular item itself. Secondly, often the commodification of agricultural production that the need for money generates is only partial and selective. In the case of Zapatista peasants, for instance, production oriented to generating monetary income to buy consumption commodities is limited to the production

resistance, alternative development  |  191 of chilli or coffee. Even in the case of MST settlers, where most of the production is sold on the market, a substantial portion of their reproduction needs is covered through agricultural production for self-consumption. The gradual commodification of agricultural production, in my view, seems to be much more dependent on: 1) the conditions of peasant agriculture (land tenure, productive diversity – or lack thereof – of peasant agriculture); 2) the concrete structures and dynamics of local markets of agricultural and consumption products; and 3) different state policies. Moreover, it is my contention that peasants who have become members of the MST and the EZLN consciously cling to subsistence production to slow down the pressure for commodification of agriculture. One of the first objectives of the MST and the EZLN is food self-sufficiency for member families. However, the MST approach with regard to this objective differs greatly from that of the EZLN. Since it is inserted within a much more marketoriented rural context, one of the main preoccupations of the MST has also been to improve production by introducing technological improvements such as mechanization. Food self-sufficiency is only a building block among the productive strategies of MST settlers. In contrast, the decisions of Zapatista indigenous peasants with regard to production are reminiscent of Chayanov’s assumptions about the logic of the peasant economy (Chayanov 1966). The central priority of Zapatista families is food self-sufficiency.

The MST settler: between subsistence, modernization and agroecology  If winning land comes after a very long and extremely difficult struggle, remaining on the land is also far from being an easy task. Becoming a settler means, first and foremost, a battle to secure survival within a very hostile market of agricultural production controlled by large farmers and large agribusiness enterprises. To achieve this survival goal, MST settler families have to start by reinserting themselves within the circuits of agricultural production. Fernandes refers to this process as the reinsertion of peasants into ‘the capitalist production of non-capitalist relations of production’ (Fernandes 2005: 318). In schematic terms, most MST settlers have long personal experience of two production models, the ‘peasant/traditional model’ and

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the ‘modernizing extensive model’, and have been exploring a third one, the ‘modernizing intensive or integral model’ alongside these other two models (Zamberlam 1994). In the peasant/traditional model, production is diversified, oriented to self-subsistence, and organized around the absorption of family labour. The production of inputs is internal to the household, and productivity is low (ibid.: 273). In the modernizing extensive model, production is specialized in cash crops, mechanized to reach economies of scale, and integrated into agro-industry. It is dependent on the intensive use of chemical inputs and access to credit and does not use family labour to its full capacity. In this model, subsistence production is almost abandoned (ibid.: 273–4). According to Zamberlam, during the 1980s most MST settlers did not follow the traditional model of subsistence production but rather the modernizing extensive model. This choice responded to their initial expectations with regard to agricultural production. But with the fall in prices and the high interest rates that occurred during that decade, most families found themselves incapable of continuing with the modernizing extensive model. Some reverted to subsistence production. Some experimented with renting their plots and selling their family labour. Others formed cooperatives. Still others, perhaps about 5 per cent of the group, started exploring the third model, the modernizing intensive or integral model (ibid.: 276–9). During my fieldwork, I observed that most MST settlers, in their struggle to survive and to improve their standards of living and levels of autonomy with regard to the market, continued to combine elements from the traditional model and the modernizing extensive model. To a certain extent, it could be said, as Zamberlam argues, that a new agricultural model is emerging along the lines of the ‘intensive or integral model’ that is today referred as agro-ecology (Altieri and Toledo 2011). This model seeks to adapt production to the characteristics of the land by using the proper type of mechan­ ization to reach economies of scale, by privileging organic inputs but combining them with chemical ones in a reduced quantity, by increasing productivity, by combining subsistence and cash crops, and by experimenting with the creation of on-farm micro-industries (Zamberlam 1994: 274). Elements of the first peasant/traditional model can clearly be seen in the first objective of the MST productive strategy, i.e. to secure the

resistance, alternative development  |  193 self-subsistence of its settlers. Where land is sufficiently fertile and allows for the cultivation of many crops, settlers are encouraged to reach this objective through the diversification of their production. In southern Brazil, the great majority of settlers tend to cultivate a variety of crops that constitute their basic diet, such as beans, maize and manioc. Most families also raise animals, such as chickens and pigs, and have a garden where they grow all kinds of vegetables. The choices of food crops by MST settlers are far from being pathbreaking decisions. The favoured crops tend to correspond with the general trend of peasant agricultural production. Throughout Brazil, peasant households and small farmers grow a significant proportion of the food production: 30 per cent of rice, 67.2 per cent of black beans, 48.6 per cent of maize, 83.9 per cent of manioc, 72.4 per cent of onions, 58.5 per cent of pigs, 52.1 per cent of milk, and 39.9 per cent of poultry (Ferreira et al. 2001: 494–5). In southern Brazil, peasants and small farmers produce these agricultural products in some cases in even higher proportion, reaching 92.1 per cent of onions, 80.3 per cent of black beans, 65 per cent of maize, 88.9 per cent of manioc, 68.6 per cent of pigs, 79.6 per cent of milk and 61 per cent of poultry (ibid.: 494). Small producers from the state of São Paulo also cultivate most of these products, although generally in a lesser proportion than their counterparts from the south. However, they do produce a higher proportion, 51.3 per cent, of the regional rice production (ibid.: 494). MST settlers, most of the time, have chosen to continue producing these crops for self-consumption. Occasionally, they might sell their surplus on the local market when they have easy access to it. Food production by the family household within MST settlements is thus mainly oriented towards producing use-value instead of exchange-value. The proportion of agricultural production that is geared to selfconsumption, although generally small, represents an enormous difference compared with the situation of poverty and food scarcity many landless people experienced while they were living in the city. Indeed, most settlers pointed to food self-sufficiency as one of the fundamental advantages of gaining access to land because it allowed them not to have to depend on money to cover that fundamental need. The many visits I made to settlements from different regions of São Paulo, Paraná and Rio Grande do Sul in 2003 and 2009 confirmed

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the result of the study conducted by Jurandir Zamberlam and Alceu Froncheti a decade earlier in the settlement of Rincão de Ivaí in Salto de Jacuí in Rio Grande do Sul. Zamberlam and Froncheti found that almost all settler families had three meals a day and that their diet was much more varied than that of the average peasant family (Zamberlam and Froncheti 1997). In addition, they found that  the production of food for self-consumption constituted a barrier to the full commodification of social relations in the household and the settlement, which I would argue helps mitigate the negative effects of the market both in terms of the prices of commercial crops and rural employment wages. However, even if the great majority of settlers have successfully solved the problem of poverty and hunger, they still have to enter the market to satisfy a variety of other needs. Hence, in their struggle to remain on the land, MST settlers are faced with a major challenge: having to create economic mechanisms that will generate secure sources of income. Most MST settlers in southern Brazil attempt to reach this objective by cultivating cash crops. Because of market fluctuations, many settlers in the south, following the regional productive pattern of the soybeans-wheat farm, have concentrated their production on soybeans, the only product which has not been affected by the same dramatic drop in price that other products have experienced. On the contrary, soybean has seen its price increase in recent years, thanks to growing world demand since the mid2000s. Maize and wheat are the other major commercial crops that the majority of MST settlers grow. But by choosing soybeans and wheat, MST settlers have reinserted themselves into the market, although often in a subordinate position within the local marketing networks. A minority of more entrepreneurial-minded settlers have also experimented with a series of products, including vegetables, for the local market, which they attempt to cultivate using agroecological techniques. In order to avoid dependency on a single or a few cash crops and fluctuating prices, the MST recommends that its members choose a product that will guarantee a constant minimum income the whole year round. This strategy becomes especially crucial between harvests. In southern Brazil, the great majority of families have invested part of their government loans for infrastructure (first

resistance, alternative development  |  195 known as PROCERA, Program de Crédito Especial para Reforma Agraria, Special Credit Programme for Agrarian Reform, and now called PRONAF, Programa Nacional de Fortalecimento da Agricultura Familiar, ­National Programme for the Strengthening of Family Agriculture) in the purchase of a few head of cattle, mainly for milk production. The diversification of commercial agricultural production is extremely important for settler families because the great majority of them confront difficulties in paying back their government loans owing to the often fluctuating and disadvantageous market prices for the main commercial crops. Similarly, the move away from or the decreasing use of fossil-fuel-based inputs by some settlers also seems to be partly determined by economic considerations. The use of agro-ecological techniques could thus be interpreted as a strategy to avoid having to buy inputs, making it a kind of ‘agro-ecology of the poor’.8 However, if one looks at the choice of commercial crops and the investment in milk production in particular, it could be said that MST settlers are involved in a process of monetization of agricultural production. However, to determine whether this process of monet­ ization leads to commodification or not, it is necessary to look at the forms of production within the household. Currently, peasant farmers in southern Brazil use modern agricultural techniques, such as mechanization, improved seeds, chemical and organic fertil­izers, practices of soil improvement, and sanitary control of animals (Navarro et al. 1999: 46). As with the choice of crops to cultivate for food security and the choice of commercial agricultural production, MST settlers are not innovators but tend to follow the general trend of the local economy. With regard to commercial production, MST settlers follow the ‘modernizing extensive model’, which allows them to cultivate around half of their 15–18 hectares of land. In cases where settlers have formed a cooperative or a production group to buy machinery and inputs, most of the work in the field is carried out with machines and modern inputs. Those who are not members of these production groups, in general, tend to rent machinery either from these or from farmers in the region. However, cultivating land with modern techniques, even though it means having to buy or pay for many of the means of production, does not necessarily imply the commodification of social relations of production within MST

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settlers’ households because production is still organized around family labour. On the plots of MST members who cultivate the land ‘individually’ (i.e. as a family unit), the farming workload is distributed under fairly traditional gender lines among the husband, the wife and the children, until the latter are old enough either to join an encampment to gain their own plot of land or to seek employment outside the settlement. Since most of the families buy milk cows to secure a monthly monetary income, milking cows and attending to the cattle are among the most important chores of the day. Often, this task will be the responsibility of children, but when the children are still too young or when they have left the household it is the responsibility of the couple. In general, once the milking has been done and the cattle attended to, the husband will leave for the field, while the wife remains at home to take care of domestic chores and care for the children and/or grandchildren, as well as attend to the home garden, poultry and pigs. Hence, even if the period of encampment challenges many gender roles, once families are settled, men and women tend to return to their traditional gender roles within the household, even if within the politics of the settlement women often continue to break with their traditional role of ‘non-political actors’. The situation is somewhat different in settlements that have decided to form a collective or a cooperative, such as in the COPAVI in Paranacity or the COPANOSSA in Itapeva. There, settlers have made the effort to transform traditional gender roles, by adopting a policy of rotation of duties within the cooperative so everyone learns the different tasks ranging from all the aspects and kinds of agricultural production to management. However, as was explained to me, many didn’t feel comfortable outside their traditional gender role and preferred to be assigned to more traditional tasks for their gender, such as working in the community kitchen if one was a woman. What is important to underline is that, even though patriarchal relations are only partly modified, all the productive and reproductive tasks are carried out by the different members of the household without any monetary compensation, effectively blocking the full commodification of social relations of production within the household. Hence, even though MST settlers are involved in the  market

resistance, alternative development  |  197 at different levels, instead of profit maximization and capital accu­ mulation, another dynamic, crucial for productive decisions, is at play within the household. In his study on family farming in Paraná, Papma observed that a third of the families in the region he studied had moved to monoculture during the late 1970s. During the 1980s, with the drop in the price of soybeans, they gradually returned to polyculture, cultivating maize and black beans (two subsistence crops that can be grown without much fertilizer) in addition to soybeans (Papma 1992: 148–9). Surprisingly, Papma observed that the families that were in the best condition (in terms of the amount of land to which they had access and their productive capacity) to profit from the soybean boom did not engage in soybean production. They preferred to continue growing more traditional subsistence crops, did not take bank loans, and used family labour instead of mechanizing production (ibid.: 155). In contrast, many of the extremely poor households appeared to ‘gamble their lives away by taking out loans, refinancing them with new loans, and risking all of their possessions’ (ibid.: 157). For Papma, this pattern of the richer peasant not investing in modernization can be explained through intra-household evaluations of couples with respect to their old-age retirement strategies, because loans imply mortgaging land and risking its loss. Contrary to Scott’s argument highlighting the safety-first strategy of poor subsistence peasants and the market-oriented rationality of richer peasants, in Paraná couples within a family household that has secured its reproduction, following a safety-first strategy, will thus prefer not to risk the loss of land while a peasant household that is barely surviving may decide to take the risk. For Papma, then, after attaining the simple reproduction of the family household, the main driving objective of the heads of households is to secure old-age care, not to orient production towards the market. MST settlers, who are far from living in extreme poverty,9 do not ­approach production of cash crops in the same way as the more well-off peasant households in Papma’s study. In contrast to the latter, MST settlers engage in mechanized and modern soybean production and often tend not to use all the family labour they might use. However, the context has changed since state credit programmes were set up in the 1990s. Soybean production, now

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financed with credits from the government (PROCERA-PRONAF) or from the MST’s regional cooperatives, provides monetary income without fully jeopard­izing food production or landownership. However, MST settlers most probably also take the decision to engage in modern soybean production after evaluating their old-age retirement strategies, just as the well-off peasants in Papma’s study did. In the case of MST settlers, however, even if internal demographic pressure on land from children exists, it does not play out in the same way as it did before the emergence of the MST. Today, the possibility of acquiring land through occupation is the parents’ preferred option for their older children. In turn, this option, considering the symbolic character it has for the parents, cannot easily be rejected by older children and makes their claim over the household estate weaker. In terms of commodification of the household, the possibility of gaining access to land through occupation thus reduces some of the pressures towards the commodification of agriculture. As will be shown in Chapter 5, this changed within the first few years after Lula took office, as the creation of new settlements and thus the occurrence of land occupation came down significantly. Together, Papma’s example and my own drawn from the study of MST settlers in southern Brazil further demonstrate that there is no single inherent logic or rationale to peasant production. Instead, the productive choices of peasants will vary according to the internal dynamics of the household and the features of the general and local context. The productive choices will also depend on the different state programmes and incentives to which peasants have access. The reinsertion of MST settlers into their local rural economies necessitates a substantial amount of funding, which most settlers do not have. For years now, scholars and social movements have been criticizing the Brazilian state for not demonstrating a real commitment to the agrarian reform sector. According to some perspectives, this sector would not form part of an alternative agricultural policy but would merely be an instrument of state social policy. The distribution of land would be more a way to reduce poverty and social confrontation in the countryside than a measure directed at reorienting agricultural policy towards goals such as the development of a dynamic sector of small producers geared to providing food for the internal market (Wright and Wolford 2003: 274–9). Even INCRA

resistance, alternative development  |  199 officials have recognized that, in reality, ‘INCRA was simply planting minifundios throughout Brazil’, only partially solving three problems: hunger, housing and employment (Cardim et al. 1998: 24). The admin­ istration of Fernando Henrique Cardoso, by creating programmes of productive credit (PROCERA-PRONAF), provided more support to settlers than previous administrations, but did not depart from this tendency. In effect, the amount of credit per family allocated through PROCERA – between R$1,000 and R$2,000 for harvest and between R$3,000 and R$7,50010 for infrastructure11 (CONCRAB 1998: 8) – makes it more a programme for poverty reduction than one that actually promotes growth in production and the productivity of small farming (Cardim et al. 1998: 24). In its defence, the Cardoso government stressed that the great majority of the government’s financial resources for agrarian reform had to go to cover compensations and that this was due to the way Brazilian tribunals handled land expropriation.12 The situation did not change significantly when Lula became president in 2003 and under the following PT governments. Lula, and Dilma Rousseff after him, took steps to help small agricultural producers, such as renegotiation, rolling back or partially cancelling outstanding debts, increasing the amount of credits, and making them available before harvest. They have also instructed municipal governments to buy up to 30 per cent of food of their poverty-relief programmes, such as free meals in primary schools, from small producers. However, none of these measures provides the amount of support that is allocated to large capitalist farmers and agribusiness, and which would allow peasant farming to prosper. However, even if the loans provided to initiate agricultural production, build infrastructure and buy machinery are modest, they have had the effect of slowly imposing the imperative of competition on MST settlers. They have had to find ways to increase and improve production, to work more or differently or even to hire labour to try to increase their profits in order to pay back their loans. The extent to which the imperative of competition imposes itself on individual settlers depends, however, under which form they hold their land, because it determines whether they are at risk of losing their land or not. That is only the case when they have decided to replace their possession title with a private property one. It also depends on personal character and cultural values, as for many the shame of not

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being able to ‘live up to their word’ pushes them to find all kinds of ways to acquire the needed money. Others make a political and structural reading of their situation. They reject the idea that their inability to repay their loan is their failure, making connections with how large producers and corporations dominate the market with the support of the state, but also how large corporate groups are able to evade this requirement of repaying their debts. Those who take the more political reading of their situation also tend to place their current difficulties in relation to their initial struggle for land and seek political solutions. Here again, the form of ownership of land obviously has an impact on how people are able to act on their specific analysis of their particular circumstances. In this context, in order to improve the economic situation of ­settlers and collectively renegotiate the terms of their loan repayments, the MST turns to its traditional strategy of pressuring the state for agrarian reform, credit and programmes of various kinds. However, considering the power of large capitalist farmers and agri­ business, the MST on its own does not seem to have the capacity to propose a solution or an agricultural model that would break the barriers to the sustainable development of MST family farmers beyond the subsistence horizon. Its strategy in this respect has mainly been a political one, and involves an alliance with the Workers’ Party (PT) and participation in institutional politics at the local and state level. I will analyse this strategy in Chapter 5.

Zapatista agriculture: non-capitalist relations as refuge and the agroecology of the poor   Even though the programmes implemented to help Brazilian settlers fall short of really promoting peasant agriculture, subsistence indigenous peasants in Mexico do not benefit from any state programme that could remotely be said to resemble what MST settlers have in Brazil. Recently, the only state programmes acces­sible to subsistence peasants in Mexico were FOSOLPRO (Fondo de Solidaridad para la Producción, Solidarity Fund for Production) and PRONASOL (Programa de Subsidio Directo al Campo, Programme of Direct Subsidy for the Countryside). Even more than their Brazilian equivalents, the funds distributed through these programmes function as poverty relief funds rather than real subsidies for agricultural production. In 1996, the average amount of financial assistance dis-

resistance, alternative development  |  201 tributed in Chiapas through FOSOLPRO was 234 pesos per producer, while the average distributed through PROCAMPO was 745 pesos per producer (Villafuerte et al. 1999: 376).13 Since then, PROCAMPO has been slightly modified, but because the amount of cash distributed is still low and allocated on a per hectare basis, the funds going to small-scale producers are not enough to substantially contribute to increasing production or investing in inputs. The programme should thus be considered more as a poverty alleviation cash transfer programme (Winter and Davis 2009). Hence, since the liberalization of agriculture, and more so since the implementation of NAFTA, subsistence peasants in Mexico can be said to work practically without any state support whatsoever. Within this context of government neglect, Zapatista subsistence peasants have followed a type of agricultural model similar to that followed by indigenous peasants from other tropical forest regions in southern Mexico. Although many agronomists often view the practices in this model as ‘primitive’ and ‘backward’, indigenous agricultural practices in tropical forests are actually part of a very complex and diversified form of resource management (Leyva Solano and Ascencio Franco 1996: 134). The milpa system can include up to twenty-five types of agricultural and forest species (Toledo 2000: 137). Indigenous peasants modify and manipulate their forest en­ vironment to different degrees in accordance with land fertility and type of soil, types of production, and family consumption needs. For instance, they will virtually clear some areas for maize, beans, chilli and c­ attle, while leaving other areas with more vegetation to allow for the production of coffee, vanilla and cacao (ibid.: 137). They will also prepare other areas for the cultivation of fruit trees (citrus, bananas) and sugar cane, and maintain family gardens or poultry yards around the house. Finally, indigenous peasants will also constantly tap into their forest areas to complement their diet with indigenous species of plants, fruits, fish and animals (ibid.: 137). Agricultural production relies on an extensive set of family and kinship relations. Thus, it cannot be said that farming is simply an individual or even a family activity in indigenous peasant commun­ ities. In general, men carry out the bulk of the work in the field, although in certain periods women also work in the field three to four times a week in addition to their domestic chores. Often children over

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ten years of age also help in various tasks in the field, while older daughters start helping around the house, taking care of younger brothers and sisters. Help with food preparation begins at a much earlier age. Depending on the amount of vegetation, slashing and clearing of land can take up to a week per hectare and is carried out by three to five persons, normally the ejidatario and his family and one or a few extended family members. Often, teenagers (sons, younger cousins or nephews) will be the ideal helpers because they do not have their own plot to work on. Other family members, such as cousins or uncles, also often help in the slashing on the basis of a labour exchange, or repayment for a loan or crops. The wife of the ejidatario will help if not enough helpers are found. The work, almost completely carried out with a simple machete, starts around 5.30 a.m. and continues until 11 a.m. or noon, after which time it becomes extremely difficult to work because of the intense heat. After waiting a week or so for the vegetation to dry, it is time for burning. This task is a simple one that does not require the presence of too many people and which can be accomplished by the couple and their children. The sowing of the seeds follows, and is executed by the couple. To save time, sowing can also be conducted by a small group (four or five people, selected on the same basis as for the slashing procedure). The sowing technique is fairly simple. The planters, keeping less than one metre apart, walk side by side with a stick in one hand and seeds in a side-bag. They dig a six-inch hole in the soil with their stick, drop five to six grains of corn into the hole, and cover it with their feet. For several months following the sowing, ejidatarios who have sufficient monetary income will spread chemical insecticide or herbicide on the field. Around four to five months after the sowing of the field, harvest time comes. In the Lacandona jungle there are two harvests, one at the end of the regular summer rains around September, the other benefiting from the less predictable winter rains (ibid.: 109). The harvest is carried out by the whole family but can also include relatives (selected on the same basis as the other tasks described above). The collected maize is stored in small cabañas (cabins) built near the field, where it slowly dries and from where the family takes the quantity that it will need to satisfy its weekly consumption. The quantity of maize brought in by a harvest as well as the number of

resistance, alternative development  |  203 cattle owned by a family were topics that were not openly discussed between neighbours. It is difficult to be sure of the official orientation of the Zapa­ tistas in terms of agricultural production. The EZLN, and particularly Subcomandante Marcos, have produced numerous communiqués presenting their understanding of democracy, social change, the role of civil society, and so on. However, there are very few documents that present their views on agricultural production. To assess the Zapatista alternative understanding of agricultural production, it is necessary to draw on the Revolutionary Agrarian Law and the actual practices and mechanisms developed by Zapatista peasants and their autonomous municipalities. Sections 8 and 10 of the EZLN’s Revolutionary Agrarian Laws state: Eight. Groups benefiting from this Agrarian Law must dedicate themselves preferentially to the collective production of food necessary for the Mexican people: corn, beans, rice, vegetables, and fruits, as well as animal husbandry for cattle, pigs, and horses and bee-keeping, and [to the production] of derivative products (milk, meat, eggs, etc.). Ten. The purpose of collective production is to satisfy primarily the needs of the people, to form among the benefited a collective consciousness of work and benefits, and to create units of production, defence and mutual aid in rural Mexico … (Womack 1999: 253–4)

The Zapatista focus on food production does not conflict at all with the common practice of indigenous peasants in the Lacandona jungle or in the other indigenous regions of Chiapas. For indigenous peasants of these communities, the first and foremost objective of production is still self-consumption and not production for the market. The main subsistence crop is maize, which is grown in combination with beans and a commercial crop of some sort. In regions suitable for coffee production, on top of the maize self-consumption production, families cultivate coffee on a certain portion of their plot, regularly not more than two hectares (Toledo 2000: 109). Coffee productivity in the jungle reaches only 60 per cent of the average of the state and 25 per cent of the average of modern plantations of the

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Soconusco region (ibid.: 114). In certain regions, many subsistence peasants also raise cattle, but it cannot be said that their involvement with the cattle production market has diverted them from their subsistence preoccupation towards strictly commercial endeavours. The average ejido plot in the Lacandona jungle, as in other tropical jungle regions of southern Mexico, has a very diversified production. According to a study conducted in the early 1990s in the Cañadas region of the Lacandona jungle, 95 per cent of families cultivated maize, between 55 and 75 per cent grew beans, 70 per cent grew coffee, and more than 50 per cent raised cattle (ibid.: 109). In terms of the area of the typical ejido, on average 10 per cent of the plot was dedicated to the cultivation of maize, 6 per cent to coffee, 3 per cent to beans, 2 per cent to sugar cane. Of the remaining land that was not sown, 26 per cent was made up of acahual,14 24 per cent of pasture and 29 per cent of mountain (CIEDAC, cited in ibid.: 113). In Santa María, each family cultivated between one and three hectares of their eight hectares,15 allowing the rest to lie fallow to recover its fertility. In Santa María, as in most communities of the jungle, because of the decreasing fertility of the soil, indigenous peasants have had to clear a growing portion of mountain land to incorporate new land into their plot rotation practices. However, mountain land tends to be more subject to erosion and ends up being turned into fallow land much more quickly than land in the valley. According to Juan, a normal harvest brings in between 15 to 20 zontes (a zonte equals 50 kilograms) per hectare and up to 30 zontes (between 750 kilograms and 1,500 kilograms) if the harvest is good. These numbers coincide with Toledo’s estimate that maize production in the Cañadas reaches around 900–1,500 kilograms per hectare (Toledo 2000: 113). According to Pedro, a family of seven to nine members is able to live on what a single hectare of maize brings in, but most families sow another additional hectare or two with a combination of more maize, beans, chilli, bananas, papayas, sugar cane, etc. All these products were cultivated for self-consumption and only chilli and the surplus maize was sold on the market. In the highlands and in the north of the state, peasant subsistence farming is combined with coffee production, which is marketed locally or internationally through intermediaries or cooperatives. Zapatistas from the highlands and the northern region live on much

resistance, alternative development  |  205 smaller plots (on average only between three to five hectares) and are closer to employment sources and urban markets than their comrades from the jungle. Zapatistas from the highlands and the north are thus much more integrated into the market through wage labour or the production of a variety of commercial products, such as vegetables and flowers. Indeed, in the highlands, commodity production of artisan pottery, charcoal and fruit intensified in the 1970s and the money acquired from these activities financed the purchase of chemical fertilizers and pesticides, which became a very important input for agriculture (Nash 2001: 91, 96, 97). In those years, peasant agriculture became more and more dependent on commercial activities. At that time, there were even important signs of monetization, as highland indigenous peasants’ demand for loans even exceeded the capacity of the Ejido Bank (ibid.: 101). Nash argues that, in the highlands, women’s artisan work was ‘not just a supplem­ ent to men’s production in the subsistence economy’, but a ‘major determinant in whether they could continue as small-plot cultivators’ (ibid.: 101). However, with the agricultural and employment crisis throughout Chiapas, even more commercially oriented peasants see food production for self-consumption as a crucial element of their survival strategy. The Zapatista focus on food production, especially on maize production for self-consumption, follows a trend of peasant production that is observable throughout Mexico. Between 1970 and 1998, notwithstanding the fivefold growth in maize imports, domestic production has doubled (Barkin 2002: 80). Throughout the 1990s, around two-thirds of the maize was sown on rain-fed plots (ibid.: 87), signalling that maize production was mainly carried out by peasants and not farmers. Thus, regardless of the drastic decline in maize prices, which dropped from 820 pesos per tonne in 1990 to 559 ­pesos per tonne in 1999, peasants increased maize production, which jumped from 14,635,439 tonnes in 1990 to 17,706,375 tonnes in 1999 (ibid.: 87). Chiapas does not differ from this national trend. Maize output in Chiapas has increased substantially since 1994. Between 1994 and 2003, the harvested area was expanded by 32,000 hectares, and the output grew from 1.5 million tonnes in 1994 to over 2 million tonnes in 2003 (Villafuerte 2005: 471). This trend contrasts with a decrease of 34,000 hectares of harvested area in municipalities such as Comitán,

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Villaflores and Tapachula, where producers are traditionally known for producing for the market and for using modern agricultural techniques (ibid.: 471). It is important to note that these three municipalities are the three municipalities with the fewest indigenous language speakers in Chiapas (CIACH et al. 1997: 85). Production of maize in Chiapas has shifted from areas of high productivity to low productivity (Villafuerte 2005: 471). Today, the main maize producers are smallholder peasants who possess less than five hectares. They grow maize mainly for subsistence instead of for the market (ibid.: 470). The production of beans, the second-most important food crop, also increased substantially. Between 1994 and 2003, the harvested area increased by 15,318 hectares and the output from 52,000 tonnes to 72,000 tonnes (ibid.: 472). As is the case with maize, it is safe to say that production of beans is mainly oriented towards self-consumption and that the crop is grown by smallholders. The Zapatista peasant focus on production for self-consumption is thus part of a trend in Chiapas that is also part of the subsistence strategy of millions of peasants throughout Mexico, who are searching for ‘mechanisms to reduce their vulnerability to many of the negative impacts of international integration [and to] protect and reinforce their own social structures and lifestyles’ (Barkin 2002: 83). Even if they are basically self-sufficient as far as food production is concerned, Zapatista subsistence peasants in the Lacandona jungle are not completely self-sufficient. They have to enter the market to satisfy complementary – although fundamental – necessities. These necessities are satisfied through the purchase of all kinds of domestic products (clothes, soap, cooking oil, sugar, limes, etc.) and some productive inputs such as agricultural tools, chemical fertilizers and pesticides. The current economic crisis has led subsistence peasants to try to cut down as much as they can on consumption goods. However, they cannot avoid the market because they do not have local, self-produced substitutes for products available in the market. Hence, as is the case with MST settlers, the need for consumer goods is a pressure point pushing Zapatista families towards the commodification of agriculture. In order to generate monetary income, subsistence peasant fam­ ilies have limited options. The male head of household or another

resistance, alternative development  |  207 member of the family can seek temporary employment in the nearby fincas in Chiapas or Tabasco, and in the construction sector in nearby  urban centres. When it is the male head of the household who leaves the community to work temporarily, the agricultural workload falls entirely on the female head of the household and the children. Since employment opportunities have just about dried up since the 1994 peso crisis, temporary work is more and more difficult to find. This situation has led to a significant increase in migration to central and northern Mexico and to Cancún, as well as to the United States (Villafuerte 2005: 477–8). For the families who stay, another option is to sell coffee, chilli and cattle, as well as their surplus maize. However, the monetary income obtained from these activities represents only very modest amounts because, for the most part, the cultivation of commercial crops is carried out on a very small portion of the plot, and the low price paid for these products brings in only a few hundred pesos. The monetization of agricultural production is thus fairly limited. A more detailed analysis of the market relations in the maize and cattle markets can demonstrate the extent to which these market relations are actually not entirely capitalist. In contrast to MST settlers who sell their products in a capitalist market, Zapatista subsistence peasants exchange their products in a local market that resembles the following description of peasant societies by Rhoda Halperin and James Dow: Peasants seem to mix monetary and nonmonetary mechanisms in similar ways for organizing production and distribution … nonmonetary modes such as reciprocity often prove useful and indeed more effective than monetary ones for the survival of peasant sectors … Peasant economies are distinguished from industrial capitalist economies not by the presence of certain traits or elements themselves, but by a certain combination of commercial and non-commercial elements. (Halperin and Dow 1977: 187)

In the case of the sale of the maize surplus, the amount of maize that is sold is very limited and the actual transactions at the local level are not carried out under a strictly capitalist logic, even though international and national mechanisms intervene in the determination of prices. First, only a very small proportion of production is sold, on average only between 5 and 12 per cent of the total production,

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according to Márquez Rosano (1996: 217). Thus, the sale of maize is not geared to capital accumulation but simply to acquiring money to meet the consumption necessities of families. During my fieldwork, following the trend of other subsistence peasant communities across Mexico, many members of the community, even though the additional income from the sale of their maize surplus would have allowed them to purchase more consumer goods, preferred to refrain from selling maize in order to make sure they would not jeopardize their family’s subsistence. Secondly, the destination of this surplus production is the local market, where local producers still have a privileged position over external agents. The lack of attractiveness of the local market, due to bad road conditions, the high costs of transportation and the low income of the local population, has discouraged the entry of competing agricultural products, particularly maize and beans, which are a crucial source of monetary income for many peasants of the jungle. In concrete terms, the real buyers in the local market are the other peasants of the regions who are, structurally or temporarily, more dependent on the market for their social reproduction. These peasant families are either those families that have converted almost completely to cattle ranching or those that have encountered difficulties with their maize harvest (plagues, little rain, etc.). The exchange between sellers and buyers takes on a variety of forms. It can happen either through the intermediation of local merchants or it can be face to face between seller and buyer. For subsistence peasants, selling and purchasing surplus maize through an intermediary is probably the least preferred option because it implies little possibility of mitigating market rules through kinship relations of reciprocity and solidarity. Within this market arrangement, since there are only a few intermediaries (coyotes16 and merchants) who control the sale and purchase of products, prices do not strictly follow the trends of the national market. Local agents mediate national and international prices. These intermediaries are in a position to determine prices, taking into account local demand and supply, but always from a quasi-monopolistic position. Obviously, the situation is different for indigenous peasants who live in regions with easy access to urban centres such as San Cristóbal, Ocosingo, Altamirano, Palenque or Comitán. Traditionally, coffee, chilli and

resistance, alternative development  |  209 cattle are mainly marketed through intermediaries, although coffee producer cooperatives have existed since the 1980s and are, in terms of price, a preferable option for peasant producers. Subsistence peasants prefer face-to-face market exchange because it implies a greater variety of options that do not necessarily involve money. Depending on the circumstances of a particular family, the exchange process can involve either the producer seeking out the buyers or the buyers seeking out the producers. This search can take place either within a community or it can require travelling to other communities or regions where families are ready to sell their maize surplus. Market exchange can include a monetary exchange or it can be agreed upon according to reciprocity, where the product might be acquired in exchange for a promise of future labour. The choice of including a monetary transaction or not will depend on the need for money of the selling family and the access to money of the buying family, and it will be evaluated with regard to the goal of self-subsistence of the selling family, which can very well trump that family’s need for money. As for the purchasing family, since maize is being bought for consumption, the decision to buy from one producer or another will not be determined solely on the basis of price alone. Peasant families will not necessarily buy the cheapest corn on the market. They will, in fact, prefer to buy local maize because the foreign maize that is sold through CONASUPO and later the DICONSA community stores,17 I was told, ‘is not as tasty as the type we grow in the region’. However, when a monetary exchange has been agreed upon, the price set by the government functions as a reference point for the price of the local maize, which will often be sold and purchased at a higher price. When the buyer and the seller have agreed to privilege forms of reciprocity over monetary exchange, they can resort to the simple exchange of products for work or under the form of a ‘loan’ to help a needy family of the community or of the extended kinship network. Thus in many cases, kinship relations function as a network for the sale and purchase of maize, where market exchange is carried out through a variety of practices (barter, in exchange for labour, in exchange for a promise of future reciprocity in kind, as a loan repayment, etc.), in which personal relationships are more important than market relations (ibid.: 217). For instance, in Santa María, one

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of Arturo’s cousins from a neighbouring community was helping him clear his field before planting because Arturo had lent him money the previous year to cover the expenses of his father’s illness. Maize, because it is a food crop crucial for the diet and the culture of indigenous people, is at the centre of a variety of solidarity and reciprocity practices that link production, subsistence and kinship relations. Cattle ranching is a very different type of agricultural activity, since cattle are mainly, if not exclusively, destined for the market. Cattle ranching is often presented as the epitome of commercial agricultural activity because it requires more investment than subsistence agriculture, and, by diverting peasants from food production, it encroaches on their subsistence. Moreover, cattle ranching is seen as an activity that has other broader negative effects on the subsistence of peasant families. Since it requires substantial amounts of land, cattle ranching tends to encourage processes of land accumulation through which tenants and peasants gradually lose their access to land. Also, by requiring less labour than other agricultural activities, it reduces off-farm employment opportunities for peasants, which are crucial to many peasant families, either as complementary income to buy consumption goods or as money inflow to invest in agricultural activities. Hence, cattle ranching is an activity that leads, on the one hand, to the expulsion of peasants from the countryside and, on the other, to the deeper market integration – and thus monetization of the agricultural activities – of those peasants who are able to insert themselves in the circuit of cattle ranching. Many scholars (Leyva Solano and Ascencio Franco 1996; Ascencio Cedillo 1996; Villafuerte et al. 1997; Márquez Rosano 1996) have identified the rapid growth of cattle ranching in the 1970s and the dramatic price decline in the sector in the 1980s as among the main processes contributing to the current economic crisis in Chiapas. If at the beginning the growth of cattle ranching was mainly a phen­ omenon headed by large private landowners who benefited from generous government subsidies (Villafuerte et al. 1997: 12, 51), they were quickly followed by ejidatarios who sold their calves to private ranchers. By 1991, throughout Chiapas, of the number of production units reporting to be raising cattle, 80.5 per cent were ejidos (CIACH et al. 1997: 57). Within the ejido sector of Chiapas, ejidos from the Lacandona jungle were those in which cattle ranching grew at a

resistance, alternative development  |  211 faster pace, the number of heads of cattle growing by 12.62 per cent between 1971 and 1991 in Ocosingo – the largest municipality in the Lacandona jungle – in comparison to 4.81 per cent for the rest of the state (Ascencio Cedillo 1996: 75). In 1990, in the same municipality, half of the bovine herd was in the hands of ejidatarios (ibid.: 68). In addition to state support for cattle ranching, this trend can be explained by some of the features of peasant agriculture in the jungle. Since land fertility diminishes very rapidly, and because after a few years of cultivation and rotation often the only option is to turn milpa land into pasture, cattle raising represents one of the few agricultural activities that can be carried out on low-fertility land. This growth of cattle ranching in ejidos in the Lacandona jungle can also be seen as part of the diversification of the survival strategy of subsistence peasants, whereby cattle ranching represents a commercial activity generating monetary income to buy needed consumption goods. The crisis in cattle ranching of the mid-1980s, triggered by the policy of market liberalization of the Mexican state, did not stop the process of expansion of cattle ranching in the Lacandona jungle. In contrast to the rest of the state, where the annual rate of growth of cattle ranching diminished, cattle ranching continued to grow in the Lacandona jungle because it was not determined by the profitability of the activity but rather by the need for money to buy consumption goods, a need which is relatively constant. In regions where cattle ranching has become an important activity, subsistence peasants tend to dedicate on average five to seven hect­ ares to this activity (Toledo 2000: 109). However, Zapatista families that have cattle are stuck at the lower and less lucrative level of the commodity chain. The great majority of them sell almost exclusively calves to local intermediaries. In turn, the intermediaries sell the calves to regional intermediaries or ranchers who then send them to Tabasco, where they are raised to adult age. Finally, the animals are sold as meat in the Mexico City market (Márquez Rosano 1996: 137). Peasants who own cattle in isolated Zapatista communities are in an even worse position, as they tend to sell their cattle to nearby indigenous ranchers who live in communities with better access to means of transportation. More importantly, most of the Zapatista families who own cattle, like the majority of subsistence peasants of the Lacandona jungle, do not manage this resource in the same

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way that they manage any other agricultural commercial product. For most of them, cattle function as an insurance policy in case of emergency, as a calf will be turned into money if needed. In the region of the Cañada of Santo Domingo in the northern fringes of the Lacandona jungle, a region known for its early integration into the cattle economy, I observed that most peasant producers did not use cattle under a strictly capitalist logic (see also ibid.: 66). First, the great majority of cattle owners do not have sufficient head of cattle to be able to sell them on a significant and regular basis. Márquez Rosano mentions that an average of one calf per year is sold by owners of three to four hectares of pasture (ibid.: 133). Secondly, this is the case because for the enormous majority of ‘peasant/ranchers’ who have fewer than five head of cattle, and who represent 14.1 per cent of all ejidatarios (Márquez Rosano and Legorreta 1999: 13), animals are used as an ‘insurance policy’ that they can cash in when they have to face extraordinary circumstances such as the illness of a family member (ibid.: 11). Cattle functions not as a commodity that can be turned into money and then capital to be invested, but simply as a money box. In this sense, even if we have witnessed an increase in cattle ranching in the ejido sector since the 1970s (Ascencio Franco 1995; Solano Leyva and Ascencio Franco 1996; Villafuerte et al. 1997), the process of ‘ganaderización’18 of agricultural production does not appear to be a phenomenon that applies to the majority of peasants. Even according to the 1990 census, in only three of the thirty-one communities of the municipality of Altamirano was cattle ranching considered the main activity. In Las Margaritas it was only in one of the 174 communities that it was so considered. In Ocosingo, ­cattle ranching was the main activity in sixteen of 206 communities, while in Palenque the level of ganaderización reached the highest proportion, with thirty-two communities engaged in the process out of a total of 101 (INI 1995). In the municipality of Ocosingo, one of the strongholds of the EZLN, according to the census of 1990, 62 per cent of ejidatarios reported not having any cattle (Márquez Rosano and Legorreta 1999: 13). This proportion went up to 76.2 per cent when peasants with fewer than five head of cattle were added. Finally, according to various accounts of Zapatistas from the region in which Santa María is located, since 1994 cattle ranching seems

resistance, alternative development  |  213 to have lost even more predominance in the jungle because many producers sold their cattle owing to the uncertainty generated by the conflict and, additionally, because the traditionally larger buyers, the Ladino ranchers, left the region. These testimonies concur with the reduction of 40 per cent in the cattle herd of the community of Ubilio García, located in the same region as Santa María, observed by Márquez Rosano and Legorreta (1999: 19). If the production and sale of commercial crops or cattle do not follow a strictly capitalist logic, the internal relations of production within a Zapatista household are even less capitalist. Zapatista families, like the great majority of indigenous peasant families in Chiapas, work the land traditionally with a simple machete and use very few modern techniques or inputs. Slash-and-burn agriculture, reliance on rain, land rotation where possible, and the use of home-grown seeds are the main features of the dominant method of farming. Pesticides and herbicides are the only modern inputs that peasants use. Because of the crisis in the countryside and the high levels of unemployment in Chiapanecan and Mexican cities, Zapatista peasants have been reducing the use of chemical pesticides and herbicides since their use implies a substantial monetary investment. Chemical insecticides and herbicides are used by the most well-off peasants. Those who still use pesticides use as little of them as possible, but they are slowly being replaced by agro-ecological substitutes. In our host community, some Zapatistas were using an organic fertilizer called ‘nescafé’ (known as Mucuna pruniens in Latin), which they grow between harvests.19 These practices coincide with the agro-ecological approach to farming (Altieri and Toledo 2011) and the Zapatistas have indeed been receiving the support of NGOs with this type of knowledge and techniques. These types of decision on production could also be placed under the umbrella of the concept of self-provisioning, understood as ‘reducing dependency on external resources while simultaneously enlarging and improving the stock of internal resources, including ecological capital [which] reduces monetary costs while overall levels of production are maintained or even slightly improved’ (Van der Ploeg 2010: 6). In my view, what was clearer from the fieldwork, however, was that agro-ecology or self-provisioning was more adopted for practical reasons and objectives, that of dealing with the lack of money or avoiding the need

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for money, than for ideological or cultural reasons. In a much more striking way than in the case of the MST settlers, Zapatista producers seem to be falling back on an agro-ecology of the poor. In Chapter 3, I argued that the MST and the EZLN were much more than mediators between the state and their members because MST settlers and Zapatistas participate in the maintenance of alternative power structures based on a form of popular power that resides within communities and is sustained by participatory practices. In this chapter, I have argued that these ‘autonomous rural communities’ can maintain their level of political autonomy because their ­access to land provides a material base upon which they can reproduce their household, in the first instance by securing food production. This stepping stone, however, plays a different role in the case of the members of the EZLN and those of the MST. The focus on subsistence and self-reliance can be said to shape almost all of the production decisions of Zapatista peasants. Even though they resort to the market for the purchase of consumer goods, their agricultural practices are still organized around the production of use-value and the use of family labour. In many circum­stances, monetary transactions are avoided and replaced by practices of reciprocity and solidarity among kin. Based on Wood’s distinction, most Zapatista subsistence peasants are not market-dependent or even market-oriented, but not because peasant production is inherently organized around subsistence goals. In the jungle their focus is subsistence because of the regional context, which limits the expansion of capitalist relations and because the form of land tenure impedes the emergence of the imperative of market competition. In contrast, Zapatistas from the highlands and north of Chiapas are more market-oriented (not market-dependent) than their comrades from the jungle because, among other things, the size of their plot does not allow them to produce enough to cover the food needs of their family. They thus have to rely more on the market for their subsistence. MST settlers are more market-oriented than Zapatista subsistence peasants. Living in a much more capitalist countryside, the needs of Brazilian settlers are far more monetized than those of Zapatista subsistence peasants. One of the main differences between MST settlers and Zapatista peasants resides in the type of access they have to the market and the type of market in which they are involved.

resistance, alternative development  |  215 On the one hand, MST settlers, often after the first few years of settle­ ment, are able to enter the market through their integration within marketing networks controlled by multinationals, entrepreneurial cooperatives or MST cooperatives. Hence, MST settlers end up being relatively quickly involved in the decidedly capitalist market of soybean or milk production. In addition, the need to repay state credits imposes a kind of imperative of competition, which can, however, be mediated in different ways. On the other hand, Zapatistas, since they live in regions where infrastructure tends to be very deficient, are not integrated within the same market as other producers. They tend to be integrated within the local market, a market that is not strictly a capitalist one, even though it is linked to and is determined by the capitalist market. In the case of neither the MST nor the EZLN does monetization lead to full commodification of agriculture, mainly because land is not commodified, but also because prioritizing food production is a conscious decision of MST settlers and Zapatista peasants. Because of their personal experiences with the market, both as producers or as wage labourers, MST settlers and Zapatista subsistence ­peasants have emphasized subsistence and food self-sufficiency as a fundamental objective informing their decisions regarding agricultural production. Furthermore, in both cases, internal relations of production are not commodified and are organized around the use of family labour. However, guaranteeing subsistence, although it is an important achievement, is not sufficient to ensure the well-being and development of MST settlers and Zapatista ejidatarios. In order to create more political space for their development alternative, the MST and the EZLN have tried to build alliances with other political actors to confront neoliberal policies implemented by the Brazilian and the Mexican states. I will look at these politics of alliances in the next chapter.

5  REVOLUTION IN TIMES OF NEOLIBERAL HEGEMONY

This chapter will analyse the ways in which the MST and the EZLN address issues of alliance with other social and political actors and will assess the results of their political strategy for broader social change at the national level. I will look at the relationship the two movements have established with different sectors of civil society and the strategy they have adopted towards existing political parties and the state. The chapter will show that both the MST and the EZLN, although collaborating with left-wing political parties, have placed priority on changing the correlation of forces within civil society and by participating in, or trying to generate, a national movement of opposition to neoliberal policies. However, as I will make clear, neither movement has been able to strike an alliance with other peasant organizations, and neither has been able to generate the broad national coalitions it would like to see emerge. In my view, although recognizing the peculiarity of their experience of control of a territory that generates autonomous rural communities with politicized grassroots members, the MST and the EZLN have presumed that other organizations have the ability to adopt the same confrontational tactics that they have adopted. This shortcoming explains why they have had difficulty in finding allies with similar perspectives on radical social change. Within their respective national societies, the MST and the EZLN argue for radical social, political and cultural change, while most social movements and political parties on the left in Brazil and Mexico are mainly engaged in seeking incremental changes within the existing national political structures, often through clientelist or corporativist links with political parties or the state. In some ways, the MST and the EZLN swim against the current when compared with most left-wing social forces in Brazil and Mexico. With regard to the way they approach state institutions and poli­ tical parties, the MST and the EZLN have departed from a similar

revolution  |  217 position of attempting to engage with state institutions and political parties of the left but have moved towards divergent strategies. The MST, although it has constantly criticized the state, has always remained open to dialogue and negotiations, while the EZLN, after negotiating with the state on two occasions (in 1994 and in 1996), decided in 1997 to break off any dialogue with the state, accusing it of not negotiating in good faith. As a consequence, MST settlers are able to pressure the state for funding and programmes, while the Zapatistas have broken most ties with the Mexican state and the EZLN has called on its member communities to decline any state funding and refuse to participate in any state programme. As for their respective positions towards political parties, throughout its history the MST has maintained a strong alliance with the Partido dos Trabalhadores (Workers’ Party, PT), while the EZLN has moved from an attempt to build an alliance with the Partido de la Revolución Democrática (Party of the Democratic Revolution, PRD) to a complete rejection of the electoral process and a ferocious denunciation of the state and the PRD. As a consequence, the EZLN has concentrated almost all of its effort on building an alliance with progressive sectors of Mexican civil society. I will argue that this early divergence in strategy towards the state and political parties, as shown by the MST on the one hand and the EZLN on the other, is due to three main factors: the different ­circumstances of struggle of the two organizations; the different results of their negotiations with the state; and the differences in the types of links and relationships that have existed between each movement and political parties. My analysis of the politics of alliance of the MST and the EZLN and their relationship with the state and political parties is inspired by Antonio Gramsci’s notion of the extended state and its influence on the role of the Modern Prince, which I have already presented in Chapter 3. What it is still necessary to further specify is his understanding of the role that the Modern Prince is supposed to play in relation to other classes within civil society, and the combination of actions in both civil society and political society. The strategic conclusion that Gramsci draws from the importance of hegemony for power is that a radical social change cannot simply be carried out through the seizure of state power. Political actions

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need to target the institutions of the state and the transformation of the economic structure, but imply a long-term process understood as a moral and intellectual reform of society in which the working class is transformed from a subordinate class into a leading class, and ultimately into a hegemonic class. As seen in Chapter 3, all this is the task of the Modern Prince and the organic intellectuals. Hegemony, in its revolutionary sense, is thus a political practice that seeks to change reality, specifically the correlation of social and political forces, through the gradual acceptance by various groups within civil society of the particular political project that has been initiated by the Modern Prince. The actions of the Modern Prince are thus expected to lead to the formation of a broad revolutionary class alliance that Gramsci calls a ‘historical bloc’. The political project that mobilizes this historical bloc cannot simply be a doctrine or an ideology that represents the interests of the popular classes and of society at large, but more importantly has to translate into a set of ideas and values that are accepted and internalized by all the members of the historical bloc. As already noted, for Gramsci it is within the institutions of civil society that the ruling class generates and maintains the consent of the governed and it is thus within this sphere that bourgeois hegemony needs to be challenged in the first place. However, poli­ tical society and civil society should not be understood as strictly separated spheres. They should rather be conceived as two interrelated spheres with a dialectical relationship to one another. That said, Gramsci’s analytical distinction suggests that he recognized that a different dynamic existed within each sphere. For instance, consent, but also politicization and social mobilization of subaltern classes, develops within civil society and is not bound to the same set of procedures that characterize politics within political society (institutional politics). Civil society mobilization can obviously have an important impact on institutional politics, at the same time that decisions within political society can limit the range of options open to social movements within civil society. This distinction between political society and civil society led Gramsci to constantly evaluate the consequences of events and developments in one sphere or the other.

revolution  |  219 State power, radical social change and the corporatist legacy in Brazil and Mexico Historically, the strength of the Latin American left lay in its capacity to simultaneously mobilize and politicize the working classes while fighting to take state power through elections or armed revolution. In addition, most revolutionary movements in Cuba, Chile, Peru and Nicaragua also promoted forms of class power through the creation of neighbourhood councils, factory committees, cooperatives and other forms of collective self-management or self-government. The privileged form of political organization, as was the case throughout the world, was the political party, which subordinated all the different movements (unions, peasant organizations, shanty-town associations) and struggles to its strategy of gaining spaces of power through negotiations or alliances with nationalist forces or taking state power on its own. In many Latin American countries, communist parties, even if they were often quite small, were successful at supporting and coordinating actions and mobilization. During the period of military dictatorships and authoritarian rule of the 1970s and 1980s, one of the main objectives of the juntas was to disarticulate or annihilate left-wing political parties, rendering them illegal, repressing and ‘disappearing’ their militants. The mobilizations that led to the fall of authoritarian regimes in the mid-1980s and the subsequent protests against the early phase of implementation of neoliberal policies were thus not carried out by political parties, but by social movements (Eckstein 2001 [1989]). Several scholars, comparing them to movements in Europe, argued that these were ‘new social movements’ (Slater 1991; Alvarez and Escobar 1992). Since the early 1990s, some researchers working on new social movements have emphasized the emergence of ‘new forms of doing politics’, the construction of ‘new forms of social power’, and the shift in strategy from a focus on the conquest of state power towards a ‘search for autonomy’ or an ‘alternative society’ (Calderón et al. 1992: 24, 28). Others have highlighted that one of the main goals was the ‘transformation of the dominant political culture’ (Alvarez et al. 1998: 9) and the development of ‘a project of a new sociability’ (Dagnino 1998: 52). Compared with movements twenty-five years earlier, which had ‘strong state/political orientations’, new social movements were ‘searching for their own cultural identities and

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spaces for social expression, political or otherwise’ (Calderón et al. 1992: 23). Regardless of theoretical perspective, analysts observed that these social movements shared a profound distrust of the state and political parties and were reluctant to collaborate with them. However, some observers could not but caution against hasty general­ izations, stressing that social movements, although suspicious of manipulation and jealous of their autonomy, did not always shy away from political parties (Hellman 1992, 1995; Dagnino 1998: 56; Petras and Veltmeyer 2001). It would be difficult to argue to the contrary in the cases of Brazil and Mexico, where many social movements participated in the creation and development of the PT (Keck 1989: 180; Riethof 2004) and of the PRD (Hellman 1995: 169; Carr 1996; Anguiano 1997). In fact, it would be even more difficult to argue that social movements refuse to collaborate with parties if one studies contem­ porary peasant movements. One of the fundamental characteristics of new peasant ­movements has been their constant engagement in co­alition building with other political forces, including parties (Petras and Veltmeyer 2001: 112) and active participation in electoral politics (Veltmeyer 1997: 156). Here, even the EZLN, which has not established a permanent alliance with the PRD and which decided to reject electoral politics in 1997, could not be said never to have attempted to influence electoral politics. Zapatismo, however, has brought back an old debate within the left. Should a revolutionary movement ultimately seek state power in order to change society, or should its objective be to change society from within in order to abolish the state and replace it with new political institutions controlled by the labouring classes? Should and can it combine both objectives? Can a revolutionary movement use the contradictions within the capitalist state to occupy institutional spaces and pressure for policies that can reinforce popular struggles without being co-opted? The MST and the EZLN have very different understandings of the role of state power within the process of social change. However, for these social movements, the question of state power is a very practical one. It is a question to be approached by taking into consideration the actual history of national state formation and the concrete experience of each movement with the state, as shown in Chapter 2. After

revolution  |  221 forty years of broken promises and betrayals from state officials, many indigenous subsistence peasants in the Lacandona jungle of Chiapas have come to see the state as the main class enemy. The Zapatista rejection of state power and their decision to build forms of self-government derives as much from this experience as from an ideological reflection on how best to radically transform society. In contrast, throughout its history the MST has had a dual strategy towards the state and has always believed that it was important to struggle for political space within the state, be it at the local, regional or national level, with the legislative or executive branch, or even within specific ministries or state agencies. The success of its struggle for land depends on the state’s decision to expropriate land and allocate resources to agrarian reform settlements. Hence, the MST has, at times, confronted state policies while negotiating and collaborating with the state on other occasions. Thus, it is important for the MST to influence or count on allies within the state. However, like the Zapatistas, the MST has always privileged the politicization of its membership by promoting broad political participation in the organizational structure of the movement.

The corporatist legacy and left-wing parties in Brazil and Mexico  During the twentieth century, the relationship between the state and civil society in Brazil and Mexico followed corporatist lines. The state created political organizations in order to control the popular classes and impede the development of autonomous organizations. In Brazil, this was carried out first during President Getulio Vargas’ dictatorship by linking unions to the state and later by creating the Partido Trabalhista Brasileiro (Brazilian Labour Party, PTB) in 1945, while in Mexico the Partido Revolucionario Institucional (Revolutionary Institutional Party, PRI), which remained in power under different names for more than seventy years, was so omnipresent in society that people have referred to it as the party-state. The clientelist legacy of corporatism is thus much denser in Mexico because popular classes were organically linked to the regime as early as the 1930s until 2000. In Brazil, no party has stayed in power that long, and peasants began to be a subject of attention from the state only in the late 1950s. Until the mid-1980s, Brazil and Mexico were ruled by authoritarian

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regimes, Brazil under a military dictatorship from 1964 and Mexico under a one-party state from the 1920s. In both countries, the process of transition to liberal democracy was very slow and controlled by the ruling elite. In Brazil, the transition had two distinctive dynamics. On the one hand, the transition was being negotiated from above, as several sectors of the bourgeoisie and the upper middle class wanted to move to a civilian regime in which they would have more power. On the other hand, it was pushed through by the rise of social movements, particularly the new unionism in the city and the countryside, which led to the creation of the Central Única de Trabalhadores (Workers’ Unitary Union, CUT) and later the PT. In Mexico, although the 1968 student movement and the subsequent rise of underground guerrilla movements in the 1970s signalled rising discontent, the transition was much slower than in Brazil. Although the right-wing Partido Acción Nacional (National Action Party, PAN) was making some headway in municipal elections before, the trans­ ition really began to unfold in the run-off to the presidential elections of 1988 with a split inside the PRI between neoliberals aligned with Carlos Salinas de Gortari, the official presidential candidate, and the nationalists led by Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas. Banking on his prestige and popularity, Cárdenas broke with the PRI and built a coalition to support his candidacy (the Frente Democrático Revolucionario, Democratic Revolutionary Front, FDR), which later became the PRD. By the early 1990s, most left-wing parties ended up dissolving and merging into the PRD, and the leaders of the old left subordinated themselves to the PRI runaways. The great majority of the social movements stayed with the PRI, except for a few independent movements, such as the Asamblea de Barrios of Mexico City or the Co­ alición Obrera, Campesina e Estudiantil del Istmo (COCEI) of Oaxaca. Throughout their history, the PT and the PRD have opposed neoliberal policies. However, beyond a return to a modified developmental-populist state, neither elaborated an authentic alternative political project. The PT emerged from a process of radicalization of unions and the rise of popular movements that wanted to create a political party that would truly represent their interests. It inherited a militant culture that emphasized politicization and participation of the grassroots membership and combined street mobilizations with inventive experiences of direct democracy, such as participatory

revolution  |  223 budgeting. Internally, made up of several highly organized tendencies, the PT was extremely dynamic. Until around the turn of the century, the PT was primarily a party of activists and organized tendencies. In 1982 its membership totalled 245,000 and it is said to have reached around one million members in the late 1980s. The most active petistas (PT members) belong to one of the numerous tendencies whose ideologies range from different variants of Marxism to European-style social democracy. Tendencies have their own leaders, meetings and newspapers, and are constantly negotiating to influence the party, and to have some of their members appointed within the party, to PT governments or as candidate for office. Until the 1990s, the majority tendency was ‘Articulação’, which was dominated by the autênticos. In the early 1990s, Articulação was split into three tendencies, making the internal politics much more dynamic but also less cohesive. Reflecting this diversity, PT’s ideology has always been eclectic and has evolved over the years. When it was created, most petistas called themselves socialists but criticized socialist regimes of eastern Europe for not respecting democratic rights. At the same time, most of them were also very critical of the inequalities inherent in the capitalist system and the restrictive character of liberal democracy. Many also argued for a democratic revolution that would redistribute wealth and implem­ent forms of direct democracy. Since the end of the 1990s, the PT has moved to the centre, and some of its prominent leaders have accepted many of the precepts of neoliberalism (see Sader 2011: 43–66). To some extent, this has been influenced by the need to broaden its electorate. In 1982, in the first presidential elections in which the PT participated, Lula garnered a disappointing 3.5 per cent of the votes. In 1989, Lula managed to obtain 47 per cent, but lost to Fernando Collor de Mello. In 2002, after two other consecutive failed attempts against Fernando Henrique Cardoso, Lula obtained 61 per cent in the second round, and the PT finally reached its goal of winning the presidential election. Nothing in the history of the PRD resembles the trajectory of the PT. Despite the fact that many left-wing parties that had merged into the PRD had a long history of involvement in peasant and working-class struggles, most of them, with the exception of the  Partido Socialista Unificado de México (PSUM), the heir of the

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­ exican Communist Party, were rather small in terms of numbers, M and rarely achieved national coverage. Most of the smaller parties were composed of a few thousand activists who adhered to the different strands of Marxism, such as Leninism, Trotskyism, Maoism, etc. The PSUM was the biggest party and included a broader array of ideological tendencies, even including social democrats and Eurocommunists (Carr 1996: ch. 9). Owing to the political reform of 1978, which lowered the percentage of votes necessary to be allocated seats in the Federal Congress, by the end of the 1980s many of these small left-wing parties had already started to move away from mobilization and direct involvement in popular struggles to privilege participation in the electoral process and internal battles within parties (Anguiano 1997: 71–9). However, none of them could have been said to be anything close to a mass party of the kind the Brazilian PT was already. Once the ex-priístas took control of the PRD, they brought with them the old PRI practices of personal rather than ideological loyalty in the internal processes of the party. Although mobilizations were important in the earlier years of the party, the more the PRD integrated within the political regime the more electoral politics came to dominate the party. As with the PRI, the PRD’s relationship with social movements has been characterized by the co-optation of leaders and clientelist links with the grassroots. Electorally, the party has been relatively successful. It has been governing Mexico City since 1997 and its candidates have won several state governorships. As both parties became further integrated into the political regime, both Brazil’s PT and Mexico’s PRD began to accommodate their discourse to neoliberalism and adopted a narrower understanding of politics, increasingly restricted to elite negotiations in the corridors of parliament. The MST: occupying all possible political spaces Since its creation in 1984, the MST has always recognized the need to participate on all fronts (rural workers’ unions, small ­farmers’ organizations, coalitions against neoliberalism, and political parties). But it has also been conscious of the need to maintain its autonomy with regard to political parties (Wright and Wolford 2003: 41; Fernandes 2000: 83–93; Almeida and Ruiz Sánchez 2000:

revolution  |  225 26; Scherer-Warren 1988: 257). The MST has thus always adopted a political strategy that attempts to have influence over or establish alliances within both civil society and political society. The first and most important struggle of the MST is the struggle for agrarian reform, followed by the modification of agricultural policy, as well as general opposition to the neoliberal policies of the Brazilian state. Hence, the first and most important interlocutor with which the MST interacts is the Brazilian federal state. Most of the actions of the MST are geared to pressuring the state to accelerate land distribution, to improve credit schemes, and to support programmes for the country’s small agricultural producers. However, more broadly, the MST understands that the support of certain sectors of society can be very important in winning these battles with the state. Hence, to achieve its particular goals as well as its more general goals of transforming Brazilian society, and following a relatively standard strategy for the traditional Latin American left, the MST has called upon ‘workers, intellectuals, small businessmen, retired people, housewives, and students’ to join them in order to elaborate a ‘Programme of the Brazilian People’ (Almeida and Ruiz Sánchez 2000: 24). Hence, the MST believes that it must first give priority to collaboration and establishment of alliances with other peasant and workers’ organizations and later extend these to other groups that radically oppose neoliberalism.

Breaking isolation and stigmatization and leading the struggle for agrarian reform  During the mid-1980s until the early 1990s, the MST was mainly focused on the task of creating a national organizational structure. However, the context of democratic opening initiated by the ruling military junta under Figueiredo in the late 1970s, and the subsequent negotiations that occurred in the 1980s for recasting features of the political system, also allowed many MST militants and leaders to acquire political experience outside the movement through their involvement in the new unionism and in the creation of the PT. The first national campaign in which the landless participated was the Diretas Ja campaign in 1983/84, which was a campaign led by the PT to demand the organization of direct elections for president. However, the two most important events of the 1980s for rural political actors were the elaboration of the Primer

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Plano Nacional de Reforma Agrária (First National Plan for Agrarian Reform, PNRA) in 1985 and the rewriting of the Constitution by a Constituent Assembly in 1988. Given that the support of the rural sectors had been an important factor in the negotiations between the democratic forces of the Alianza Democrática, the coalition of parties of the centre-right, and the military dictatorship, the democratic forces had promised to carry out an agrarian reform once they assumed power. With the exception of the MST, which at the time was still a minor organization, all rural organizations participated in the elaboration of the PNRA and supported the government of the Alianza Democrática, which, under the leadership of Tancredo Neves, took office in 1985. However, very quickly, progressive forces within the alliance lost ground, and the PNRA was transformed so substantially by conservative elements that it never managed to carry out the plan that would have enabled 450,000 landless families to settle within the first four years of democratic rule. As I have already described in Chapter 2, something very similar happened with the negotiations around the agrarian clauses of the Constitution of 1988, the only other institutional transformation that could have guaranteed agrarian reform. Nonetheless, in spite of this adverse political context, 89,350 families were settled between 1985 and 1989 (Fernandes 2000: 268). The presidency of Fernando Collor de Mello (1990–92) was marked by the further marginalization and repression of the MST. Having close links with conservative sectors of the Brazilian ruling class, including the landed class, Collor de Mello had no intention of carrying out any kind of agrarian reform. During his administration, political harassment of the MST increased, land distribution faced countless judicial, budgetary and administrative delays, and programmes of technical assistance were terminated. Collor de Mello barely distributed land. According to official statistics, Collor is said to have settled 38,428 families, but many independent studies question those numbers, arguing that the true figure is between 15,000 and 23,000 families (Coletti 2005: 193), very far off the numbers promised in the PNRA. Because of the climate of harassment, land occupations decreased during this period, and the MST retreated by trying to consolidate its settlements. After Collor de Mello’s impeachment in 1992 on the grounds of corruption, his successor, Itamar Franco, took

revolution  |  227 a more sympathetic attitude towards the MST and agrarian reform. Franco named Osvaldo Russo, who was close to the Confederação Nacional dos Trabalhadores na Agricultura (CONTAG), as the head of INCRA. He also met with the MST leadership in February 1993, and saw to it that the laws that were supposed to clarify the criteria for land expropriation established in the 1988 Constitution were finally passed in 1993 (ibid.: 195). The political harassment of the MST decreased and land occupations resumed again, and 65,565 families gained access to land between 1990 and 1994 (Fernandes 2000: 269). Prior to 1994, the MST focus was mainly on simple resistance, consolidating its organizational structure, establishing its modus operandi with regard to land occupation, and elaborating the broader political objectives of the movement. For instance, in its National Plan for 1989–93, the MST highlights very clearly the internal tasks for the following years. One of the most striking objectives that the MST set for itself, only four years after its creation, was the need to ‘professionalize’ the movement, by guaranteeing the development of an organizational infrastructure and by developing training programmes, both political and technical, for all levels of its leadership and membership (MST 1989: 18–19). The issue of the training of the membership became ‘the political priority’ of the organization’s executives at all levels (ibid.: 18). The movement was also conscious of the need to work internally on a communication strategy that would link the movement across Brazil, and decided that it would use a printed journal as its main medium. The issue of the isolation of the movement was also a theme that preoccupied the leadership at the time. Hence the Second National Plan also pointed to the need to develop public relations and propaganda skills to convey the message of the MST to other sectors of society (ibid.: 16, 19). With this Second National Plan, the MST moved forward with its intention to ‘masificar’ (massify) the struggle for land by multiplying land occupations and expanding into new regions where conditions were favourable for the development of a mass movement. Two regions were selected for this phase of the struggle: the impoverished north-east region and Pontal do Paranapanema, in the westernmost region of the state of São Paulo. Navarro contends that the MST acquired a national dimension when it ‘discovered’ the potential of the state of São Paulo and moved its headquarters to the capital of

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that state (Navarro 2000: 39). According to Navarro, the MST started to gain media coverage when the mass media of São Paulo, where national broadcasting centres are located, began covering the land occupations that were occurring in Pontal do Paranapanema almost on a weekly basis. From that platform, the MST became an ‘obligatory spokeperson’ on the issue of agrarian reform and on settlements (ibid.: 39). Thanks to this visibility, the use of land occupation as its main form of struggle and innovative mobilization strategies, the MST began to lead the struggle for agrarian reform. It cannot be said, however, as we will see below, that it was yet considered anything like the leading organization of the peasantry. It was during the first administration of President Cardoso that the MST really came to have the stature of a national movement. In July 1995, the MST held its third national congress. Here the delegates established two priorities: to continue the struggle for agrarian reform and to oppose the neoliberal policies of the Cardoso government (Coletti 2006b). From that point on, the MST was transformed from being a movement centred on the struggle for land and agrarian reform into a movement of resistance against neoliberalism. However, most of its actions and the public inter­ ventions of its ­leaders were still centred on issues related to land or agriculture. Even if its political tactics of direct action, such as land occupation, public building sit-ins and street marches, were already common practices in many of the regions where it was present, the MST had not until then really caught the attention of the Brazilian public. A series of factors can explain the increased visibility of the MST during this period: a more moderate response from President Cardoso to the MST’s demands, two massacres of landless people in 1995 and 1996, and the March to Brasilia in 1997 (Ondetti 2008). Violence, selective assassinations and disappearances have always been tactics used by Brazilian landowners to impede the emergence and mobilization of rural organizations that challenge their dom­ inance of the countryside. However, even though the numbers of deaths in rural conflicts were already high by the mid-1990s, the press had paid little to no attention to this fact. But in 1995, in the municipality of Corumbiará in the state of Rondônia, nine landless people were killed by the police, 138 wounded and 350 imprisoned (Galdino 2005: 147). The press covered the massacre, and the struggle

revolution  |  229 of landless people began to be publicized. A year later, on 17 April 1996 in Eldorado dos Carajás in the state of Pará, repressive forces killed nineteen MST activists. This time, the news reached an international public. Within a few days of the event, the story was the subject of an article in the Sunday edition of the New York Times and appeared on the front page of Le Monde in France (Comparato 2000: 203). President Cardoso, fearing protests from human rights groups and possible damage to his international image, decided to cancel his imminent visit to the United States (ibid.: 204). A few weeks later, on 2 May 1997, hoping to show that agrarian reform was among his priorities, Cardoso received a delegation from the MST in Brasilia. These events broke the isolation that had been imposed on the MST by the rest of Brazilian society, and in 1997 the MST decided to counter-attack and organized the National March for Land Reform, Jobs and Justice. The march, two months long, proceeded to Brasilia in three columns1 of MST families (men, women, children and elderly people). The participants arrived in Brasilia on 17 April 1997, exactly a year after the Eldorado dos Carajás massacre. This was the first major protest against Cardoso’s government (ibid.: 86) and it drew media coverage almost every day. Moreover, the march also helped the MST to connect with other poor Brazilians (Almeida and Ruiz Sánchez 2000: 22). ­During the two months that the march lasted, in every town they visited, the landless were met with support and admiration. ­According to an account given by Mario Schons, a Sem Terra: ‘When we left São Paulo for Brasilia, we had food for two weeks. … But after that it was the people we met on our way who fed us. When we arrived in Brasilia we had so much food left that we were able to send it to the nearby encampments. So in this sense, society supported us’ (Cadji 2000: 34). Hence, during this time, the Sem Terra were able to break with the image of illegality, banditry and violence that the corporate media had attached to them. Once again, the international media picked up the story and reported on the march. During the march to Brasilia, the MST inserted its struggle for land into the broader struggle against neoliberalism. Thus, when they were received by President Cardoso in Brasilia at the end of the march, they invited representatives of artists’ groups, the Church, trade unions, women’s movements and indigenous peoples to be part of their delegation (Almeida and Ruiz Sánchez 2000: 23). The

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effect of the march on the progressive sectors of Brazilian society was surprising. According to Almeida and Ruiz Sánchez: ‘Eduardo Suplicy, an important member of the moderate wing of the PT, compared the march on Brasilia to the Civil Rights March on Washington led by Martin Luther King in 1963’ (ibid.: 22). Indeed, the march to Brasilia was ‘the first victory of the lower classes over the neoliberal policies implemented by the Brazilian state’ (ibid.: 23). In the context of the retreat of the Brazilian left in general, the MST represented for many the emergence of new possibilities. The MST as a movement felt the effects of this new visibility and support: not only did the number of land occupations increase, so too did the number of families involved in the occupations. In Gramscian terms, the march to Brasilia allowed the MST for the first time to break the neoliberal hegemony by publicizing its struggle nationally as a peaceful and democratic one, and connecting it to the broader issues of inequality and injustice in Brazil.

Fighting criminalization by increasing occupations and mobilization  During the second term of Cardoso, arresting the growth of the MST became an important priority for the government, and thus Cardoso adopted a much more militaristic approach towards the movement. He created the ‘Department of Agrarian Conflicts’ within the federal police force. Undercover police and informants infiltrated the movement, and from 1997 onwards the head of Cardoso’s military cabinet reported to him daily on the activities of the MST (Comparato 2000: 60). Later during this second mandate, Cardoso created a ‘crisis cabinet’ with a dozen specialists who assisted him in dealing with crisis situations, among which rural conflicts and the activities of the MST were priorities (ibid.: 63). On 27 December 2000, in order to discourage land occupations, the Cardoso administration passed a decree prohibiting INCRA from conducting the audits (visturías) that can lead to expropriation on land occupied by landless families (Coletti 2005: 237). According to the decree, families that decided to occupy land regardless of this decree had to wait two years for INCRA to conduct its audit on whether or not the occupied property could be expropriated. Also during this second mandate, the Cardoso administration created and implemented a series of programmes intended to undermine the social base of the MST. One of them

revolution  |  231 was an agrarian reform programme conducted through the postal system, whereby landless families could register their demands for land in a post office and wait to be called to be allocated land. The federal government was incapable of responding to the demands it received from citizens seeking land. Of the 574,590 persons who submitted an application, the government interviewed 103,225, and only 16,390 were selected (ibid.: 236). In 2000, Cardoso also carried out a market-friendly agrarian reform, called ‘Banco da terra’, which, instead of expropriating land, lent money to landless families in order to enable them to buy land from willing landowners (ibid.: 234–5). The programme was a failure. The price of land rose and many families ended up in debt.2 Regardless of the disadvantageous context, the MST continued to carry out direct actions during Cardoso’s second term. For instance, the ‘March of the Hundred Thousands’, which reached Brasilia in August 1999 and demanded Cardoso’s resignation, was very successful, although it did not attract the same amount of media attention as the first march. On the contrary, the media represented the MST as a violent, criminal and uncompromising organization and facili­ tated Cardoso’s strategy. In May 2000, the MST coordinated the simultaneous occupation of INCRA offices in nineteen states to ask for the release of credits for planting, to denounce the reduction of credit for small producers, and to demand an increase in the INCRA budget from 1.3 to 4 billion reis (Comparato 2000: 107). In January 2001, in the context of the first Social Forum held in Porto Alegre in the state of Rio Grande do Sul, the MST, in coordination with Via Campesina, invaded a property of the Monsanto company in order to destroy the genetic­ally modified maize that was being grown there (Coletti 2005: 241). This act would mark the beginning of a new phase of direct ­action in the MST struggle, as it was the first time the movement directly confronted the interests of a multi­ national corporation. In October of that same year, members of the MST and the MPA simultaneously occupied banks in ten states, forcing the government to reschedule the debt of settlers and small farmers (ibid.: 242). Since then, the MST has continued to pursue direct action in order to remain in the public eye. Although it held back during the first year of the Lula government, it resumed its actions in July 2003

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with a march to San Gabriel in the state of Rio Grande do Sul, the stronghold of the fazenderos in that state. Another march to Brasilia was undertaken in May 2005. In each case, the media coverage of the event allowed the MST to put the issue of agrarian reform on the political agenda and present its views on the matter. The rise of the MST as a national political actor coincided with the decline of radicalism in Brazil, particularly in the union sector. On the one hand, this situation explains why the MST gradually became the most visible opposition movement to the Cardoso administration and its neoliberal agenda. On the other, since the MST was seemingly the only movement capable of successfully confronting the Cardoso government, this situation also had the effect of putting the movement in a position of power with regard to other popular organizations. However, at the same time, the MST’s radicalism was at odds with the strategies and tactics adopted by other groups and organizations within civil society and institutional politics. The MST was not able to change this situation and turn itself into the leader of a ‘radical agrarian historical bloc’.

The MST’s strategy towards civil society  The support of the Catholic Church and the Comisão Pastoral da Terra (Pastoral Land Commission, CPT) was crucial in the emergence of the MST. At the beginning, many MST leaders and many of the MST’s closest advisers were actually members of different ecclesiastic orders which worked with the rural poor. However, by the end of the 1980s the movement had its own leaders, who replaced the religious leadership. Still, to date, the CPT remains one of the most important allies of the MST. Being an institution of the Church, and given that the Church resembles an NGO, the CPT is very important in forming public opinion, influencing state policies and conducting studies. Hence, the MST works closely with the CPT on many campaigns, studies and lobbying efforts. The CPT does not, however, have the capacity to mobilize thousands of people in the way that a social organization can. In its second National Plan (1989–93), the MST highlighted the following objectives: 37. The construction of an alliance between workers and peasants. The construction of a permanent alliance between workers and

revolution  |  233 peasants, as much in concrete struggles as in strategic struggles, is one of the principal challenges that will allow the struggle for agrarian reform to move forward. … 39. Search for unity within the struggle. It is necessary to search for a minimal consensus among the various rural leaderships on the nature of agrarian reform and to understand that such a consensus can only be possible among those who are involved in concrete struggles. 40. The construction of a new union structure. The current union structure limits the struggle to its most backward, corporatist character, and impedes the development of a revolutionary character, which the union movement also has. (MST 1989: 12)

The political strategy of the MST towards civil society is mainly geared to building an alliance with organizations. Among those organ­izations, the MST has tried to privilege rural unions and other peasant movements. The MST has not been able to forge a strongly unified rural alliance that would bring together the most important rural organizations that work for agrarian reform. In the countryside, the closest allies of the MST are the Movimento dos Atingidos par Barragens (Movement of those Displaced by Hydro-electric Dams, MAB) and the Movimento dos Pequeños Agricultores (Movement of Small Agricultural Producers, MPA), both of which the MST helped create. These movements seem to follow the leadership of the MST because of the similarity of their interests and their political perspective. The MST could be said to be the leading organization of the more radicalized sectors of the peasantry. Often these two groups provide a way for the MST to reach out to rural constituencies other than landless people. To this effect, the MST has decided to use its system of service cooperatives, in which MPA members participate, to politicize small farmers.

The MST and rural unions: radicalizing the struggles and internal democratization  Rivalries between the MST and the CONTAG, num­ erically the most important rural organization of Brazil with 8 million members, are much more important than the tensions that exist between the MST and the rural branch of the Central Única de

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Trabalhadores (Workers’ Unitary Union, CUT). Although there are channels of communication between the CONTAG and the MST, each organization regards the other with great suspicion, mainly because they have opposing trajectories and political views. The CONTAG, for instance, after being ‘purged’ of communist leaders, was allowed by the ruling military junta to continue organizing rural workers during the military dictatorship (Galdino 2005: 132). Hence, by offer­ing a series of state-funded social services, the CONTAG became integrated into the corporatist branch of the state (Houtzager 1998), which made it much more conciliatory with the government. The CONTAG, being from the outset the target of the rural new unionism, opposed the creation of the MST and the process of radicalization of some Sindicatos de Trabalhadores Rurais (Unions of Rural Workers, STRs), which represented both rural workers and small farmers (Coletti 1998: 241–54). The CONTAG saw the threats to its privileged status within the political system, and sought to keep its hegemony in the countryside. The CONTAG exercised great influence on the first democratic government of the Alianza Democrática. Because it had been a key supporter of the Democratic Alliance, the CONTAG was able to influence the first elaboration of the PNRA and have some of its members appointed to important state institutions dealing with agrarian issues (Coletti 2005: 77–8). The CONTAG had used its huge membership and political power to secure the lion’s share of future land reform. According to the first draft of the PNRA, rural unions were supposed to be involved in all stages of the expropriation process of unproductive latifundios (ibid.: 85). Within this context, the MST’s methods, especially land occupations, threatened the stability that the CONTAG saw as necessary for the success of the negotiations for the 1988 Constitution, which never materialized as they wished. Moreover, in order to attempt to curtail the rising influence of the MST during his presidency, Cardoso privileged the CONTAG as the more legitimate and representative rural organization. For these reasons, a strong alliance between the MST and the CONTAG has never developed at the national level. Although some important divergences exist between members of the CUT and the MST, local unions from the CUT are major allies of the MST. In many regions of the Brazilian countryside, the MST

revolution  |  235 has developed a strong alliance with the rural branch of the CUT, and, by extension, the local sections of the PT (Galdino 2005: 135). Many members of the MST are very active in their rural union, to such an extent that in certain regions the MST and the rural unions coordinate their actions, be they organizing encampments or social mobilization. However, considering the diversity within the MST and the CUT, the collaboration between the two organizations can also be said to have varied according to the regional context and the objectives of the struggles of rural unions. In general terms, the MST’s relationship with the CUT has also evolved over the years. The MST and the CUT were very close in the early 1980s when both movements were emerging and when they formed the ‘new unionism movement’. The two organizations shared similar views on issues of strategy and tactics, as direct action and grassroots democracy dominated their political culture. For instance, during the 1980s, the CUT became known for its combative strikes, which strengthened it organizationally. At that time, the CUT, like the MST, had a broad understanding of what constituted working classes. They did not limit themselves to representing the interests of their constituency, but understood their respective struggles as a battle for citizenship rights that could only be acquired through the eradication of socio-economic inequalities within society at large. Thus they tackled issues such as education, health and housing (Riethof 2004: 34, 36; Antunes 2012). Later, after a failed attempt to carry out a national general strike against the Cardoso government in 1996, in the light of the increased threat of unemployment, the CUT distanced itself from a strategy in which strikes were a key elem­ent in favour of one that emphasized negotiations (Riethof 2004: 38–41; Antunes 2012). In the countryside, because of the specificities of each region, it is difficult to identify a general tendency. For instance, in the sugarcane regions of the state of São Paulo, it was in the late 1980s and early 1990s that rural unions went through a process of radicalization and affiliation to the CUT. However, this process was carried out by creating new unions (Sindicatos de Empregados Rurais, Unions of Rural Employees, SERs) that represented rural workers exclusively, whereas former rural unions (STRs) represented rural workers and small-family producers (Welch 1999). An alliance between the local

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SERs and the MST was more difficult because, according to many leaders of the SERs, the interests of rural workers were not necessarily compatible with those of peasants (Coletti 1998). For this reason, MST settlers in São Paulo tried instead to win over the leadership of their traditional local union (STR) who were also affiliated to the CUT. As a result, if the MST and other rural movements were the only organizations conducting land occupations in the early 1980s, by the early 1990s many unions affiliated with the CUT also started to carry out land occupations. In addition, even the more conservative CONTAG also began conducting land occupations (Coletti 2005: 212, 226). The success of the MST in the 1990s thus led to the temporary radicalization of rural movements under the Cardoso governments. However, if the effectiveness of the methods and the leadership capacities of the MST was recognized, the CUT and to an even greater extent the CONTAG were unwilling to give up the leadership of the rural workers’ and peasant movement. Instead, something like a triumvirate developed, with each organization leading its members and like-minded organizations. However, with the affiliation of the CONTAG to the CUT in 1995, the leadership of the rural branch of the CUT, like its urban counter­ part, began signalling an intention to move towards the path of institutional integration. Today, like the CUT in general, rural unions also favour participation within the conselhos de desenvolvimento rural (rural development councils), neo-corporatist regional consultative councils inscribed in the Constitution of 1988. In contrast, the MST has continued to be involved in intense confrontation with the state. Until the mid-2000s, it multiplied land occupations and highly visible public actions, such as marches and sit-ins that have attracted media attention. Depending on the leadership of the regional STR, the MST still counts on the support of local rural unions, but not on them siding with the MST instead of their national leadership. Great regional variation thus exists across rural Brazil in regard to the relationship between the MST and rural unions belonging to the CUT. Hence although they remained very close allies, as the years passed this divergence in approach and tactics generated some tension between the MST and the CUT. This was clear in my con­versation with Geraldo José da Silva, from assentamento Fazenda ­Timboré in the municipality of Andradina in the state of São Paulo, who was

revolution  |  237 a member of the MST state leadership for four years (1988–92) and who, since that time, has been very active in the STR, which is affili­ ated to the CUT. From his position as a CUT leader, Geraldo José da Silva criticized the MST for being too radical, too ideological, and often too vertical in its ways of making decisions, and for not taking the time to negotiate with the state. Da Silva contrasted the MST’s ‘ideological position’ against the re­inforcement of state institutions with the pragmatic position of the CUT as follows: Before, INCRA used to notify the fazenderos fifteen days in advance before auditing their property. Some public servants from INCRA even helped the fazenderos. Fazenderos would put up fences, transfer cattle from one place to the other, and register workers and so on in order to reach the productivity criteria. The CUT held discussions with INCRA in order to do the audits [visturías] in various fazendas at the same time. The MST was against these audits because they would reinforce ITESP [the institution in charge of agrarian reform in the state of São Paulo] and thus reinforce the state. For the CUT this might have very well reinforced the state but at least also the agrarian reform. Well, the agreement was signed in 1999 and 162 fazendas were visited at the same time and fifty-six were found unproductive in 2000.

Critiques of the orientation taken by the CUT in recent years can also be heard from the MST leaders. The MST believes that the retreat of unionism and the acceptance of institutionalism by unions are due not only to the strength of neoliberalism but also to the co-optation of CUT and PT leaders, who have ceased to represent the masses, leading them to abandon the goal of changing society (Stédile, cited by Almeida and Ruiz Sánchez 2000: 26). But beyond these critiques from both sides, the MST and the CUT continue to present a common front on agrarian reform. Their divergences are mainly ideological and tactical.

Mobilizing against neoliberalism in the mists of institutionalization  Since it was under the second Cardoso government that deeper tensions started emerging between the MST and other rural movements, mainly over ideological issues and strategies to transform society (Navarro 2000: 38), it was also during this period that the

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MST deepened its contact with other civil society organizations. In its first national meeting in 1984 in Cascavel in the state of Paraná, the MST declared its commitment to three broad objectives: acquisition of land; agrarian reform; and a more just society (Cadji 2000: 33). In its second National Plan, the MST reiterated that ‘strategically, our alliance has to be with workers and rural workers’, but that ‘conjunctural alliances should be struck with all interested sectors in order to confront the main enemy’ (MST 1989: 14). The plan also stated that ‘the construction of alliances should obey the priority of expanding the mass movement and breaking the isolation of the countryside’ (ibid.: 14). In terms of strategic goals, a contrast between the MST’s objectives outlined in the national meeting of 1984 and those of 1995 shows that the MST realized the importance of inserting its struggle for land and agrarian reform into a much broader perspective of transforming Brazilian society. The objectives referring to society as a whole were, however, still farther on the left than those of other major organizations: ‘to build a society without exploiters and where labor has supremacy over capital; to seek social justice and equality in economic, political, social, and cultural rights; to spread humanistic and socialist values in social relationships; to oppose any kind of social discrimination and strive for greater women’s participation’ (Cadji 2000: 34). As the MST has often criticized the government for legalizing land possession in the Amazon instead of expropriating unproductive land in the rest of Brazil, it has often worked in collaboration with the rubber tappers’ union and the indigenous peoples’ movement (Wright and Wolford 2003: 241, 328). The MST has also participated in and organized a variety of campaigns, such as the Latin American Cry of the Excluded since 1987, the Citizen Caravan in 1993/94, the No Payment of the Foreign Debt Campaign in 1997, the No Genetically Modified Organisms Campaign in 1998, and the Campaign Against Slave and Child Labour in 1999 (Galdino 2005: 150). In 1993, the MST also tried to reach out to urban movements by helping to organize a coalition of popular organizations called the Central dos Movimentos Populares (Central of Popular Movements, CMP), and by promoting the construction of an alternative ‘popular project’. This popular project has taken form gradually through various discussion meetings

revolution  |  239 and the creation of a consulta popular (popular consultation) in order ‘to [mobilize] the population and [stimulate it] to participate in the formulation of economic, social, and cultural policies for all Brazilians’ (Martins 2000: 40). The consulta popular has focused on issues such as employment, education, housing, food, health and culture (ibid.: 42). The MST has since pursued its direct action tactics, but under conditions of decreasing unemployment and increased public welfare they no longer seem to attract as many people. The MST has thus been playing a pivotal role in reinvigorating popular mobil­ ization by participating in national campaigns to recover national sovereignty, such as ‘A Vale é Nossa’ and ‘O Petróleo é Nosso’. The first campaign began in 2007, as an effort of social movements and civil society organizations to reverse the highly irregular privatization by President Cardoso of the world’s largest state mining company, Vale do Rio Doce, in 1997. Its high point was a popular referendum in September 2007, in which 94 per cent of the 3.7 million participants voted against the privatization. In 2008, the second campaign, now to avoid the privatization of the oil sector, was launched in collaboration with the oil workers’ union and other organizations. Grassroots ­assemblies were held to discuss and elaborate a legislative project that would ensure state control over the sector and the reinvestment of oil revenues in social policies. The campaign culminated in August 2009 with the submission of the legislative project signed by 1.3 million people to the Brazilian Congress. Beyond all the contradictions involved in the revival of the developmental state, tactically the MST campaigns represent an opportunity to recompose a broad coalition of forces against neoliberalism, through which it can win support to put the agrarian reform back on the political agenda. Apart from participating actively in the campaigns of the CMP and playing a leadership role in it, the MST has not had much success in linking up organically with urban movements. The CMP seems to be no more than a forum where popular organizations can co­ ordinate certain actions or campaigns and maintain a certain degree of communication, but is has not turned into a movement with a coherent political capacity to seriously challenge neoliberalism. Recently, the urban movement with which the MST has been able to develop a better working relationship has been the Movimento dos Trabalhadores Sem Teto (Movement of the Homeless Workers,

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MTST). The MST helps to train leaders and members of the MTST. Although this collaboration is fairly recent, it is one of the most promising for the MST, because the Sem Teto movement has the potential to develop some of the characteristics that explain the strength of the MST. By gaining control of a territory – that is, of a section of a neighbourhood or a complex of buildings – the Sem Teto can begin to build ‘relatively autonomous communities’ with their autonomous structures of power. This process is still in its initial phases, and it is not certain that the MST will be able to sustain a long-term alliance with the Sem Teto movement. The difficulty that the MST has in translating the solidarity of and support for its struggle into organized political power can be explained by the tendency towards institutionalization that predom­ inates within Brazilian civil society organizations, as it does within unions. In the 1980s, popular movements and NGOs within Brazilian civil society were known for being extremely active and involved in challenging the dominant political culture and opening political space (Dagnino 1998). However, in more recent years ­studies have shown that many of these movements and organizations have become more and more institutionalized, as they participate in the various consultative or decision-making channels created to complement institutional politics (Lavalle et al. 2005; Baierle 2005). This institutionalization is seen by some as a positive development because it allows civil society groups to better represent poor people and influence policies (Lavalle et al. 2005). However, it can also be seen as a negative development because, with the institutional and economic reforms of Cardoso and their continuation by Lula, these channels no longer allow for the mobilization of poor people as they once did (Baierle 2005). For the MST what this means, however, is that many popular movements and civil society organizations are favouring collaboration and participation over mobilization and confrontation. This does not mean that civil society organizations and movements will not participate in mobilization or other forms of direct actions against the government. It does mean, however, that these forms of actions will tend to be considered complementary rather than central, and hence will not form the basis for a strong alliance with other organizations. If understood in terms of political support, the MST strategy

revolution  |  241 towards civil society has been relatively successful. Regardless of the difficulty of building a positive media image while mass media are under the control of corporate interests, the landless have learned from their experience during their national marches and other direct actions. They have also been successful at generating and maintaining the support of unions, popular organizations, church-based groups and leftists of all affiliations. Many surveys that have been conducted over the years have shown that landless people in Brazil have the support of a significant proportion of the population (51 per cent in 1995, 77 per cent in 1997 and 63 per cent in 2000), while the acceptance of land occupation as a legitimate means of pressuring the government varies greatly according to the formulation of the survey question that is used (Comparato 2000: 191). This relative success generated the impression within progressive sectors that the MST, thanks to its dynamism, had replaced the CUT and the PT as the main force of opposition to neoliberalism (Riethof 2004: 38). However, this image has changed as the number of land occupations has diminished and the MST has lost one of its sources of dynamism.

The MST’s strategy towards institutional politics: at the service of the struggle   Most of the mobilizations of the MST (those centred on land, credit, housing, education, healthcare services, infrastructure, etc.) confront or pressure state institutions directly. Logically, the political coloration of each government has made a significant difference in the responses to MST pressure. For instance, the first wave of settlements in the early 1980s in the state of São Paulo benefited from some support (donations of tractors and machinery) by Governor Franco Montoro (1983–87). I was also told in interviews that the PT government of Olivio Dutra in Rio Grande do Sul (1998–2002) had found innovative ways to accelerate land expropriation and direct more financial resources to that goal. The MST has clearly distinguished between negotiating with a sympathetic government and dealing with a government that ignores or persecutes its organization, as was the case in the state of Paraná in the mid-1990s. Hence, throughout its history, the MST has been involved with the creation of the PT, the Diretas Ja campaign and all the subsequent electoral campaigns at local, state and national level. The movement has nevertheless been very cautious in its political strategy with respect

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to institutional politics. Autonomy from political parties and politicians has been one of the guiding principles of its relationship with political society actors. A preference for direct contact with politicians and state officials has been another important strategy guideline in the relationship between the MST and political society actors. The leadership of the MST has met numerous times with the Brazilian presidents: once with Itamar Franco in February 1993, five times with Fernando Henrique Cardoso between 1995 and 2000, ­almost yearly with Lula da Silva after June 2003, and once with Dilma Rousseff after the mobilizations of June 2013. These meetings with the highest political authority in the country signal that the MST has, since 1993, been considered a legitimate and important interlocutor on the issue of agrarian reform. But for the MST, these meetings have meant more than mere legitimacy because many of the meetings have, in fact, produced concrete results. For instance, after the MST leadership met with Itamar Franco and pointed out a few clauses of the new Agrarian Law that would slow down expropri­ation, the president vetoed them (Coletti 2005: 195). Similarly, after meeting the leadership of the MST in April 1997, Fernando Cardoso presented some legislative modifications in order to facilitate expropriations and resolve conflicts over land that had been signalled by the MST (Comparato 2000: 81–2). Although the MST leadership has met with presidents, it is often congressmen and congresswomen who have offered to act as mediators between the executive and the MST. Most of the time, they have been PT representatives, but there are also other left-wing parties that have offered to assist the MST (ibid.: 144). The MST has sometimes agreed to work with elected officials, particularly to gather information about – and attempt to influence – the legislative process. For instance, in the Federal Congress the PT has participated in the creation of a group called Núcleo Agrário that discusses legislative priorities with rural social movements. In an interview with a Brazilian newspaper, João Pedro Stédile, one of the main leaders of the MST, mentioned that in the legislature of 1998–2002 the movement counted on the support of at least seventeen deputies of the PT, four from other left-wing parties, and five senators from the PT (ibid.: 158–9). This is still fewer than the eighty-three deputies who form the bancada ruralista, which defends the interests of the

revolution  |  243 land­owners (ibid.: 150). Thus, the Núcleo Agrário appears not to have much weight, considering that there are a total of 513 federal deputies in the Chamber of Deputies. Stédile’s words are clear, however, as to what the MST expects or does not expect from the Congress: We value the Parliament as a space to be occupied, where we can have people that defend the agrarian reform, but we do not treat it as a priority. In other words, we think that the correlation of forces in our society can be altered if workers organize themselves and conduct a mass struggle through mobilizations and pressures. The Parliament is only the reflection of this correlation of forces. (Stédile in Jornal do Brasil, quoted in ibid.: 156)

Nationally, the MST has chosen not to run for political representation or participate in government. However, at the municipal and state level every local MST section can decide its own position with respect to institutional politics. By and large, up to the present the MST membership has been working alongside PT militants during electoral campaigns, and some MST members have individually parti­ cipated in the party. But the MST, as an organization, has resisted the idea of becoming organically linked to the PT, hoping that the PT, once in government, will remain congruent with its ideology, or at least provide better channels of communication for its demands. However, it is the position of the MST national leadership, as well as of the grassroots membership, that this collaboration with the PT should not divert the movement away from its mobilization strategy, especially when the PT holds power. For example, Armando, a MST settler from Fazenda Macali, in Ronda Alta in the state of Rio Grande do Sul, echoing many other assentados, told me: ‘When the government is ours, it’s worse. The MST stops organizing protests. When the government is from other parties, we go out to protest, to demand credit … When it’s ours, we are scared; we let them resolve things for us. We need to continue pressuring.’

Participating directly in electoral politics: being the voice of peasant struggles  In the case of older settlements in southern Brazil, in order to have more influence and presence in local politics, settlers have decided to become directly involved in local politics under the banner of the PT (Wright and Wolford 2003: 321). Elected MST

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settlers have occupied seats in municipal councils of Paranacity in the state of Paraná and in Ronda Alta and Pontão in the state of Rio Grande do Sul, among others. They have been mayors in Ronda Alta and Pontão as well as in Sumaré in the state of São Paulo. In addition, two well-known members of the MST (Dionilson Marcon and Frei Sérgio Görgen) have been elected representatives to the state congress of Rio Grande do Sul. The cooperative assentamento COPAVI in Paranacity in the state of Paraná discussed the idea of having one of its members run for a seat on the municipal council. The members of the COPAVI decided to allow it, but as is evident in Jacques Pellenz’s comments, the settlement had no illusions about the impact that participation in local politics would have on the balance of forces at the local level: It had always been one of our preoccupations to participate in the community, to have some influence in the decisions of the municipality. If you don’t occupy the space, it ends up always being occupied by the right. We participate without illusion. Politics is a little bit like a straitjacket. We have no illusion that big changes are going to happen there. The position of the MST is not to participate in government. We agree, we don’t want to be occupying the position of minister, but legislative positions are another thing.

No matter how small the impact might be, a presence in local politics can help MST members in the relationship they are bound to establish with the state at the local level. The testimony of a settler from assentamento Fazenda Annoni in the municipality of Pontão in the state of Rio Grande do Sul, José Estevan da Silva, helps to clarify the role that a political representative close to the MST can have: We came to the conclusion that we had to get involved in local politics. In Pontão, the mayor was a fazendero. We had no political representation to help us with our administrative dealings and create some pressure. Our numbers allowed us to elect two repres­ entatives. We discussed that necessity. The settlement proposed eight names, then discussion continued and we reduced it to three. There was a sort of campaign within the settlement. At the end there was only one left, we sent him and he won. That was in 1996. Also, the person who won as mayor was a settler of the MST,

revolution  |  245 but we were still in a minority in the chamber [municipal council], so then we started to mobilize to pressure the chamber and that produced some results.

Although seeking local office is a decision that is discussed and agreed upon collectively by the settlement, the participation of these MST members in local politics is not as representatives of the movement but as individuals. Their actions are nevertheless closely followed and monitored by settlers and most of the time the elected official has to give a percentage of his/her salary to the MST. This is the case because, beyond the practical reasons highlighted above, in strategic terms the movement sees political representation as a way of amplifying its influence within Brazilian society. These MST members turned political representatives can thus work as public spokespersons for agrarian reform and other related social issues. A national leader, Judith Strozaki, told me that participation in local and state politics had to be in line with the overall mission of the MST, which is ‘to organize the poor in the countryside and in the city’. The idea behind this approach to the role of elected official is that a political representative is in a better position to access the media, intervene in public debates and call gatherings and meetings. In Gramscian terms, participation in institutional politics should serve the objectives of mobilization and organization in civil society to intensify class consciousness and popular pressure for agrarian reform and other state policies for popular classes. But, as the same national leader told me, experience has shown that political repres­ entatives, because of their busy agenda, end up ‘administering the institutional machine and are left with very little time to organize the people’. This shortcoming is not the only danger of participating in local or state politics. Participation in politics can also become a divisive issue among the membership and the leadership of the MST. An example of such a division happened in the region of Joia in the state of Rio Grande do Sul in 2001 when the election of a candidate to the state legislature caused a schism within the movement.

Internal tensions around electoral politics  Wendy Wolford (2010) has argued that there is an important distance between MST settlers

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and the leadership, who have a preconceived idea of what the ‘ideal settlers’ should be, often based on the experience of the MST in southern Brazil. This leads the leadership of the movement to impose its views on the grassroots membership. She is partly right. There are ‘historic leaders’ in the MST and the movement does ‘export’ leaders from one region (particularly the south) to others. But what is most striking about the MST is that it is constantly creating new leaders who emerged out of the encampment period. This has even been recognized by their most vehement critics, who argue that the most recent wave of MST leaders (from the mid-2000s) is more radical than previous waves. As we have seen, the process of encampment and land occupation clearly contributes to the emergence of more politicized, critical citizens, who are able to collectively (or sometimes individually) negotiate with the state and with the movement. In the history of each MST settlement, there are plenty of stories of small and big victories against the state and less talked-about, but no less important, stories of victories of the grassroots membership over attempts by the local, regional, state or even national leadership to impose certain decisions without sufficient consultation. Who wins, the grassroots membership or the leadership, will depend on the specific case and internal correlation of forces. The following is a description of such a case, which speaks of the dynamic nature of internal politics within the movement. In 1998, Dionilson Marcon, who became a settler in 1994 through the MST, ran with the support of the MST for the state legislature and won under the banner of the PT. In 2001, as the legislature was up for renewal, the issue of choosing which candidate the movement would support came up for discussion. Many settlers were satisfied with the work that Marcon had accomplished during his first term and, as he stated his intention to seek another term, he got support from many of them. The issue divided the grassroots members, but also brought out a division between the MST leadership and part of the membership. According to Valdecir ‘Zorizo’ de Olivera, from assentamento Rondinha in the municipality of Joía, the sense among many settlers was that Marcon should be allowed to run for at least another term, during which time the decision on the issue of re-election could take place, and that eventually the no-re-election rule should be imposed on the candidate for his third term. According to Valdecir:

revolution  |  247 Marcon accepted, so the question of discussing names began and Frei Sérgio’s name emerged. The movement identified another person, a sympathizer of the MST, João Klein, the mayor of Barrera. But it was finally Frei Sérgio. I believe it was a somewhat manipulated process. Then the municipality of Palmeira das Missões proposed to support Marcon. Over 90 per cent were in favour. The guideline coming from the leadership was that we had to campaign for Frei Sérgio.

It was within this context that the MST leadership and the coordinating committee decided, without consulting the base, not to permit re-election. According to Claudemir Moselin, from the regional leadership of the municipality of Pontão, … when the issue of the re-election came up, the MST positioned itself against it, so it would not promote ‘personalismo’. Certain members and leaders campaigned for Marcon, but there was a real problem: the discussion on re-election wasn’t very broad, it was a discussion limited to the leadership. Marcon was expelled and two others were reprimanded.

Valdecir, one of the reprimanded members of the MST, explained that his decision to campaign for Marcon, regardless of the position of the state leadership, rested on the fact that there had not been, as was recognized by Claudemir, a real internal discussion. In a surprising result, both got elected on 6 October 2002. Valdecir, who remembered the numbers very well, recounted to me: Marcon got 44,000 votes and Frei Sérgio 44,300 votes in all the state. Marcon got 19,600 votes in Palmeira das Missões, Ronda Alta, Sarandí and Pontão; Frei Sérgio 9,000 or 10,000 votes less. Here in Joía, Marcon got 430 votes and Frei Sérgio 400. It was very divided. At the end of the year, there was a discussion in the regions. In Joía, four comrades, including myself, were disciplined and couldn’t participate until June 2002, not even in the cooperative. In Sarandí, one comrade was disciplined and replaced in the regional coordination, and Marcon could not speak for the movement for an undetermined period.

For some MST settlers, such as Ari Marcon (not related to the

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candidate) from assentamento Fazenda Annoni in the municipality of Pontão, the dice were loaded from the very beginning of the process. The no-re-election rule was a pretext for Frei Sérgio’s candidacy. The question of re-election was never discussed at the base. It was a decision at the top. The objective of the leadership was for Frei Sérgio to be state representative this time and federal representative the next.

Whatever the case may be, what this division highlights is that divergent views, conflicts of interest and tensions arise between the MST membership and its leadership. The fact that Marcon won regardless of the position of the MST leadership speaks to the independence of MST settlers. However, the way this conflict was resolved speaks even more to the organizational capacity of the MST and the dynamism of the relationship between the membership and the  leader­ship. In effect, a year after the suspension of Valdecir and  the other MST members who had campaigned for Marcon, a meeting to debate what had happened was called. As Valdecir described this reconciliation process to me, beyond some bitterness, I could sense his satisfaction with the measures taken by the MST to avoid similar problems in the future: In Joía a workshop on the political path of the MST was organized. There were about a hundred participants. The comrades and I were reintegrated, and people criticized the ‘verticalism’ of the decision to not allow re-election. It was decided that no more candidates be presented for the moment and that a state meeting would be called on the question of elections and that the ­issue would be discussed in the núcleos and in the settlements. The regional and state coordinating committee recognized the mistake and agreed to organize the meeting. It will be held in September [2003]. Five representatives will go to the meeting, two from the settlement leadership and three from the núcleos. We are seeing the meeting as a preliminary one. It will be followed by meetings in settlements and núcleos.

According to Valdecir, one of the regional leaders of the MST, there are many lessons to be learned from the conflict, and steps were being taken to prevent it from happening again:

revolution  |  249 The mistake was recognized and we are working so it won’t happen again. Never had something like this happened before: a decision coming from the top. I think it was useful. It reminds the movements that the núcleos are what is most important. It is important for our way of seeing decision-making. There are the ones that see it as ‘let’s take the decision we want in the direction and let’s send the report to the people later’, without calculating the consequences. And there are those that recognize the importance of the núcleos. The question of the re-election rebalanced things. The two camps recognized that the movement is more important than a re-election.

Nevertheless, other MST members, such as Terezinha Marcon from assentamento Fazenda Annoni in the municipality of Pontão in the state of Rio Grande do Sul, were disillusioned with the movement’s leadership and withdrew from participation: ‘The leadership does not listen to the bases … Many times we send proposals and the leadership accepts what it wants. There is no way we can make our voice heard. The only option that is left sometimes is to stop participating.’ This particular conflict around the choice of a candidate to an important elected position raises many questions about the MST position with regard to institutional politics, but most importantly: are the rewards of having a representative worth the risk of a division within the movement’s membership? The way the leadership imposed a decision, bypassing decision-making practices and structures at the level of the settlements, but also the response this action generated from a sector of the membership, suggests that relationships between the two groups are very dynamic. The fact that the leadership had to organize a workshop to review and reflect on the process indicates that the leadership is accountable to the membership. However, the effects of this type of imposition on the membership can vary according to settlers, and can range from Terezinha’s withdrawal to Valdecir’s intention to work within the movement to ensure that núcleos are a central component of decision-making. Beyond this very particular case, the manner in which the MST at the national level has decided to deal with the issue of ­participation

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in institutional politics appears to be a temporary strategy. Some members within the MST think that the movement should not get directly involved in politics and should instead concentrate on its mobilization strategy and in supporting the settlements. This dilemma appears very difficult since the more the movement grows, the more the political question will become problematic. The ‘political question’ is even more problematic today, after eleven years of PT rule at the federal level. The PT in power, neo-developmentalism and neo-corporatism The accession of the Workers’ Party to power in 2003 has been less than a blessing and more than a curse for the struggle of the MST. As we have seen, the MST brings together landless rural workers, involved in land occupation through the creation of encampments, and settlers, struggling to remain on the land after having conquered land through the movement. Both sectors of the membership depend on each other in many ways, but it is clear that both need each other to make progress on their side of the struggle. Landless families occupy­ing land and pressuring the state to expropriate land and turn it over to them need settlers to be successful once they have been given land. Similarly, settlers need growth in numbers in order to have more political and economic power, and this can only be achieved through land occupations. Lula’s and later Dilma’s policies have pulled the rug from under the feet of the MST by weakening this unity and splitting the membership of the MST. Indeed, as we will see, on the one hand, the policies of the PT administrations have slowed down the pace of land distributions, while improving the support to settlers without drastically changing the model of agriculture. On the other hand, by significantly expanding cash transfers to families living in extreme poverty, they have drastically reduced the number of people willing to join an MST encampment. Lula’s victory in 2002 was the culmination of twenty-two years of dedicated efforts on the part of hundreds of thousands of activists. The Lula and the PT that won the presidential elections of 2002 were not those of the early 1980s, not even those that opposed the neo­ liberal reforms of President Fernando Henrique Cardoso (1995–2002). In order to win the 2002 election, Lula had to go a very long way to tone down his leftist image, choosing José Alencar Gomes da Silva

revolution  |  251 of the right-wing Liberal Party as his vice-president. By the end of the second round of the 2002 election, he even had to publish his ‘Carta ao Povo Brasileiros’ (Letter to the Brazilian People), which critics dubbed ‘Carta aos Banqueiros’ (Letter to the Bankers), because in it he promised to keep inflation down, the budget balanced, the internal debt under control, and honour Brazil’s foreign debt (Sader 2011: 54–5). Lula did not govern in a way that would distinguish him from his immediate predecessor. If one takes his monetary policy and the latest reforms to the public sector’s pension plan into consideration, one could even say that his government represented a continuation of Fernando Henrique Cardoso’s agenda. In the formation of his first cabinet, he had to balance individuals from the ‘establishment’ with individuals with social activist credentials. For instance, for the position of director of the Central Bank, Lula appointed Henrique Mereilles, former president of BankBoston and a member of Cardoso’s Partido Social Democráta Brasileiro (Brazilian Social Democratic Party, PSDB). For minister of finance, Lula chose Antonio Palocci from one of the most moderate wings of the PT. On the other side of the political spectrum, Lula chose Olivio Dutra, former governor of Rio Grande do Sul with affinities with the left of the PT, as his minister of cities. Marina Silva, an activist who sided with Chico Mendes in the protection of the Amazon, was made minister of the environment. Nowhere was this attempt to balance forces more evident and contradictory than in the ministries that deal with rural issues. Roberto Rodrigues, former president of the Brazilian Association of Agribusiness, became minister of agriculture while the Ministry of Rural Development, responsible for agrarian reform, was put into the hands of Miguel Rossetto, former vice-governor of Rio Grande do Sul, from the left of the PT, and sympathetic to the MST (Löwy 2003). Lula also followed in Cardoso’s footsteps by promoting the in­ terests of agribusiness and large agricultural producers because of the large export revenues they generate. Early in his mandate, he lifted the ban on GM crops and made the production of ethanol from sugar cane, controlled by large capitalist farmers and corporations, one of the new economic ‘engines of growth’ of Brazil (Fernandes et al. 2010). Here, Lula went even farther than previous governments, by

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providing billions of dollars’ investment in infrastructure to transport ethanol to markets in Brazil and abroad, as well as credits for the day-to-day operations of the industry (Vergara-Camus forthcoming). With respect to the distribution of land, Lula had promised that he would settle 550,000 families. He did not quite live up to his promises. In his first mandate, the government stated that it had distributed land to 448,000 families between 2003 and 2007, but several experts contest these numbers and argue that most of the actions were legalizations of old settlements. According to these experts, Lula settled only 192,257 new families in his first mandate (Fernandes 2008: 79). Although it held back during the first year of the Lula government, the MST resumed its actions in June 2004, by launching a series of land occupations throughout Brazil and undertaking another march to Brasilia in May 2005. To compensate for the lack of swift agrarian reform, Lula’s government took some steps to help small agricultural producers. Debts were renegotiated and partially cancelled and credits were increased and made available before harvest. Lula also sought to integrate family producers into the different agricultural commodity chains. In the case of biofuels, in December 2004 the federal government created the Programa Nacional de Produção e Uso de Biodiesel (the National Programme of Production and Use of Biodiesel, PNPB), which reduces taxes for enterprises that buy a minimum amount of the agricultural input from small producers. The PNPB also facilitates credits for small producers who want to acquire equipment to allow them to integrate into the biodiesel commodity chain (Vergara-Camus forthcoming). Critics who have studied the application of the PNPB argue that the programme does not effectively give the means to peasant producers to collectively set up their own production infrastructure, but rather subordinates them to large agribusiness corporations operating in the sector (Fernandes et al. 2010: 808). What this policy, like many others of its kind, shows is the typical PT way of dealing with popular demands. It simply introduces a requirement on capital to ‘integrate the poor’ and pays them for this ‘service’ by way of tax exemptions or other benefits. Alongside this, very often the PT will use the state. For instance, the Lula administration also decided to buy up to 30 per cent of food crops from small producers for its poverty-relief programmes. How-

revolution  |  253 ever, since it depends on the president’s will and the collaboration of municipal governments, this measure is another way of reinforcing the clientelist pattern between small farmers, the PT and the state. For Lula’s re-election bid in 2006, the MST remained silent throughout the campaign, giving its support to Lula only a few days before the second-round vote. Even though Lula’s policies had been disappointing for its militants, the MST was not ready to turn its back on the PT. The MST still believed that social movements had to concentrate on pressuring the state into adopting measures more favourable to popular sectors. Lula’s balancing act between capital and popular sectors seems to have only partly confirmed this analysis. In 2008, in comparison with 2003, the budget for infrastructure and sustainable development for agrarian reform settlements increased tenfold and the credits that help families that have been awarded land to set up their farms increased fivefold (MDA and INCRA 2010: 49, 83). In September 2009, Lula’s administration sent to the Congress a legislative project revising – although only for a small proportion of the territory – the productivity indexes that determine which properties are subject to expropriation. This had been a long-standing demand of rural movements because the existing indexes were based on the productivity and technological level of 1975. The same month, Lula also sent his own legislative project regarding oil exploration and exploitation to the Congress. The project included elements proposed by the O Petróleo é Nosso campaign, such as a social fund, but also provided ample opportunities for the private sector. However, these two mild measures seemed to respond much more to the electoral calendar of the presidential elections of 2010 than to a real commitment to social movements and organized sectors of the working class. An unambiguous governmental decision came at the end of Lula’s administration. On 26 June 2009, by ratifying Decree 458, which legalizes 67.4 million hectares of Amazonian land (equivalent to the size of England and France combined), in the face of criticism from his former minister of the environment, Marina Silva, Lula definitively sided with the landed class. This decision was very controversial because, even though thousands of squatters will be able to legalize their access to land, several clauses of Decree 458 could open the door to a new round of illegal land grabbing and consolidation of large latifundios in the Amazon region, which will directly benefit the

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large capitalist farmers and agribusiness. Agrarian reform statistics for the end of Lula’s second mandate cast further doubts on how much the PT is committed to agrarian reform. According to official sources, his government distributed land to 614,000 families ­during his two terms, making him the president who has distributed most land in the history of Brazil, ahead of Cardoso, who benefited 541,000 families. However, scholars of the agrarian reform, such as Ariovaldo Umbelino de Oliveira from the University of São Paulo, have once again questioned these figures and contend that most of the distributions, as in the time of Cardoso, were actually legalization of land that was already being farmed and that Lula distributed land to a mere 211,000 new families (Arruda 2011). This lack of commitment to agrarian reform has continued under Dilma Rousseff, who, in her first year, expropriated only twenty-eight properties, fewer than any president since 1992, when the then incumbent, Collor de Mello, was strongly against agrarian reform (Caramante and Carvalho 2013).

The effects of conditional cash transfers on the membership base of the MST  Traditionally, the different levels of government had the ability to establish programmes that addressed extreme poverty and food insecurity. In the countryside, one of the most common measures has been the distribution of food baskets (cesta básica) to poor families by municipal governments in collaboration with state and federal ministries. These very often depended on the political will of local politicians and/or the political mobilization and pressure of local  social movements. Throughout its history, the MST very often pressured local governments in order to access food for their acampados and acampadas. However, these programmes were not very important although they did cover a large proportion of the rural population. The creation and expansion by Lula of a Conditional Cash Transfer programme first called Fome Zero and later Bolsa Família for families living in extreme poverty has dramatically changed this situation.3 CCTs issued by the federal government began with President ­Fernando Henrique Cardoso in 2001, but this policy instrument gained real momentum when President Lula da Silva came to ­office in 2003. Indeed, the federal government has placed CTTs at the centre of its poverty alleviation strategy ever since. The budget for

revolution  |  255 these programmes has increased from 0.03 per cent of GDP in 2003 when President Lula took office to 0.44 per cent of GDP in 2012, the first year of Dilma Roussef’s administration (MDS 2013: 13). In addition to CCTs, there are also various Non-Conditional Cash Transfer programmes. The rural pension plan, the assistance to the disabled and the assistance to the elderly are probably the programmes that have contributed the most in reducing extreme poverty. In 2009, 24 million people were receiving social security transfers, 6.6 million unemployment insurance, while the Bolsa Família reached 12.4 million people (IPEA and SPI/MP 2010: 14). In 2010 in Brazil, 26.4 per cent of the total population was covered by Bolsa Família, while this percentage was just over 20 per cent in 2005, two years into Lula’s first administration. After evaluating the success of Bolsa Família and identifying the remaining challenges, on 2 June 2011 President Dilma Rousseff launched the most recent poverty alleviation programme, called Plano Brazil Sem Miséria (Plan Brazil without Misery). The programme aims to locate and include the 16.2 million Brazilians still living in extreme poverty. Brasil Sem Miseria is organized around three axes: 1) guaranteeing income; 2) providing access to public services; and 3) productive inclusion. This last axis seeks to complement the cash transfers with other income-generating opportunities, such as support for the creation of micro-businesses and cooperatives, employment-enhancing training, such as adult literacy and skills development, the employment of beneficiaries of cash transfers in public works, or the purchase of food by the different levels of governments from family farmers in situations of extreme poverty. Bolsa Família was very rewarding for President Lula and the PT in the electoral arena (Hunter and Power 2007) and has had a significant impact on the reduction of poverty. However, it has not reduced the stark income inequalities in Brazil, and since it has not been accompanied by a distribution of land, it has not tackled one of the root causes of inequality and poverty in the countryside. Nonetheless, it has had a profound impact on the MST, which no longer finds as many recruits for its land occupations (see note 7, p. 305). Even worse, considering the long clientelist history of Brazilian politics, in addition to the fact that eligibility depends on a simple declaration of income by the beneficiary, these anti-poverty programmes have

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demobilized poor landless peasants and have made them once again potential clients of political bosses. From a Marxist perspective, we could characterize President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s (2003–10) policies as ‘neo-developmentalist’ because they favoured the sectors of the national bourgeoisie whose activities are centred on the domestic market (Morais and Saad-Filho 2011). However, it is also important to recognize the ‘neo-populist’ character of its social policies because they allocated poverty-­alleviating funds to popular classes along clientelistic lines. Lecio Morais and Alfredo Saad-Filho (2005: 4–6) argue that Lula’s first government represented a ‘losers’ alliance’ composed of several sectors that had not benefited from the policies of President Fernando Henrique Cardoso (1994–2002). Among these ‘losers’ figured the traditional manufacturing elite of the south-east, who favoured nationalist and expansionary policies, and several ‘notorious right-wing oligarchs, landowners,4 and influential local politicians from the poorest regions of Brazil’ (ibid.: 6). What Morais and Saad-Filho could not foresee, however, was that some class fractions of this ‘­losers’ alliance’, specifically traditional landlords from the states of São Paulo, Mato Grosso do Sul, Mato Grosso and Goiais, would manage to use the state to relocate themselves within the dominant ‘historical bloc’ by linking themselves to the sugar-cane ethanol industry. This alliance is clearly related to the lack of agrarian reform, as land distribution in regions where sugar-cane production is dominant has been stalled ever since the ethanol boom (Vergara-Camus forthcoming). How to act with the PT in government remains a puzzle for the MST. The movement is divided as to the steps to take in order to rebuild a popular political alternative for poor Brazilians, but there are no signs that the MST will invest its activist time in the construction of the Partido Socialismo e Liberdad (Socialism and Liberty Party, PSOL), created in 2004 by PT parliamentarians expelled for criticizing Lula’s policies. The MST’s pragmatic position towards institutional politics and the local nature of the militancy of MST members within the PT seem to weigh more than the need to create a new political instrument for the labouring classes. At least for the moment, many MST members still prefer to use the PT machinery to wage their local battles in their municipalities and states, even if it means sacrificing the possibility of more far-reaching change.

revolution  |  257 The MST’s critical support for Dilma Rousseff, the presidential candidate of the PT, at the end of the second round of elections in 2010, signals that the movement is not ready to change its strategy. The MST seems to share Emir Sader’s analysis that the PT is a ‘hybrid, contradictory government, in which on the one hand finance capital played an essential role, and, on the other, there was an increasing development of redistributive social policies’ (Sader 2011: 64). Zapatismo: building ‘another way of doing politics’ When in the early weeks of 1994 the EZLN insisted that its political project and strategy were not about taking state power but rather about changing the relationship between the rulers and the ruled, it generated enormous confusion within the left. When Subcomandante Marcos, through his communiqués, developed the ideas of mandar obedeciendo and autonomy, things became a little clearer for its leftist supporters since many sectors of the left were able to relate to the idea of self-government and popular power. However, if for most people on the left in Mexico mandar obedeciendo and autonomy could be translated into concrete practices in the case of indigenous communities, the majority of Zapatista urban supporters and the EZLN itself have had great difficulty in conceptualizing how this strategy could apply to the urban and national context. The achievements and the setbacks of the Zapatista national strategy in recent years are, to a great extent, outcomes of that difficulty.

Being a semi-clandestine organization: the greatest barrier  The EZLN, it should not be forgotten, is a guerrilla movement. However, it is not a traditional guerrilla movement because the use of arms has an objective different from the one it had in traditional Latin American guerrilla movements. The EZLN has not unleashed a ‘campaign of revolutionary violence’ against state targets or elements of the ruling class, as previous guerrilla movements would have done. For the EZLN, the use of arms is not considered a solution to the injustice caused by capitalism and the implementation of neoliberal policy. Rather, the Zapatistas have presented their decision to take up arms as the last political option open to them in the particular circumstances of Chiapas. They stated very early on that the use of arms was not a means to take state power but rather a means to

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force the Mexican state and society to listen to their demands. The use of arms was never elevated by the Zapatistas to the status of a universal solution, but was rather presented as an exception, a limited and partial response, with specific ends, to extreme circumstances. Hence, very early on, on 20 January 1994, the EZLN made sure to recognize and underline the importance of all forms of struggle, including elections (EZLN 1994b: 103). Hence, although symbolically significant internally, nationally and internationally, arms have not been the main political advantage of the Zapatistas in the battle for public opinion in which they confront the federal government. On the contrary, the Zapatistas have used the undeniable conditions of poverty and marginalization of the indigenous population of Chiapas, as well as the clear lack of response on the part of the state, to their advantage. For instance, the recognition by the entire political class – including President Salinas – of the dramatic situation of poverty in which indigenous people lived was one of the first victories of the EZLN. Hence, surprisingly, the use of arms, although rejected by the great majority of the population, came to be tolerated in the case of indigenous Zapatista peasants, especially once they made clear that they sought a political and negotiated solution to their demands, and suggested that they would give up their arms once a political solution was reached (EZLN 1994c: 165). However, the fact that the Zapatistas possess arms, and that they have attracted worldwide political support, has obliged the federal goverment to seek negotiations with the EZLN. Considering that it is a very poorly armed guerrilla movement, the EZLN came to rely on national and international support to avoid being crushed by the federal army. Fortunately for the EZLN, many sectors of Mexican civil society, from the rural and urban popular classes to the middle classes, and the intelligentsia, recognized the EZLN’s demands as legitimate ones and pressured the Salinas government to declare a truce within two weeks of the outbreak of the guerrilla offensive. As the years have passed, this support has evolved, but it still remains a fundamental factor in the conflict that pits the EZLN against the federal government. While securing and defending access to land and the construction of autonomy have been the main concrete objectives of the EZLN in Zapatista territory, the EZLN has had to build national support for

revolution  |  259 its struggle in order to protect its achievements in Chiapas and to defend itself against military encirclement and offensives. Because of this peculiar context of ‘armed peace’ or ‘low-intensity warfare’, and because the EZLN is still a semi-clandestine organization, the way the EZLN relates to other political actors in Mexico differs greatly from the way the MST does in Brazil. The first major difference is that most EZLN proposals, even if they have sought to build a national antineoliberal movement, have, in practice, tended to be more embedded in the short-term conjuncture than in the longer-term horizon of the construction of a political movement. The second major difference is that, in contrast to the MST, as a result of the conflict, the EZLN has been literally blocked from expanding outside Chiapas, although it has expanded outside its initial stronghold in the Lacandona jungle to other indigenous regions of Chiapas. The third major difference is that at the national level the EZLN, unlike the MST, has not struggled for a concrete objective such as an agrarian reform programme. At the beginning of the uprising, the EZLN had very ambitious plans, and indigenous autonomy was one among many other Zapatista demands. As I will show, it was partly despite the EZLN’s initial inclination that indigenous autonomy became its main concrete objective.

Subcomandante Insurgente Marcos  Subcomandante Marcos is, at the same time, one of its greatest assets and a major limitation to the politics of the EZLN. Since the very beginning of the uprising, thanks to his image, charisma, impressive general culture, sense of humour, irreverence, literary talent and clever use of the mass media, Marcos caught the attention of the Mexican and international public. His image and his discourse are probably the elements that Marcos has learned to use most effectively to generate the sympathy of people from radically different ideological backgrounds. On the one hand, Marcos’ image – the military uniform, the ammunition across his chest, etc. – is reminiscent of Che Guevara and attracts numerous militants of the radical left. On the other hand, Marcos’ discourse, which reframes the traditional Latin American revolutionary imaginary in terms of radical democracy, distinguishes him from previous generations of guerrilla leaders and attracts the support of more moderate sectors of the Mexican left. In addition, many symbols of the EZLN link the current guerrilla with a ‘collective imaginary’ based

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on the Mexican revolution and previous peasant rebellions, which is still extremely important among popular sectors (Rajchenberg and Héau-Lambert 1996; Gilly 1997; Vergara-Camus 2000: 96–100). Moreover, thanks to his university education and knowledge of Mexican popular culture, Marcos has been able to reach a great diversity of audiences, from intellectuals and university students to workers and peasants. Hence, although other Zapatista leaders – such as Comandantes Moises, Tacho, David, Ramona and Esther – have made numerous public interventions, it is Marcos who plays the role of transmission belt between the EZLN and Mexican civil society, and the international network of supporters. He is the main spokesman of the EZLN, and it is with him that Mexican political leaders, organ­ izations and intellectuals enter into dialogue. This centralization of the public image of the EZLN in Marcos’ persona, because it has not permitted the diversity of opinions that must exist within the EZLN to be known, has actually been detrimental to the movement. During the first few years following the uprising, Subcomandante Marcos benefited from a high level of sympathy, and a surprisingly good relationship with intellectuals, who in Mexico, because they are allocated space in newspapers, magazines and television programmes, are particularly important for orienting public opinion.5 From 1994 to 1997, the ideas, proposals and events promoted by the Zapatistas and Marcos were generally received positively by most of the left-wing forces. However, as Marcos’ critique of the ‘political class’ and the PRD became more corrosive, his political position, irreverent style and relative intolerance of opposing views started to irritate many leftist intellectuals. If the counter-insurgency war against the EZLN, unleashed by Zedillo from 1997 to 1999, prevented many left-wing intellectuals from publicly criticizing Marcos, the election of Vicente Fox in 2000 created an environment in which many believed that criticism of Marcos would not have dramatic­ ally negative consequences on the Zapatista struggle. Hence, since 2000, the relationship between Marcos and left-wing intellectuals has deteriorated, and many who were Zapatista supporters have now distanced themselves from the movement. In recent years, Marcos’ temperament and attitude towards intellectuals has thus caused the loss of important supporters among the Mexican intelligentsia and middle classes.

revolution  |  261 The EZLN, through Subcomandante Marcos, constantly intervenes in Mexican political debate in order to convince other actors that are close to its positions. All the communiqués of the EZLN are published by the national newspaper La Jornada, which maintains three correspondents in Chiapas. When communiqués are important, they are discussed by the right-wing journal Reforma, which had maintained a correspondent in San Cristóbal de las Casas until the mid-2000s. Until then, every time the EZLN published a communiqué, the press sought the president and his minister of the interior for their opinion. Still to this day, every time the EZLN presents a proposal for an event, a meeting or a campaign, intellectuals discuss it in the pages of La Jornada, the weekly magazine Proceso, and sometimes the more conservative newspapers Reforma and El Universal. Hence, even if it is no longer the novelty it was in the first few years following the uprising, the EZLN still resonates with significant sectors of Mexican civil society.6 The relationship between Subcomandante Marcos and leaders of popular movements is not as easy to assess, because it is not conducted through the media and does not benefit from any significant media coverage. Hence, very little is known about the exchanges and dialogues that Marcos has had with leaders of indigenous movements, workers’ movements or peasant movements. What is clear, though, is that the EZLN has refused to enter into any kind of alliance with organizations that have any kind of links to political parties. Marcos has avoided commenting on any of the initiatives presented by dissident sectors of the corporatist structure of the PRI and has been extremely intolerant with leaders of independent popular organ­ izations that have chosen to engage in negotiations with the state. Hence, through Marcos, the Zapatistas have consciously chosen not to add their voice to certain struggles and have sought alliances only with movements that remain autonomous from political parties and the state, which in Mexico are still a minority. The EZLN has thus effectively cut itself off from major political actors, only to rely on sporadic contacts with groups of supporters.

Combining mere survival of the organization with the refounding of the nation  The Zapatista national strategy has had many objectives since 1994. First and foremost, over the years, the main objective

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has been to maintain a network that can support the movement at particular moments of the conflict with the Mexican state. The second objective has been the formation of a broad opposition front with other popular organizations from the left, including political parties. The main goal of this front was initially to defeat the one-party PRI system and its neoliberal policies and contribute to what they call ‘the refounding of the nation’. In all its most important communiqués from 1994 to 2006, the ‘Declarations of the Lacandona Jungle’,7 the EZLN has argued the necessity of organizing a national Constituent Convention to write a new Constitution, in which a new relationship between indigenous peoples and the state was but one aspect. The other major aspect, in the eyes of the EZLN, is a transformation of the relationship between the rulers and the ruled in such a way that it could be the grounds for reviving non-capitalist relations. In other words, contrary to what some have argued, the politics of the Zapatista is not only anti-politics or anti-state (Holloway 2002), but also a politics of radical democratization of the state, whereby power would be distributed and exercised differently. The Zapatista national strategy has been oriented to creating the conditions to reach these goals. All the political organizations that the EZLN has proposed have had the mandate of promoting a Constituent Convention that would allow for the participation of all sectors of civil society, and not only the representatives of political parties. Certainly for the Zapatistas, the idea of a Constituent Assembly was one of the ways to make a national impact and mobilize social and political forces towards longer-term social transformations than simply displacing the PRI from power. The third objective has been the construction of a new type of political organization inspired by Zapatismo that would orient its actions towards the organization of civil society rather than electoral politics. Ever since it burst on to the national scene in 1994, the EZLN had benefited from an important show of support from many sectors of Mexican society, particularly among the popular classes and the middle-class intelligentsia. Emerging at a moment when the Mexican left was still not fully integrated in the political system, the EZLN became a major reference point for popular movements and progressive sectors of civil society. However, the liberalization of institutional politics in the 1990s through the integration of the

revolution  |  263 PRD into the party system changed the political context, rendering Zapatista attempts to build bridges with the PRD and civil society organizations and movements much more difficult. But very distinct patterns of collaboration have developed over the years between the EZLN and civil society actors, and between the EZLN and sectors from political society.

The EZLN’s strategy towards institutional politics: a short story that repeats itself  From the very beginning of the uprising, the guerrilla movement clearly stated that its struggle and demands had national dimensions. Hence, the federal government, or, better, the state at large, was the main interlocutor of the EZLN. Indeed, in the first Declaration of the Lacandona Jungle, the EZLN called on the powers of the Union to dismiss president Carlos Salinas de Gortari and form a transitional government that would guarantee free elections (EZLN 1994a: 73). Hence, the EZLN did recognize political institutions even though it did not recognize the power-holders in these institutions. Moreover, the EZLN was very careful always to remain symbolically within the nation by grounding its discourse on national symbols of independence, the revolution and the Mexican Constitution (VergaraCamus 2000: 95–101). In contrast to the relationship that the MST has with actors of Brazilian political society, and owing to the Zapatista rejection of state power and institutional politics, the relationship between the EZLN and Mexican political society has never been very fluid. During the first years following the uprising, the EZLN was much less dismissive of electoral and institutional politics than it is today. The position of the EZLN with respect to institutional politics evolved according to its reading of the dynamics of the new institutional politics in transition. The visit of Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas, the leader of the PRD, to Zapatista territory in May 1994 was the first formal meeting between the EZLN and a member of political society. The EZLN had invited Cárdenas to exchange opinions on the Zapatista demands and to hear from him which positions he would adopt in the event he became president. Although they acknowleged Cárdenas’ ‘irreproachable struggle for democracy and against the authoritarianism of Salinas’, the EZLN did not hesitate to criticize the PRD for not practising

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democracy internally (EZLN 1994b: 237). Hence, from the start, the EZLN made public its criticism of political parties and the PRD, which had until then represented the main opposition force and had suffered from the assassinations of hundreds of its grassroots militants. However, throughout the 1990s, the EZLN never attacked Cárdenas, understanding that he was highly respected by broad sectors of Mexican society. This has not been the case with any other Mexican politician.

Early attempts: linking civil society mobilization with institutional politics  The EZLN entered national politics in 1994, when the democratization process was in its infancy and when the main objective of opposition forces seemed to be the ousting of the PRI. The Zapatistas thus used their early popularity to attempt to link social mobilization within civil society with the electoral struggle, and organized the Convención Nacional Democrática (National Democratic Convention, CND) in July 1994, a month before the presidential elections and called for the formation of the Movimiento de Liberación Nacional (National Liberation Movement, MLN) in January 1995. Similarly, with the objective of providing civil society, especially indigenous people, with a new institutional settting for political participation, from October 1995 to February 1996 the EZLN carried out negotiations for the San Andrés Accords on Indigenous Rights and Culture with the Mexican state. The CND, organized from 6 to 8 August 1994 in the Lacandona jungle, was the first attempt by the EZLN to establish formal links with the different sectors of the Mexican left and to present its ­vision of the political agenda for the forces of the left. The CND was also for the Zapatistas a way to enter the national arena in order to try to influence both the presidential elections and, beyond the elections, the formation of a coalition of popular forces against neoliberalism. The EZLN saw the CND as the first step towards the organization of a Constituent Assembly in charge of writing a new Constitution, which would reverse the modifications to the social clauses of the Constitution of 1917 and respond to the new demands for greater political participation (EZLN 1994c: 297). Following the event, through the ‘Second Declaration of the Lacandona Jungle’, the EZLN proposed turning the convention into a national organization open to any

revolution  |  265 Mexican citizen. In the eyes of the EZLN, the purpose of the CND was nothing more and nothing less than to ‘organize civic expression and the defence of the popular will’ (EZLN 1994e: 275; Womack 1999: 284). In order to carry out this task and to contribute to the refounding of the nation through a new Constituent Assembly, the EZLN proposed to the CND that it organize at the grassroots level in ejidos, neighbourhoods, municipalities, workplaces, schools, etc., across Mexico in order to gather ‘the popular proposals for the new constitutional law and the demands to be fulfilled by the new government emanating from its constitution’ (EZLN 1994e: 276; Womack 1999: 284). On the immediate political horizon, the CND was to decide on a programme of struggle that would include the call for a trans­ itional government that would put an end to the party-state system and presidentialism. Finally, on the electoral front, the CND would call upon the Mexican people to vote against the party-state system and would organize in order to defend the popular will (EZLN 1994f: 299). Hence, by calling for the formation of an umbrella organization and a Constituent Assembly, the EZLN was attempting to place itself in the role of the initiator of a new national-popular historical bloc that would aim at bringing down the PRI. The victory of the PRI presidential candidate, Ernesto Zedillo, a result that many on the left had not predicted, cut these ambitions short, and forced the EZLN to reconsider its strategy and alliances. In September 1994, in a communiqué that presented the Zapatista analysis of the presidential election, the EZLN acknowleged the trajectory of some leaders of the Partido Acción Nacional (Nacional Action Party, PAN, the major right-wing party in Mexico) who had been opponents to electoral frauds organized by the PRI in the 1980s,8 and considered them possible participants in an opposition front. However, the idea of inviting them to join the MLN was abandoned in favour of a clearly left-wing opposition movement. Indeed, in November 1994, the EZLN proposed the idea of creating the ‘parliamentary branch’ of the CND by inviting independent deputies and senators to declare themselves ‘parliamentarians of the convention’ and ‘to pledge to follow the indications of the CND’ (EZLN 1995b: 124). The EZLN, through its ‘Third Declaration of the Lacandona Jungle’, later called for the MLN to organize the resistance against the Zedillo government and coordinate efforts with political parties,

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especially the PRD. The EZLN proposed that the objective of the MLN should be the formation of a government of democratic transition that would focus on the following tasks: 1) [eliminate] the party-state system that would actually separate the government from the PRI; 2) reform the electoral law that would guarantee clean elections … and hold new general elections across the country; 3) convoke a Constituent Assembly for the elaboration of a new Constitution; 4) recognize the particularities of indigenous groups, and their right to inclusive autonomy and citizenship; 5) give a new orientation to the national economic programme … by favouring the most dispossessed sectors of the country, the workers and the peasants, who are the principal producers of the wealth that others appropriate. (EZLN 1995d: 192–3; Womack 1999: 293)

Since no parliamentarian accepted the idea, the EZLN responded with another of its incendiary yet contradictory communiqués, in which it criticized the political class for its ‘cynicism’ and for ‘backing down’ in the name of a ‘disguised gradualism’, but at the same time the EZLN continued hoping to form a coalition with cardenismo (EZLN 1995c: 148). If these initiatives did not prosper, it was due to a great extent to the fact that the Zapatista proposals of not recognizing Zedillo’s victory, forming a transition government and calling for a Constituent Assembly were far from being a priority for the PRD. First, the PRD did not think it had the capacity to contest the results of the elections. Secondly, the PRD had been struggling for years to win elections and have its electoral victories recognized, so it was not ready to challenge the Mexican state. Even though it was born, in part, out of a split within the PRI between nationalists and neoliberals, and even though it presented itself as a critic of the free market policies of Carlos Salinas de Gortari and the PRI, the PRD was not seeking to fundamentally transform the political system, but simply to be integrated within it as a player like all other players. In fact, this search for integration and the institutionalization of the parties from the radical left had been a tendency since the political reform of 1977 (Hellman 1988: 258; Anguiano 1997: 87–9). Hence the failure of the Zapatista strategy, to a great extent, can be explained by the decision of President Ernesto Zedillo to

revolution  |  267 negotiate electoral reform with the PRD. In a contradictory twist of history, the Zapatista rebellion and the possibility of seeing the radicalization of the electoral left forced the Zedillo government to negotiate an electoral reform that the president probably would not have ­accepted under other circumstances. As a result, the PRD became further integrated into the political system, and at the same time this integration cut off the possibility of a real alliance between the EZLN and the PRD (Anguiano 1997: 159, 162–3; García de León 2002: 252). In addition, Subcomandante Marcos’ constant attacks on the PRD and the party’s own fall into factionalism and electoralism ended up terminating any significant links between the EZLN and the PRD. However, the EZLN attempted on several occasions until 2001 to find ways to reach out to political society.

The betrayal of the San Andrés negotiations and the definitive rejection of institutional politics  In subsequent years, with specific regard to elections, the EZLN moved towards a much more ‘case-by-case’ attitude based on the evaluation of the local conditions in which elections were taking place. In the mid-term elections of 1997, the EZLN maintained a position of ‘sceptical support’ towards the PRD and electoral politics at the national level, and even congratulated Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas for his victory in Mexico City. However, the EZLN also argued that, given the high level of military presence and political repression, there were no suitable conditions for democratic and free elections in many other regions of Mexico (EZLN 1997a). As I will demonstrate below, from 1994 to 1998, even though it became ever more cynical about political parties, politicians and institutional politics in general, the EZLN attempted to build bridges with the PRD and various federal legislators. Like the MST, the Zapatistas had not completely abandoned yet the idea of using the spaces within institutional politics to mobilize sectors of civil society. But unlike the MST, they also wanted to attempt to change the institutional settings of the Mexican state in favour of indigenous and civil autonomy. The EZLN used the negotiations of the San Andrés Accords, which took place from October 1995 to February 1996, to put into practice its idea of pushing for a Constituent Assembly. After the federal government had voted on a law that called for a negotiated solution to the conflict in Chiapas and gave some guarantees to the EZLN,9

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the EZLN pushed the government to accept a series of talks that would touch upon all the major national issues. The idea was to transform the different dialogues into something equivalent to a Constituent Assembly. The talks were supposed to be comprised of six separate dialogues: 1) Indigenous Rights and Culture; 2) Democracy and Justice; 3) Well-Being and Development; 4) Conciliation in Chiapas; 5) Women’s Rights in Chiapas; 6) End of Hostilities (EZLN 1995e: 445–6). The first issue was indigenous rights and culture. The EZLN invited well-known scholars and leaders of other local and national indigenous movements to sit on its side of the negotiating table or to attend as guests, which gave the talks a real national character (Rus et al. 2003: 17). At the end of this dialogue in 1996, the government signed the San Andrés Accords with the EZLN and promised to transform them into legislation and to have them ratified by the Federal Congress. But the federal government broke off talks right at the beginning of the second dialogue on ‘Democracy and Justice’, and all of the EZLN’s attention and that of its supporters within civil society and political society turned to indigenous issues. In November 1996, the Comisión para la Concordia y la Pacificación en Chiapas (Commission for Agreement and Pacification in Chiapas, COCOPA)10 worked on a legislative text. According to Jaime Martínez Veloz (2005), a deputy of the PRI and a member of the COCOPA, both parties agreed to the text in late November, but Zedillo finally rejected it in December (Rus et al. 2003: 19). The refusal by the Mexican state to uphold what it had signed in San Andrés was a major turning point in the conflict between the EZLN and the Mexican state. From then on, the EZLN has dedicated the greatest part of its efforts to getting the state to respect its signature and the movement’s political agenda has been limited, to a large extent, to indigenous issues. The Mexican state has thus managed to limit the influence of the EZLN and downplay its national character. In this context, the Zapatista proposal for ‘refounding the nation’ has not been given serious consideration by any other forces of the Mexican left, as they have been more preoccupied with either localized or sectoral demands or electoral politics.11 Antonio García de León argues that the PRD did not have a real commitment to the recognition of the San Andrés Accords and the ratification of the COCOPA law, but

revolution  |  269 rather that it used it as a platform to make progress on other issues. He points out that: ‘It is striking, for instance, that the parliamentary delegation most interested in achieving peace was not the PRD’s, as one might expect, but that of the PRI, headed by then senator Pablo Salazar, and local representative Juan Roque Flores’ (García de León 2002: 264).12 It is possible that this fact was also known by the Zapatistas and further undermined the relationship with the PRD. In 1997, the government of President Zedillo unleashed a counterinsurgency campaign against the Zapatista autonomous municipalities and tried to isolate the Zapatistas by attempting to co-opt the EZLN’s political base through micro-development programmes, infrastructure works and poverty relief programmes, which had already began in 1994 (Rus and Collier 2003: 53–4). The Mexican army intensified its actions within Zapatista territory, destroyed the infrastructure that the Zapatista autonomous municipalities had built, imprisoned dozens of Zapatista supporters, and encouraged the creation of indigenous paramilitary groups. One of the worst atrocities of this campaign was the massacre of 18 children, 22 women and 6 men in the village of Acteal on 22 December 1997 (Rus et al. 2003: 18). When the state tried to further weaken the EZLN by attempting to co-opt its social base, the EZLN adopted a position of resistance and, in a manner similar to that in which the MST responded to Cardoso’s attempt to isolate them, intensified its efforts to mobilize Zapatista supporters within Mexican civil society. Regardless of the growing distance between the PRD and the EZLN, from 1994 to 1998 the PRD denounced the government’s military strategy in the conflict and appeared to be pushing for the recognition of the San Andrés Accords. The 1997 elections were, however, the last opportunity that the Zapatistas gave to electoral politics to convince them of its potential to bring about political change. Since 1998, as the years and electoral campaigns passed and the new electoral politics became more and more characterized by the excessive pragmatism of politicians and political parties – including the PRD – the EZLN definitively rejected electoral and institutional politics as a path for social change. Echoing the criticism of many sectors of the left (Anguiano 1997; Semo 2003), the EZLN accused the PRD of clientelism, opportunism and electoralism (Subcomandante Insurgente Marcos 1998a, 1998b).

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However, even in July 1998, in the Fifth Declaration of the Lacandona Jungle, when it was promoting the popular referendum on the COCOPA law on indigenous rights, the EZLN addressed itself directly to federal legislators, asking for their support during and after the campaign (EZLN 1998). This time, more than usual, the EZLN recognized the role of political parties and traditional politicians: This is the hour of Congress. After a long struggle for democracy, headed by the opposition political parties, there is in the ­Chamber of Deputies and in the Senate a new correlation of forces that hinders the arbitrariness typical of presidentialism, and points with hope to a true separation and independence of the branches of government. The new political composition of the lower and upper chambers presents the challenge of making legislative work dignified, the expectation of turning Congress into a space at the service of the Nation and not of whoever happens to be president … We call on the deputies and senators of the Republic, from all registered parties, and on independents, to legislate for the benefit of all Mexicans. To command in obedience. To fulfil their duty by supporting peace and not war. Making effective the division of powers, to oblige the federal executive to stop the war of extermination it has under way on Mexico’s Indian populations … To support firmly and fully the Commission of Concord and Pacification, so that it can effectively and efficiently carry out its work of helping in the peace process. To answer to the historic call that demands full recognition of the rights of Indian people … (Ibid.; Womack 1999: 368–9)

However, this ‘rapprochement’ did not last very long. In November 1998, Subcomandante Marcos recognized in an interview that it had been a mistake to judge and criticize other political forces – ranging from the PRD to some sectors of the PRI and the PAN and even to other guerrilla movements – as if they were monolithic entities (Gallegos 1998). But in May 1999, Marcos returned to the fray with a communiqué that criticized the attitude of the ‘political class’ as a whole for having already started the campaign for the presidential elections of 2000 and being preoccupied in internal battles instead of focusing on the real problems of society (Subcomandante Insurgente Marcos 1999).

revolution  |  271 In sum, from 1994 to 2000, the EZLN tried on many occasions to establish an alliance with the PRD or some kind of relationship with other actors of political society. However, as it saw that politicians were not interested in bringing down the PRI and later as it suffered a defeat at the hands of the state in the San Andrés negotiations, Subcomandante Marcos turned to fierce criticism of electoral and institutional politics, as well as politicians and political parties. The appeals of the EZLN’s initiatives directed towards political society gradually also lost credibility. The Zapatistas and Subcomandante Marcos are, however, guilty of not having taken into consideration the different agendas of other political forces. The EZLN has not, for instance, been able to understand that not all political forces on the left were ready to embark on a confrontation with the whole political system. As a result, the Zapatistas have tended to want to impose their view and agenda on their potential allies, and they have not been willing to find grounds to negotiate common objectives. From the Zapatista perspective, the coup de grâce to institutional politics, political parties and politicians came in April 2001 with the adoption, by all political parties represented in Congress, including the PRD, of a Law on Indigenous Rights that does not correspond to the spirit of the COCOPA law. For the EZLN, as one Zapatista told me: The indigenous law that was voted on by the Congress is not the one we had negotiated with the government. It was treason. All the politicians betrayed us. It was demonstrated that politicians only want power for themselves in order to make money. The PRD also betrayed us. The PRD also can go to hell! The politicians of the PRD also only want power for themselves, not in order to do what the people want. The Zapatistas, we don’t struggle for power. We don’t want power. We want a dignified life and that the rulers rule by obeying, doing what the people want, not for themselves, not so they can fill their pockets.

These perceptions of betrayal of Zapatista indigenous peasants have pushed the EZLN to reject any relationship with the forces of political society, to reinforce their lived experiences of autonomy in Chiapas as the appropriate path for social change, and to continue to focus exclusively on the organization of a resistance movement within civil society.

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The Zapatista decision not to collaborate with the PRD or any other party is not likely to change, since the PRD is moving ever farther from its initial opposition roots and has even recently struck local alliances with the party ideologically more to the right, the PAN, in order to block the PRI. Given López Obrador’s failure to rally the whole party around him when he adopted an insurrectional stand in 2006/07, and the rise of several contenders within the party since then, the battle for the PRD’s presidential nomination in 2011/12 brought to the fore once again all the dirty politics inherited from the PRI. Since he no longer held any public office and thus was not in a position to rally allies, López Obrador began losing ground within the PRD. He created a movement, the Movimiento Regeneración Nacional (National Regeneration Movement, MORENA), to pressure the PRD from outside and campaign for the candidacy of the left. When he lost to the PRI candidate, Enrique Peña Nieto, in the presidential elections of 2012, his inability to rally the more important figures of the PRD around him led him to resign from it, and turn MORENA into a party. Obviously, all this political manoeuvring has degraded the image of the PRD and López Obrador even further in the eyes of the Zapatistas.

The EZLN’s strategy towards civil society: organizing those without organization  Certain scholars have celebrated the fact that the EZLN supposedly abandoned class-based politics in favour of identity politics, and alliances with groups from civil society at large (Burbach 1994; Rubin 2002). However, in reality, much like the MST in Brazil, since 1994 the EZLN has called for a fairly traditional class alliance between peasants, workers and popular sectors. This focus on forming an alliance with popular sectors, although more evident in the earlier years, is still the predominant objective of the EZLN. It can be seen in all the calls to action that the Zapatistas have launched through their several ‘Declarations of the Lacandona Jungle’. When asking for support for its campaigns or inviting recruits to participate in the creation of an organization, the EZLN calls primarily on the popular classes, such as workers, peasants, the urban poor and ­teachers. Then it always attempts to mobilize the middle sectors, such as students, progressive intellectuals and professionals, and marginalized groups, such as gays and lesbians, youth and trans­ gendered groups, etc. (see Vergara-Camus 2000: 165–7).

revolution  |  273 The strategy of the EZLN towards sectors of civil society has been to push for their mobilization and to help organize civil society as an independent force, i.e. one that operates outside the orbit of political parties and the state. Hence, the EZLN, through the communiqués of Subcomandante Marcos, has tried to intervene in all major national conflicts and issues (e.g. electoral campaigns, the FOBAPROA bank rescue programme in 1995, the threats to privatize electricity in 1997, the strike at the UNAM (the National Autonomous University of Mexico) in 1999/2000, the repression in Atenco in 2006, and so on. The Zapatistas thus have tried to generate a movement of resistance to neoliberalism outside institutional politics and located in civil society. Subcomandante Marcos has explained this Zapatista perspective in the following words: Society has to organize to resist. We use the example of Juárez in the midst of the French invasion a lot … How that movement decided not to clash with the French army, but rather to resist and wait until it exhausted itself and the process of exhaustion in France obliged the army to retreat and another alternative to emerge. What Juárez did was to keep the nation organized, resisting in very difficult conditions, but avoiding its decomposition. We [the Zapatistas] say, ‘Now we have to organize the people for that and then exercise power.’ But now, there is nothing to exercise, and even less after the new electoral reform … Voting will not solve the problems of social decomposition. And since the government continues within its logic, this will not be solved. Hence, we have to organize society, not so it can make demands on the government – that is why we distance ourselves from ­populism – but rather in order to solve problems. (Subcomandante Marcos, cited in LeBot 1997: 303)

In contrast to the MST in Brazil, which has been more successful at working with organizations than with unorganized groups, the EZLN has had more success in working with supporters that engage in solidarity with the Zapatistas as individuals rather than through organizations. Throughout the years, the EZLN cannot be said to have built a strong alliance with organizations, such as the MST has built with the CUT, for instance. The EZLN has been almost absent from the peasant movement that, although it seems to have

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been at a low point at the time of the uprising in 1994, managed to re-emerge forcefully in 2003 with the ‘El Campo no Aguanta Más’ (‘the countryside will endure no more’; see below) mobilizations (Bartra 2003; Hernández Navarro 2003). The EZLN has also not shown a particular interest in creating lasting links with major trade unions that struggle to democratize their corporatist and clientelist unions. The exception to this tendency has been the EZLN relationship with indigenous movements through the Congreso Nacional Indígena (National Indigenous Congress, CNI). This exception may be due to the fact that the EZLN and the indigenous movement, through the process of negotiation of the San Andrés Accords, established direct ties and a common ground from which to work. Following this line of thought, the fact that the government abandoned the dialogues after the first round of talks on Indigenous Rights and Culture cut off the EZLN from the possibility of building with other sectors the same kind of platform it had with the indigenous movement. It would not be surprising if that was one of the main objectives of the federal government when it withdrew from the dialogues.

The fall of peasant unity in Chiapas to the hands of corporatism  The first important setback for the EZLN in the politics of alliance for­ mation with popular movements took place at the state level in Chiapas. In the aftermath of the uprising in 1994, the most important independent organizations of Chiapas recognized the ­Zapatista demands as legitimate and, even though they disagreed with the use of arms, decided to support the EZLN. Two coalitions were quickly formed: 1) the Consejo Estatal de Organizaciones Indígenas y Campesinas (State Council of Indigenous and Peasant Organizations, CEOIC), bringing together organizations that had land and autonomy as their main demands; and 2) the Asamblea Estatal del Pueblo Chiapaneco (State Assembly of the Chiapan People, AEDPCH), which brought together all kinds of popular groups that identified with the other Zapatista demands (Villafuerte et al. 1999: 166). The EZLN welcomed the support, but, having the federal state as its main interlocutor, chose to give priority to national problems rather than local ones. Yet there was a basis for a strong alliance between the EZLN and other peasant and indigenous movements in Chiapas. As a matter of fact, the Zapatista uprising unleashed a

revolution  |  275 significant wave of land occupations throughout the state, conducted by independent organizations as well as by organizations linked to the PRI. Heading the negotiations with the state, which would eventually have to deal with these occupations, could have been a platform for an alliance between the EZLN and other independent peasant movements in Chiapas. This is what the EZLN was expecting to do, but it wanted to finalize the negotiations in San Andrés before dealing with the concrete land issue in Chiapas. The Zapatistas asked the indigenous peasant organizations to wait to enable them to negotiate collectively with the federal government. However, divisions within the CEOIC quickly emerged as peasant organizations started to negotiate separately with the federal government. The alliance was terminated in 1996 when the state and federal governments began signing individual agreements with independent peasant organizations which legalized their land occupations while representatives of the federal government were negotiating the San Andrés Accords with the EZLN (ibid.: 188–97; García de León 2002: 263). Hence, while independent peasant movements were closer to the EZLN in terms of class, ethnic composition and goals, these factors were less important when the possibility of securing concrete gains presented itself to these organizations. For the Zapatistas, the opportunity of leading a ‘radical agrarian historical bloc’ in Chiapas was lost to the far longer-standing capacity of the state to co-opt peasant organizations.

From support network to force for radical change  It is really within unorganized sectors of civil society (especially in Mexico City and San Cristóbal de la Casas in Chiapas) that the EZLN found most of its support. The EZLN has been very inventive in its relationship with those sectors of civil society. It has managed to maintain high levels of support among broad sectors of society by organizing two national plebiscites, by holding six forums or meetings (to which we have to add the four different meetings in August 2005 in preparation for the ‘Other Campaign’; see below), and by sending three delegations of Zapatistas to Mexico City and all regions of the country. Throughout the years, the EZLN has managed to maintain an impressive network of supporters who assist it in the preparation and running of the different referenda, meetings and campaigns it

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organizes. Overestimating the political capacity of this network of supporters, the EZLN attempted to turn this very diverse network within civil society into the social base for a national political organ­ ization. However, this task proved very difficult because of the kind of supporters that the EZLN had attracted. Indeed, Zapatista supporters within civil society came from a variety of political backgrounds and with varying organizational experiences (small revolutionary parties, the PRD, popular movements, collectives, NGOs, etc.) and, apart from their sympathy with the Zapatista struggle, did not share a common ideological and political background. The first attempt to create an organization came in 1994 when the EZLN called for the formation of the MLN, which would be a coalition of three forces: the PRD, the EZLN and the CND. This latter organization was meant to be the place where non-partisan members would participate. With the MLN, the Zapatistas sought to ally formally with the PRD but also sought to oblige leftists to opt for a unified militancy. The objective was to organize sectors of the non-electoral radical left around the CND, and the institutional left around the PRD. Thus, with time, since it could bring together forces potentially closer to the EZLN than to the PRD, the CND had the potential to become the political wing of the EZLN. However, the CND quickly became the arena for sectarian battles of the nonelectoral radical left (Sánchez 1998: 36), and it never managed to agree on a common position with regard to the PRD (García de León 2002: 257, 260). It was in 1996 that the EZLN finally turned to the task of organizing a national Zapatista movement that clearly defined itself in opposition to the PRD. In January 1996, in the context of the negotiations for the San Andrés Accords on Indigenous Rights and Culture, the EZLN organ­ ized the Convención Nacional Indígena (National Indigenous Con­ vention). The most important indigenous organizations in Mexico participated and, although some differences existed with regard to the institutional framework in which autonomy would be exercised, agreed on the idea of autonomy and the need for its constitutional recognition (Bartra and Otero 2005: 400). Although very close to the EZLN, the CNI acquired a life of its own, and, it can be said, began to represent a unified voice for the Mexican indigenous movement. Three congresses have been held since 1996, making the CNI the

revolution  |  277 only political organization initiated by the EZLN with a real national political capacity. The experience of the CNI represents the only instance in its history of the EZLN being able to work with another organization. The ratification of the latest indigenous law in April 2001, which the CNI and the EZLN rejected, has maintained the alliance between the two organizations, but no major mobilization or common strategy has been developed since. In early July 1996, in the context of preparations for the second round of San Andrés negotiations, which were supposed to deal with ‘Democracy and Justice’, the EZLN organized the Foro Especial sobre la Reforma del Estado (Special Forum on the Reform of the State). The objective of the forum was to meet with other social movements and political organizations to elaborate a proposal for an alternative vision of society. For the Zapatistas, the forum was also a way to create a dialogue parallel to the legislative debates on the reform of the state that political parties were undertaking with the federal government. In addition, the forum was supposed to be a space where the EZLN could build an alliance and a consensus that it could bring to the second round of San Andrés talks. In turn, this consensus could also become the basis for a national political organization inspired by Zapatismo. However, as mentioned earlier, the retreat of the federal government from this second round of talks cut that possibility short. This second round could have been very important for the future of the EZLN, as the forum with sectors of civil society did not generate a detailed political plan but rather a minimal consensus around general demands and orientations, which necessitated other venues to develop into a real alternative political proposal. Once again, the Mexican state blocked the EZLN’s plan of being the initiator of a collective will organized around a national-popular project and a popular historical bloc, and of playing a leading role within it.

The failure of the attempt to create a national Zapatista organ­ ization  Because of the militarization of Chiapas by President Zedillo, the years between 1997 and 1999 were marked by a succession of Zapatista meetings, referenda and initiatives that were very successful in keeping the conflict in Chiapas on the political agenda, but not particularly successful in generating a strong coordinated

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opposition movement. In September 1997, the EZLN organized ‘The March of the 1,111’, for which 1,111 Zapatistas were sent to Mexico City for the creation of the Frente Zapatista de Liberación Nacional (Zapatista Front of National Liberation, FZLN). In November 1998, in San Cristóbal de las Casas, it organized the ‘EZLN/Civil Society Encounter’ to prepare for and organize a national referendum on indigenous rights in order to pressure the government to recognize its commitment to the San Andrés Accords and the COCOPA law. Prior to the referendum, which took place on 21 May 1999, the EZLN sent 5,000 Zapatistas to all Mexican states to promote it. The founding congress of the FZLN was held in Mexico City from 13 to 16 September, and through a communiqué, published in La Jornada on 14 September, Subcomandante Marcos expressed the view that the FZLN would be the organization in which the EZLN would participate once a peace treaty with the federal government was signed. The founding documents were very ambitious and somewhat vague as to the kind of actions that the FZLN would be carrying out. The document emphasized greatly the need for a new kind of political organization: We need a political force that does not struggle for state power or with old methods of doing politics, but rather that struggles to create, add, promote and empower citizens and popular movements, without trying to absorb them, lead them, or use them; a political force that adds its struggle to the other forces to allow for a real democratic transformation; a political force that struggles so that political action can be a space for citizens. (FZLN 1997: 4) We need a space for participation that, with social movements, can organize the demands and the satisfaction of the rights of popular sectors, can organize resistance and the development of forms of self-management, can recognize the appearance of new social actors and accompany their mobilizations, can organize and propose citizens’ vigilance over rulers, and can create new spaces of mobilization. (Ibid.: 5)

The FZLN, of course, intended to be this new political force, which would not seek state power but rather organize civil society with the objective of generating forms of autonomy and self-government. The FZLN intended to achieve this goal with campaigns of mobilization

revolution  |  279 through which it would seek to insert itself within, and to influence, social movements. Where social movements did not exist, it would help create them. However, lacking concrete struggles of its own on which to focus, like other popular movements, the FZLN gradually turned into a solidarity network for the Zapatista rebels, more than an autonomous organization focused on the transformation of Mexican civil society. The FZLN was also criticized by many for being as sectarian as the CND had been (García de León 2002: 273). The EZLN observed the FZLN from afar, and included it in all its calls for action, but from 1999 onwards did not privilege it over other organizations. With the failure of all its organizational attempts between 1999 and 2005, the EZLN reverted to its sporadic and spontaneous relationship with civil society sectors (students, popular movements, collectives, NGOs, etc.). One of the first events through which the EZLN re-established its contacts with its supporters in 1997 was the organization of the popular referendum on indigenous rights, which lasted from November 1998 to May 1999.13 After this successful attempt, the EZLN concluded that, for the moment, organizationally the only movement it was capable of maintaining was a network of local and regional coordinating committees, which eventually could become the skeleton of its national movement. The EZLN submitted the following proposal to its supporters within civil society: 3. We propose that you become the bridge between the Zapatistas and social and citizens’ organizations, movements, and individuals, and all those with whom you work. 5. To build a whole information network that will really be able to impede the possibility that any of us can be attacked without the others knowing about it and responding to and supporting [the subject of the attack]. (EZLN, cited in Hernández 1999)

Concretely, the EZLN also called on this network to mobilize in support of the Sindicato Mexicano de Electricistas (Mexican Union of Electricity Workers, SME) in their struggle against the privatization of electricity services, and the UNAM students in their struggle against the privatization of free public university education, both of which were in 1999 the main struggles against neoliberalism in Mexico. Beyond this proposal to create a resistance network, and its

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continued dialogue with the CNI, the EZLN has not tried to develop alliances with other sectors of society, even if recently the peasant movement, with which it shared many demands, has started to reemerge from years of political disarray.

From the March on Mexico City to the Otra Campaña  Knowing that the COCOPA law on indigenous rights and culture would have to be ratified by the Mexican Congress, the EZLN still believed that pressure from civil society could force the Congress to pass the law. It decided on a long march on Mexico City, dubbed La Marcha del Color de la Tierra – the largest ever organized by the EZLN – in February/March 2001. After having waited for President Vicente Fox, elected in 2000, to define his government’s position on the issue of indigenous rights, the EZLN decided, once again, to take the initiative. The Zapatistas sent Subcomandante Marcos and all members of the top leadership of the EZLN on a political journey from Chiapas to Mexico City to convince the Mexican Congress to ratify the COCOPA law. The enthusiastic response of hundreds of thousands of people all along the route as participants made their way towards Mexico City reconfirmed the support that the Zapatistas had garnered within Mexican society, especially among indigenous people, peasants, workers and sectors of the middle class and youth. The arrival of the comandancia of the EZLN at the zocalo14 in Mexico City in March 2001 was one of the biggest mass events in recent Mexican history. However, although this march was successful in revealing the level of Zapatista support throughout the country, a result that obliged political parties to allow a Zapatista delegation to speak at the tribune of the Mexican Congress, the Congress did not approve the COCOPA law but passed something very different.15 According to Díaz-Polanco, the PRD, in a minority in Congress, was outmanoeuvred by the legislative adroitness of the PAN and PRI, which lured it into voting for the general content of the law with a promise to negotiate specific sections subsequently. This obviously never happened (Díaz-Polanco 2004: 337). All hopes for a real law on indigenous autonomy in Mexico slowly died as the different states of the Mexican federation ratified the constitutional amendment and the Supreme Court rejected the claims of more than three hundred indigenous municipalities (ibid.: 338).

revolution  |  281 The year 2003 was a high point for peasant movements in Mexico. As a result of the dramatic generalized crisis in the countryside, eighteen peasant organizations – including the Confederación ­Nacional Campesina (National Peasant Confederation, CNC) and the Congreso Agrario Permanente (Permanent Agrarian Congress, CAP), which were traditionally linked to the state – came together in a national opposition movement called ‘El Campo No Aguanta Más’. The movement carried out a series of demonstrations from January to April and managed to get the federal government to sit at a negotiating table to discuss the situation of rural producers and the current agricultural policy. This was the first time since the late 1980s that peasant organizations had presented a common front, articulated around a unitary proposal that included the principles of food sover­ eignty, the renegotiation of NAFTA, the revision of Article 27 of the Constitution, and the rights of indigenous peoples (Bartra 2003). In response to the movement, the Fox government proposed the Acuerdo nacional para el campo: por el desarrollo de la sociedad rural, la soberanía y la seguridad alimentaria (The National Agreement for the Countryside: for the Development of Rural Society, Food Sovereignty and Security), which was signed on 28 April 2003. Surprisingly, the EZLN, which repudiated NAFTA in its first Declaration of the Lacandona Jungle and has made the struggle against neoliberalism one of its main battles, has been completely silent with regard to this new movement. The presence of peasant organizations affiliated to the PRI is most probably the main reason why the EZLN has not established links with El Campo No Aguanta Más. At the same time, according to some analysts, even though it shows the growing strength of the peasant movement, the government proposal did not address its main demands since it did not compromise on the renegotiation of NAFTA or on revision of Article 27 (ibid.; Hernández Navarro 2003). Hence, in some ways, this agreement on the countryside is reminiscent of the historic practice of the Mexican state of signing agreements with social organizations only to calm social discontent without substantially modifying its policies – a practice that the EZLN itself suffered from in the case of the San Andrés Accords. By taking the approach it did, the EZLN seemed to have decided to forfeit the possibility of influencing a broader spectrum of sectors of Mexican civil society.

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After a period of reassessment of their strategy, the Zapatistas decided to elevate the experience of autonomy to a higher level by creating the Juntas de Buen Gobierno (JBGs). From 2001 to 2005, the EZLN remained mostly silent, focusing on consolidating the structure and the functioning of its autonomous municipalities and the JBGs. After more than four years of waiting, the EZLN decided, in 2005, to take the offensive once again. Thus began the fourth phase of the Zapatista struggle. In June 2005, the EZLN issued the Sixth Declaration of the Lacandona Jungle and called a series of meetings with Mexican civil society organizations to set the groundwork for a new national movement. The activities of La Otra Campaña (the Other Campaign), named to suggest that the presidential electoral campaign that preoccupied Mexicans was not the only campaign under way, began in January 2006 and were meant to be a sort of ‘reconnaissance’ tour across Mexico. Subcomandante Marcos would tour the country to meet face to face with organizations interested in joining a national Zapatista movement, one that would not enter electoral politics in any form. In the second phase of the formation of this future Zapatista organization, members of the EZLN would be sent from Chiapas to the various regions of Mexico to help organize the new movement. Because of the timing of the Other Campaign’s launch – in the midst of the presidential electoral campaign of 2006 – it did not get the attention that the Marcha del Color de la Tierra of 2001 had received. When Subcomandante Marcos harshly criticized elections as a path for social change and associated Andrés Manuel López Obrador, the PRD candidate in the presidential race of 2006, with neoliberalism and the heritage of Carlos Salinas, many leftist intellectuals were infuriated. But Subcomandante Marcos was echoing the criticism that many on the left shared, which included the preoccupation with López Obrador’s highly personalist and populist style, his opportunistic use of popular mobilization without real politicization and participation, his ties to Carlos Slim, who benefited from the privatization of the state-owned telephone company under Salinas, and the presence of several close collaborators of Salinas in his team. The attack was not a turnaround in the Zapatista position towards institutional politics, but rather a reminder that for the EZLN social change would not come by changing politicians at the top but rather by

revolution  |  283 changing the way of doing politics from below. The objective was to clearly establish itself within the radical left and build alliances from there. However, tactically it cost the movement the support of more moderate sectors of the left. On 4 May 2006, just a few days after the Zapatistas reached Mexico City, the federal police attacked the village of Atenco, killing two, sexu­ ally assaulting more than thirty women, and imprisoning over two hundred people. The event halted the EZLN ‘caravan’ in Mexico City, as it tried to coordinate efforts to liberate the prisoners. A few months later, in December 2006, the PRI governor of the state of ­Oaxaca called upon the federal police to violently repress the Asamblea Popular de los Pueblos de Oaxaca (Popular Assembly of the Peoples of Oaxaca, APPO), which had been undertaking an experiment in self-government, taking control of numerous neighbourhoods of the state’s capital city. Although several groups within APPO were strongly influenced by Zapatismo and the political practices of the movement mirrored their own, the EZLN remained distant from the process, and only expressed its solidarity with it. In a sense, this speaks to the limitations of the Zapatista strategy, because in the absence of direct organizational links that could have been created over the years through coalition-building, the ideological influence of zapatismo within APPO did not lead to a national protest movement. The Oaxaca case suggests also that popular organizations that negotiate with the state, such as teachers’ unions, can escape corporatism and be the basis for radical politicization and self-government and eventually be the seed of radical social change. The EZLN seemed to have taken this view because it established links with some groups from the APPO, and with groups from Atenco and Mexico City, notably the Movimiento Popular Francisco Villa – ­Independiente, an important squatter movement. However, Zapatistas have not changed their attitude towards traditional organ­ izations, and the Festival de la Digna Rabia (Festival of Dignified Rage) in January 2009 looked more like a return to their ‘politics of events’ than the beginning of the construction of a broad coalition of mass organizations. The repression that many popular movements faced under President Felipe Calderón (2006–12) was not enough to lead certain movements to align themselves with the EZLN. Most of them were still awaiting the results of the forthcoming presidential

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e­ lection, which many predicted would see the comeback of the PRI, before deciding on their strategy. In August 2013, the EZLN organized what it called the ‘escuelita Zapatista’ (the small Zapatista school). It invited over two thousand supporters from Mexico and abroad to visit Zapatista communities in their different regions of influence and directly learn from these communities how they had been organizing their responses to the problems generated by neoliberalism. The objective behind this new move was to attempt once again to reinvigorate its relationship with activist groups within civil society, but also perhaps to influence the emergence of other forms of self-governing communities in other parts of Mexico. A shared dilemma: radicalization in times of neoliberal hegemony Building a rural or national coalition of organizations to oppose neoliberalism and struggle for radical social change in their respective countries has turned out to be a task that far exceeded the organizational capacities of the MST and the EZLN. Regardless of clear objectives, and the development of campaigns, marches and other types of direct actions involving actors from civil society, neither the MST nor the EZLN was able to become the leader of a ‘radical agrarian historical bloc’ and even less a ‘national-popular historical bloc’. The MST was able to establish its leadership over the most radicalized sectors of the peasantry, but although it managed to radicalize the struggle for land in the 1990s was not able to get its leadership accepted by the CONTAG and the CUT. It cannot be said that there is in Brazil anything like a ‘radical agrarian historical bloc’. The MST did, however, manage to carve out a space for itself alongside them and its participation is almost mandatory in any discussion on rural issues with the government. The national strategy of the MST yielded modest results, and though they did not contribute to the emergence of a national-popular historical bloc against neoliberalism, the demands of the CMP were partly met by Lula. In Mexico, thanks to having negotiated the San Andrés Acccords, the EZLN did manage to have its leadership recognized by the indigenous movement until the mid-2000s. However, the Zapatistas were outmanoeuvred by the state on two fronts. First, it prevented

revolution  |  285 them from forming and leading a ‘radical agrarian historical bloc’ in Chiapas, as the indigenous peasant organizations chose the shortterm goal of securing land through individual deals with the state instead of collective negotiations. Secondly, by refusing to recognize the San Andrés Accords and stopping the process of negotiation that would have led to the discussion of broader issues, the state did not allow the EZLN to be the initiator of the refounding of the nation, in which they could have played an important role. The failure to build a national coalition is also due to the fact that in Brazil and Mexico, unlike in Venezuela, fundamental social change did not become the objective of a historic bloc of popular social forces. As most organizations were choosing insertion into the political regime and falling victim to the corporatist tradition, the MST and the EZLN found themselves going against the current, without real allies for their national strategy. For the MST, the task of building a coalition has become more difficult in recent years owing to the institutionalization of the CUT and many movements and civil society organizations. Nonetheless, even though the MST adopts a more radical perspective then most organizations, it has decided to continue to collaborate with them in specific campaigns with the objective of influencing them and gaining support for its cause. The EZLN faced an even worse situation because it was trying to build a political front while remaining a semi-clandestine organization, subjected to varying degrees of counter-insurgency violence. The Zapatista decision to refuse to collaborate with organizations that do not adopt their policy of resistance further diminished the number of potential allies and impeded them in their attempts to influence social movements and coordinate actions. Another factor that has distinguished the MST and the EZLN has been their way of working with left-wing political parties. In the case of the MST, members have participated directly in the party politics of the PT and, to a certain extent, have been able to influence it from within over the years. Hence, even though at the national level the PT started moving towards the centre, MST members found space in which to push their demands and occupy positions of political representation. The EZLN, by contrast, was a clandestine organization and its members never participated within the PRD. The EZLN was limited in its strategy to trying to influence

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the party from outside without really having much in common in terms of political perspective. Hence, the two movements have also adopted different strategies with regard to political parties and the state. The MST recognizes that social forces seeking radical social transformation cannot progress without counting on allies within the state. They thus give their support to the PT in the hope of effecting change in public policy. The disappointing achievements under Lula’s administration have generated a discussion within the movement, but as yet no real break with their traditional pragmatic attitude towards institutional politics. It is still uncertain, though, how the militants and the leadership of the MST are going to rethink their traditional alliance with the PT. In contrast, the Zapatistas believe that the capitalist state cannot be reformed and that new workingclass institutions and ways of doing politics should replace it. They nevertheless still attempted to build bridges with the PRD until 1998, at which point they came to the conclusion that the PRD was simply another version of the PRI. The endless episodes of internal fraud, corruption and intrigue to control the party or choose candidates for elected office have confirmed the Zapatista analysis. However, their complete rejection of elections has cut them off from large sectors of the population that could have otherwise been allies. The MST’s more pragmatic politics of alliance has probably yielded more short-term results than the Zapatista maximalist one. The results, however, if we consider the way Lula combined strong support for capital with small concessions to popular sectors, have been very modest. The MST has accepted that in the current context what has been achieved is the most that can be expected. The EZLN refuses to limit itself to this perspective. In Brazil, however, the Workers’ Party’s successive federal administrations might end up being a very serious blow to the hopes of thousands of landless people and small-farmer families of the MST who expected to see their party govern in a manner different to Cardoso’s. Such a result could mean the discrediting of the PT, the political class and institutional politics in general in the eyes of MST members. Or it could also simply be the ‘normalization of politics’, when, as is the case in the Western world, the population sees institutional politics in terms simply of choosing who will administer the system and not much more. The consequences are worse for the future of the MST’s land struggle.

revolution  |  287 As we have seen, the effects of the PT’s policies have discouraged landless people from joining encampments and have disarticulated the union between acampados and settlers that had been the strength of the MST’s activism. It is still uncertain, though, how the militants and the leadership of the MST are going to rethink their traditional strategy. Will this disappointment with the PT mean that the MST will re-orient its efforts towards the development of a broad coalition of social movements clearly opposed to neoliberalism? The coming years will answer this question. In Mexico, the EZLN, almost since it adopted a public profile in 1994, was always very sceptical of political parties and institutional politics more broadly. Even though its positions varied from ‘crit­ ical and covert support’ of the PRD and Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas to outright criticism of both the party and the leader, since 1998, for the EZLN, social change did not include breakthroughs of the left within institutional politics. The EZLN strategy was thus to develop relations with sectors of Mexican civil society and try to give them an organic cohesion. As we have seen, the EZLN was never able to succeed in this task because it was obliged by the refusal of the Mexican state to honour the San Andrés Accords to turn all its atten­tion to mobilizing civil society to put pressure on the state. The efforts of the EZLN were also unsuccessful because the great majority of Mexicans still believe that elections are the appropriate path by which to improve their living conditions, and most organizations still fall under the corporatist tradition. The unwillingness of the EZLN to participate directly in a process of coalition-building prevented its proposals from going forward. With the publication of the Sixth Declaration of the Lacandona Jungle, the EZLN decided to move to a new phase in its national political strategy: direct involvement in the creation of a national movement. Events did not allow this and the EZLN retreated once again. The whole process was begun anew in 2013 with the escuelita Zapatista. Both movements have developed a formidable resistance capacity – resting on their access to land and their ability to partly disconnect from the market – that other sectors lack. As I have shown in the previous chapters, control of the means of subsistence and production by MST and EZLN members is at the heart of their ability to resist and to implement development alternatives. Surprisingly,

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however, they have not put this advantage centre stage when they have attempted to join forces with other groups within civil society. Indeed, neither the MST nor the EZLN has underlined control of the means of subsistence and production as a foundation for building their resistance to neoliberalism. To be sure, the Zapatistas, having underlined their indigenous character, differ somewhat from the MST in this respect. Subcomandante Marcos has presented indigenous communities (and indigenous culture more broadly) as a space where alternative (non-capitalist) ways of life are possible. Nevertheless, the EZLN has not suggested how non-capitalist social relations could emerge or re-emerge in other settings within Mexico. The political strategies of the MST and the EZLN have not yet been accompanied by a serious reflection on how a network of alternative economic relations might be built and reinforce an enduring alliance with other groups. For both organizations, the focus of their strategy has been mainly political. What remains surprising, as much in the case of the MST as in the case of the EZLN, is that they have both focused much more on ways of building political alliances than on ways of building an alternative political structure that could become the basis for a broader social transformation, as in the case of their own experience of creating and maintaining ‘autonomous rural communities’. This decision can probably be explained by their own analysis of their success, which, given that it is in line with a long tradition within the Latin American left, is understood as resulting from a breakthrough in the level of class consciousness and in the political will of the social base, rather than in terms of the emergence of networks of ‘autonomous communities’ that control their own means of subsistence and rely on their own autonomous structures of power. It should be said, nevertheless, that if creating autonomous rural communities is a concrete possibility in the countryside, albeit extremely difficult to achieve, this possibility is far from being self-evident in the urban context.

CONCLUSION

Throughout the book, I have highlighted the importance that the terri­torialization of the struggles, the non-commodified nature of land and the non-monetarized character of many agricultural practices have for the development alternatives of the MST and the EZLN. I have shown that these are crucial elements for the creation of an alternative to the neoliberal state and market. Surprisingly, scholars studying the Brazilian landless and the Zapatista movements have given little importance to the issue of commodification of land and monetization of social relations. The levels of commodification and monetization of social relations in MST and EZLN communities in comparison with Brazilian and Mexican society in general have hardly been studied. Yet the contrast in terms of levels of commodification and monetization between life in MST or Zapatista communities with rural life in the Brazilian or Mexican countryside in general was palpable in the barracks of the MST squatters and in the houses of settlers. The contrast became particularly sharp and most vivid in indigenous communities in the Lacandona jungle. But even among studies on the Zapatista movement, very few analyses emphasize the radical difference that exists between the political economy in which the Zapatista subsistence peasants are immersed on a daily basis and the political economy in which an important portion of small-scale producers participate in Latin America and many regions of the global South. There are several reasons that may explain why many scholars studying the MST and the EZLN have overlooked issues of commodification and monetization of the lives of landless rural workers, subsistence peasants and small family farmers. The most obvious explanation would turn our attention to the impact of the crisis of structural Marxism on research agendas and the rise of post­ modernist and post-structuralist perspectives that have favoured a shift in research focus from issues of political economy to issues of discourse, identity formation, culture and meaning. There is, ­however,

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a ­widespread theoretical practice that goes beyond the various theoretical and political divides existing within the academic community that can also explain the lack of attention to commodification and monetization – namely, the tendency to assume that capitalist relations predominate in every corner of the world. Following from this assumption, scholars would have no need to analyse the daily practices of production, reproduction and market exchange, because they are assumed to be capitalist relations, which are often deemed to be identical across societies and communities. As is evident at this point, I have contested this idea and have shown how today, in the context of the neoliberal crisis, several types of peasants rely, to a greater or lesser extent, on non-capitalist practices to cope with the damaging effects of neoliberalism and have built development alternatives for their families and communities. As many scholars have shown, opposition to the expansion of capitalism is as old as capitalism itself. In the specific case of peasant rebellions and resistance to market expansion and state modernization policies, some general trends have been identified by a previous generation of scholars. As I have argued in Chapter 1, the current land struggles of the MST and the EZLN, given that they are taking place within the context of neoliberal globalization, call for a revision of the traditional approach to peasant rebellions, which tends to be based on feudal-like relationships. The current land struggles and development alternatives of the MST and the EZLN are not being fought against traditional landlords; rather, they are responses to neoliberal restructuring of the countryside and the growing marginalization it is causing. The involvement of rural workers and peasants within the MST and the EZLN is a collective response to the experience of capitalist alienation, which has triggered a battle to secure access to land as a subsistence strategy. This new phase of peasant resistance against capitalist expansion differs from previous phases in that it is opposed to a renewed and more exhaustive movement towards the universalization of private property rights, and the full commodification and monetization of life that neoliberal globalization represents (McMichael 2000: 301; McNally 2002: 78–84). This development has been evident throughout this book, where, in various chapters, I have shown that the meaning given to land by landless people in Brazil and Zapatista

conclusion  |  291 indigenous peasants in Chiapas allows them to confront the state, and informs their different understandings of land property and tenure, well-being, community and development. However, as I argued in Chapter 2, contrary to what was formerly suggested by many students of past peasant rebellions, the new forms of peasant rebellions led by the MST and the EZLN are proving to be more than defensive struggles demanding a return to some form of paternalist relationship between the state or the rural elites and peasant communities. Both struggles challenge paternalist relationships and aim for a significant transformation of the relationship between those who were traditionally the rulers and the ruled. In other words, the MST and the EZLN have a vision of what a different society and polity should look like, and, as difficult as it might be, they attempt to organize their communities around that vision. But beyond these general orientations, it is important to ask what these two land struggles and development alternatives tell us about the way peasant movements are ‘rethinking development’. Many of the points I have made in this book mirror the conclusions that scholars working within the ‘alternative development’ approach have put forward. In a manner similar to what proponents of the alternative development approach argue, I have shown that landless people and Zapatista indigenous peasants see their struggles as a process of personal, family and community empowerment. As I have shown in Chapter 3, this process of collective politicization and empowerment takes shape through the development of communitybased autonomous political structures of power, which encourage horizontal democratic popular participation and facilitate the diffusion of political power throughout the community and within the different levels of the movement. However, as I have shown, this alternative popular power also includes elements of hierarchy and discipline, and is not completely exempt from power struggles and contradictions. These autonomous structures of popular power are, moreover, still characterized to a great extent by patriarchal relations. Indeed, even though landless and Zapatista indigenous women have managed to gain political space within the MST and the EZLN (by pushing through a parity rule in the case of the MST and the Revolutionary Law of Women in the case of the EZLN), as in other revolutionary experiences throughout

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the twentieth century, the transformation of traditional gender roles is probably the slowest transformation of all. Even if the most politically active peasant women have managed to modify the traditional sexual division of labour within their households, effectively blurring the private/public dualism in the process, this achievement does not seem to be a general tendency. In many cases, what seems to be the rule is that during moments of increased mobilization and tension, women assume the role of protagonists and thus break with their traditional gender role; but they then often retreat to a modified version of that traditional gender role. This fluctuation speaks to the fragility and temporary character of the political gains achieved by landless and Zapatista women. As a consequence of their participation in these autonomous structures of popular power, MST settlers and Zapatistas see their development to a great extent as an endogenous process, based on the realization of their fundamental needs, the guaranteeing of sufficient food production being, as was shown in Chapter 4, their first objective. Through their struggle, the landless people and the Zapatista indigenous peasants have learned the importance of building rural communities that are as self-reliant as possible. For instance, they have sought to meet many of their fundamental needs by organizing their own system of education and basic health, and have created producer and consumer cooperatives. Understanding development as an endogenous and community-based process also means that, as the proponents of the alternative development approach have argued, the MST and the EZLN build their development alternative partly around non-capitalist practices such as solidarity, reciprocity and collectivism.1 The case of the EZLN would tend to confirm that these non-capitalist practices are based on indigenous cultural values. However, the case of the MST shows that such practices do not always derive from indigenous cultures, but can also be developed through the process of struggle itself, which encourages the reinforcement of certain practices over others. What both cases actually show, with particular salience in the case of the difficult transformation of traditional gender roles, is that cultural values are not static and are constantly subject to the struggle of different agents. Indeed, in this book I have not looked at culture through an essen­tialist perspective, which certain post-development scholars

conclusion  |  293 tend to adopt (cf. Schuurman 1993; Esteva and Prakash 1999; Mies and Bennholdt-Thomsen 2000). I have instead implicitly drawn inspiration from E. P. Thompson’s approach to culture, wherein ‘culture is not situated in the thin air of “meanings, attitudes and values”, but located within a particular equilibrium of social relations, a working environment of exploitation and resistance to exploitation, of relations of power which are masked by rituals of paternalism and deference’ (Thompson 1993: 7). Thompson’s approach to culture is particularly relevant for analysing the cases of the MST and the EZLN because, as he argues, it is during periods of significant expansion of capitalist social relations that popular classes experience changes ‘in the form of exploitation, or expropriation of customary use-rights, or the violent disruption of valued patterns of work and leisure’ (ibid.: 9). It is thus during these periods of capitalist expansion that popular classes react to this disruption by re-evaluating and reinventing cultural practices. This approach to culture is not the only theoretical divergence  I have taken with the alternative development approach. Although I have adopted a ‘human-scale approach’ to development that ­focuses on the household, the community and the local organization, I have not abstracted or derived the objectives, principles and practices guiding decisions within the household from the local and national socio-economic context. In Chapter 4, I discarded the abstract n ­ otion that ‘peasant rationality’ or ‘peasant culture’ is ­either in­herently subsistence-oriented or market-oriented. Instead, this book has shown that the decision-making and the practices of MST settlers and Zapa­tista subsistence peasants depend on the particular contexts and kind of market relations in which these different kinds of ­peasants are inserted. This is why, in contrast to the synchronic focus that the alternative development approach adopts, I have chosen to insert my synchronic analysis within a diachronic perspective, by highlighting the consequences that different histories of capitalist development and state formation in each country have had on the kind of development alternatives the MST and the EZLN put forward. Even if the re-emergence of the struggle for land can be explained as a peasant response to the profound crisis of unemployment triggered by the implementation of neoliberal policies, the peculiar character

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of the struggle for land and the development alternative of each ­movement derive from the different paths of capitalist development and state formation in Brazil and Mexico. As shown in Chapter 2, these different paths can, in turn, be traced back to different regimes of land property rights that still set the current conditions in which these peasant movements must survive and develop. In this way, the Zapatista struggle, because it takes place in a region with little market penetration, where land is not yet commoditized, is mainly a struggle to protect and reinforce communal rights and a way of life based on a different understanding of the relationship between ­human beings and nature. In contrast, the struggle of the MST, which takes place in a countryside that has long been organized under a capitalist logic, represents a struggle to create a space for subsistence that is also based on a particular understanding of land. As a consequence of these different historical trajectories, the MST and the EZLN development alternatives, although they share a concern for subsistence, have a different outlook on the issue of market integration. After securing food production, MST settlers are preoccupied by negotiating their entry into the market and improving their agricultural techniques, sometimes through traditional modern­ ization and sometimes through agro-ecological improvement, in part because they receive credits from the state that they need to pay back. In contrast, this preoccupation is not as salient in the case of Zapatista indigenous peasants, who enter the market mainly to meet their consumption needs. Hence, when agricultural modernization implies an increase in their dependency on money, as is the case when they have to use chemical pesticides, Zapatista peasants prefer to turn to a free organic substitute, adopting what I have decided to call an agro-ecology of the poor. However, MST settlers and Zapatista subsistence peasants, because they work the land as family units, have contributed to slowing down the pressure towards the commodification of agriculture that the need for consumer goods – and thus the need for money – normally generates. Hence, the cases of the MST and the EZLN show that, under particular circumstances, the process of commodification of social relations can be resisted or negotiated. Finally, contrary to what scholars from the alternative development approach argue, the cases of the MST and the EZLN show that social

conclusion  |  295 movements do not shy away from challenging state power and are simply retreating within civil society to build a ‘counter-power to the state’. As shown in Chapter 3, by building autonomous structures of popular power that are alternative to the state, the MST and the EZLN challenge state power and are able to confront, oppose or mitigate its policies. Furthermore, as seen in Chapter 5, the MST and the EZLN have confronted the implementation of neoliberal policies, which they understand as part of a worldwide system, by attempting to build national alliances with other political actors within civil society and institutional politics. However, as I have shown, neither the MST nor the EZLN has been able to get its strategy of mass mobilization and confrontation with the state accepted by other major political actors in Brazil or Mexico. Indeed, both movements can be said to be pushing in a direction opposite to that of the major political actors, actors that have, for the moment, chosen political integration and negotiation instead of opposition or autonomy. What do these movements mean for the building of alternatives to neoliberalism? To a great extent, this book has been about showing how the struggle for land and the rise of a peasant alternative to neo­liberalism in Brazil and Chiapas were due to very specific historical pro­cesses, as well as class and state formations. The book has thus been pre­occupied in comparing differences between the land struggle and the development alternatives of the MST and the EZLN. It is, however, important to emphasize that there are sharp similarities between them and, additionally, that the MST and the EZLN share com­monalities with other important recent social movements. The principal political advantage of the MST and the EZLN is based on two features: 1 their capacity to organize and mobilize entire communities around autonomous structures of popular power; and 2 the maintenance of a subsistence fallback strategy that provides an opportunity to partially delink from the market. Both of these features derive from securing and protecting access to land and controlling a territory, understood as a space to politicize membership, as a means of production to satisfy fundamental needs,

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and as a space to build communities upon a set of cultural values different from (although also permeated by) hegemonic capitalist values. Following Karl Polanyi (1944: 130–4), we can think of the struggle of the MST and the EZLN as counter-movements to the implementation of neoliberal policies or ‘the globalization project’ (McMichael 2000: 300) since, as is the case with other social movements, in some ways the underlying objective of the MST and the EZLN is to re-embed the market in society (Starr and Adams 2003). The MST and the EZLN should also be seen as specific variations on the struggle for collective control over national resources, land, property, state programmes and cultural expression that are clearly at the core of the demands of indigenous and peasant movements throughout Latin America and beyond. At the same time, beyond its close similarity with indigenous and peasant movements, at the root of the landless and Zapatista struggle there is a basic and yet powerful assertion of the right to take control of one’s life, of the right to decide collectively on the way of life that individuals, families and communities want to pursue. The landless people in Brazil and the Zapatistas in Chiapas use the term vida digna (dignified life) to express this desire. In many Latin American countries, such as Argentina, Bolivia, Ecuador and Venezuela, but also beyond in the global South, this same assertion of the need to re-embed the market in society and the right to a dignified life has been at the core of the recent cycle of contention against globalization. Indeed, the MST and the EZLN as organizations share many ­features with other, more recent popular movements in the region. In recent years, several analyses of other Latin American social movements, particularly indigenous movements, have highlighted the importance of the control of space and the development of popular structures of power in the rise of successful political organization and mobilization against the implementation of neoliberal policies. For instance, as the cases of the Piquetero movement in Argentina (North and Huber 2004; Dinerstein 2002), the water and gas war in Bolivia (Postero 2005: 80; Kohl 2006: 317–18, 320) and the indigenous movement in Ecuador (Perreault 2003: 102) and Bolivia attest, the control of space through road blockades was instrumental in the ability of movements to express their grievances and force governments to

conclusion  |  297 listen to their demands. All these movements also share with the MST and the EZLN a community-based organizational form structured around what Perreault calls a ‘nested hierarchy’ (ibid.: 97) that links rural communities to local, regional and national levels. Because they have a clear class and ethnic content and prefer participatory forms of decision-making to more limited and elitist forms of political participation, these alternative structures of popular power form the basis of what other authors have called a ‘new public’ (Postero 2005) or a ‘counter-public space’ (Andolina 2003: 736). In most cases, what social movements are envisioning is a combination of participatory forms of grassroots democracy and more conventional forms of political representation at different levels of the state. Each of these movements has chosen a different way of dealing with the issue of autonomy from the state and from political parties. Only the EZLN and some sectors of the Piquetero movement have chosen the total rejection of institutional politics. However, even in the case of the Zapatistas, some members of the Juntas de Buen Gobierno at the ‘Encounter between the Peoples of Chiapas with the Peoples of the World’ in December 2006 made statements to the effect that Zapatista communities were now increasing their collaboration with state agencies, signalling a pragmatic re-evaluation of their radical anti-state position. Declarations along these lines, however, have not been repeated and are probably not the direction that the Zapatistas intend to take, as their strategy has always been one of replacing the state with self-government structures. But as I have argued, the anti-state position of the Zapatistas should not be interpreted simply as an ideological position. It comes out of a long history of betrayal by the state and political parties. Similarly the MST’s more pragmatic position towards state power, while still producing local autonomy, should be traced back to the fact that peasant movements did not face a party-state as Mexican peasants historically have. Unfortunately, contemporary discussions on radical social change and the contribution of the MST and the EZLN to them have been grounded more on a priori ideological and political positions than on concrete analysis of the actual practices and specific features of these movements. Very schematically, the discussions pit against each other scholars who argue that we should abandon the traditional focus

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of the left on the state and think in terms of autonomy (Hardt and Negri 2000) or ‘changing the world without taking power’ (Holloway 2002), and scholars who argue that any strategy that avoids the state is simply not a strategy, incomplete or doomed to failure (Boron 2012; Sader 2011). The first school of thought has the advantage of highlighting the importance of transformation of the everyday life of the people involved in processes of resistance and radical change, and points to the necessity to transcend the false dichotomy between reform and revolution. Indeed, grassroots members of the MST and the EZLN did not wait for the storming of the winter palace before embarking on a struggle that could radically change their lives. However, this position – especially Holloway’s argument – presents power as having a ‘state-like character’ and thus prefers to use the idea of ‘anti-power’ when referring to the practice of social movements like the Zapatistas, because their stated objective is to transform the relationship between the ruled and the rulers. As this book has shown, by developing popular structures of power the MST and the EZLN do transform this relationship. However, power relations do not dissolve through this process, as many forms of power relations continue to be reproduced within households, communities and the movement’s organizational structure. Power relations are, rather, democratized and diffused along more equalitarian (although imperfect) lines. In my view, a more accurate depiction of the practices of the MST and the EZLN should thus be that they are ‘changing the world by exercising power’. In turn, this internal, generalized exercise of power allows these movements to generate a politicized grassroots membership that can be mobilized to confront the state. The second school of thought has the advantage of pointing to the obvious difficulties that movements that emphasize autonomy against the state have in scaling up their achievements and inspiring other progressive sectors of civil society. For this position, the only institution that is able to carry out this task remains the state, and social movements can truly transform society only if they adopt a ‘political strategy’, i.e. enter in one way or another the ‘political sphere’. The Zapatistas are often identified as being responsible for the abandonment of ‘strategic thinking’. Although the Zapatista discourse has pushed this kind of anti-strategic argument, as has been shown in Chapter 5, the EZLN itself, throughout its twenty

conclusion  |  299 years of public history, has offered and pushed for a strategy of radical transformation of power relations by a refounding of the state through a Constituent Assembly. Similarly, alongside the develop­ ment of the autonomy of its encampments and settlements, the MST has adopted a strategy of partly ‘occupying’ the state and pressuring the PT and other parties into adopting certain political stands. The critiques of movements that promote autonomy thus tend to overlook the fact that these movements have had a ‘political strategy’ that addresses state power in one way or another. They hence tend to judge the strategy of the MST and the EZLN from a perspective that, even though it recognizes the crisis of political parties, presumes the superiority of the party form. This might correspond with a long history of modern social struggles. However, it unfortunately no longer corresponds with our contemporary context. As this book has shown, social movements like the MST and the EZLN, not left-wing political parties like the PT or the PRD, play the role of Modern Prince, i.e. schools of government (and social transformation) for subaltern classes. What both polar extremes of the contemporary debate on radical social change tend to underestimate is the importance of the control of the means of production and the labour process for develop­ment alternatives to neoliberalism. This book has shown that social movement struggles that seek radical social transformation will be able to bear fruit if and only if they are able to transform the subaltern classes from objects to subjects of their own history, by allowing them to gain control of the means of production and creating a structure of popular power alternative to (or alongside) the state, not by making the correct decision between focusing on the autonomy of the local community or on gaining access to state power. Peasant movements of the kind studied in this book are particularly well equipped to reclaim the control of the means of production and maintain them decommodified, but maybe less equipped to play the role of a hegemonic class within civil society. This limitation is not due to some kind of theoretically deduced character of the peasantry per se, but rather to this same class peculiarity of having the ability to partially avoid the market and relying on non-capitalist social relations, which is much more difficult for other classes. In other words, their politically constituted class advantage, which is at the

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root of their strength, cannot easily be transferred to other classes. This is where authors who conflate all kinds of local alternatives to neoliberalism in the North and the South under the banner of autonomy without distinguishing the extent to which these local alternatives are market-dependent or not (Starr and Adams 2003) misunderstand the peculiarity of the development alternative of the MST and the EZLN. As Greg Albo underlined recently for the case of eco-localist experiences that champion small-scale production, selfreliance, local markets and participatory democracies, ‘local capitalist power relations are embedded in these wider [state] relations and internalize these extra-local relations in the local power structure. There is quite literally no way to withdraw (even if it was judged desirable to do so) from these relations and remain in a capitalist market economy’ (2006: 353–4). Withdrawal from the market is indeed virtually impossible for a great variety, probably the majority, of social groups today because of our market dependence. However, as I have shown in Chapter 4, this does not hold to the same extent for peasant producers who control non-commodified land. Although they do not stand outside capitalist relations of production, they have more room for manoeuvre and can partially withdraw from the market. Under these circumstances, the task of attempting to pull sectors of civil society towards more radical or confrontational positions that the MST and the EZLN have set for themselves probably exceeds their actual political capacities and the current realities of the groups they have been attempting to radicalize. The MST and the EZLN have nonetheless pursued this goal for more than two decades. However, both movements are facing very different political conjunctures and national configurations of social and political forces, as well as different containment strategies by the ruling elites. In both Brazil and Mexico, opposition parties have gradually been integrated into institutional politics while the MST and the EZLN are still seeking to radicalize the supporters of these parties and other social movements along more confrontational lines with regard to the ruling elites. In the case of the MST, the situation is even more puzzling, as eleven years of PT rule at the federal level have been detrimental to the continuation of their struggle, as the PT policies have had the effect of drastically reducing the number of people willing to join an encampment.

conclusion  |  301 In Victor Jara’s song ‘Herminda de la Victoria’, written in the late 1960s, a Chilean pobladora (female urban squatter) says: ‘Thanks to our triumph, we are now living like people, as we say. We have our plot, our home … the población Herminda de la Victoria.’3 In a very basic and profound sense, this short sentence enunciated more than fifty years ago expresses the same demand for a dignified life that the Landless Rural Workers' Movement, the Zapatistas and other popular movements express today. This sentence speaks of the same sense of collective agency, wherein the achievement of a family cannot be separated from the collective achievement of the group, a sentiment that I heard again and again in my conversations with Sem Terra in Brazil and Zapatistas in Chiapas. For thousands of landless people in Brazil and for thousands of indigenous peasants in Chiapas, joining the MST or the EZLN is a profoundly life-changing experience. Casting their lot with the MST or the EZLN is a political experience that has allowed them to gain or protect their access to land and provide for their families. It is an experience that politicizes them and generates a sense of individual and collective agency that throughout their lives they often felt they did not have. What is more important is that, now as in the past, collective victories are not seen as government handouts, but rather as legitimate rights that have to be gained through arduous struggles against powerful groups and forces. To express this idea, landless people in Brazil speak of conquistar a terra (to conquer land). They choose this metaphor because land is not given to the landless by some superior powerful force. Land is battled over, it is seized through struggle, organization and mobilization. Maintaining high levels of participation and mobilization of their membership is a major challenge for the MST and the EZLN, as it is for any social movement. Their ability to consolidate their support, expand geographically and make political gains depends on the participation and mobilization of their membership. Up to now, the autonomous structures of popular power, which diffuse power among different persons within a community and among different levels within the organization, as well as the selection and rotation of leaders, seem to have been successful in keeping the movements active and dynamic. These structures, however, are in no way a guarantee that grassroots members will continue participating 2

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actively in the movements. This participation will continue only as long as these movements yield results for the member families and communities, and as long as they are able to have their voice heard through those channels. Finally, there is something very different about current peasant movements compared to the movements that led the previous cycle of struggles for land, at least in Latin America. To some extent, because of the crisis of the legitimacy of representative liberal demo­ cracy, peasant movements, like other social movements, are far more conscious of the dangers of depending on the state and political parties for the resolution of their grievances and claims. The MST has had a much more pragmatic relationship with the state and political parties than the EZLN, but both movements have protected their autonomy and have sought to elaborate their own development objectives and strategies in opposition to the state. Changing the everyday lives of peasant families and communities, and making them the agents of their own development, has been the major achievement of the MST and the EZLN. These movements have been able to solve fundamental problems such as access to land, food production, education, health and complementary sources of income. But designing a political strategy and a politics of alliance that triggers the same process nationally among other social sectors of civil and political society has proved to be a task that was, probably from the beginning, beyond their capacity. Over the years, the temptation has been great, probably more for the EZLN than for the MST, to withdraw from the national scene and focus on the survival and the development of member communities. However, without a doubt, future political developments in Brazil and Mexico will oblige the MST and the EZLN to redefine their strategy. They will surely not stop attempting to contribute to the formation of a broader and more powerful coalition of popular forces against neoliberalism.

NOTES

Introduction 1  In the late 1990s and early 2000s, owing to the exacerbation of the economic crisis, more and more favelados (inhabitants of shanty towns) joined the organization and can be said to be less peasant than earlier generations of Sem Terra. However, one of their objectives is that of becoming peasants, because access to land provides protection from the market. Hence their life expectations and political class formation oblige us to consider them as part of the peasantry. 2  The form of armed struggle adopted by the EZLN has generated many commentaries. In my analysis, the question of arms will not be part of my central focus but will be part of the evaluation of the strategy. 3  I will deal with this question in detail in Chapter 5. 4  To express this dual nature of commodities (use-value and exchangevalue), at the beginning of Capital Marx used the example of a coat. A coat can of course be used to keep us warm and protect us from the elements (use-value). But a coat, as it is produced by labourers under a capitalist mode of production, also contains a certain amount of value that can be traded on the market for a certain monetary sum (exchange-value). Stallybrass (1998) argues that Marx was not simply making an abstract argument about objects. Marx drew directly from his personal experience since owing to his life circumstances the coat that he needed to get to (and enter) the library of the British Museum during winter (use-value) was

constantly in the pawn shop to acquire money to pay for the daily expenses of his family (exchange-value). In a capitalist society, the exchange-value of commodities ends up dominating their use value. 5  Traditionally, subsistence agriculture refers to the type of agriculture that is primarily focused on meeting the fundamental needs of the household through the production of food for selfconsumption. Chapter 4 will elaborate on this at length. 6 The casa ejidal is the building in which ejidatarios have their meetings. It sometimes also includes a jail for minor infractions to community rules.

1  Peasant struggles 1  It is important to note that in ­ exico migration to the USA has M replaced migration to the city as an exit solution, but until the early 2000s this option was not as common among in­digenous p­easants in Chiapas as it has been in other indigenous regions of Mexico. 2  For a critique of the base/superstructure model, see Wood (1995: ch. 2); for an explanation of the erroneous interpretation of Marx’s intentions in establishing this distinction between economic base (productive forces) and superstructure (legal and political institutions) in the Preface to the Critique of Political Economy, see Prinz (1969). 3  For a good and brief explanation of Brenner’s contribution to the debate on the agrarian question, which goes beyond our focus on distinctive property

304  |  notes to 1 and 2 rights, see Akram-Lodhi and Kay (2010a: 196–8). 4  These companies were also created in Brazil around the same time and also played an important role in the process of land grabbing and concentration in the south and the interior of São Paulo. 5  Jan de Vos’ estimate of 43 million hectares privatized between 1821 and 1910 is lower (1995: 244). 6  A decade ago, a study that looked at the forty-six largest latifundios in Brazil and grouped them by economic sector found that companies from the financial sector owned 22,133,342 hect­ ares of land, those from the industrial sector 19,991,211 hectares and those from the agricultural sector 6,277,169 hectares. In all these cases, the percentage of cultivated land in relation to the whole property remained very low: 17.16 per cent for properties owned by the financial sector, 18.12 per cent for those of the industrial sector and only 14.42 per cent for those of the agricultural sector (Júlio José Chiavenato, cited by Robles 2001: 152). 7  Considering that many forms of illegal land grabbing were and are still prevalent throughout Brazil, particularly in the Amazon, it cannot be said that politically constituted property has disappeared as a form of control of land and surplus labour. However, there is a clear movement towards ‘absolute private property’. 8  For decades, the Mexican state had subsidized a vast range of basic food crops, among which maize (for tortillas) and beans stand out. In 1994, all price subsidies were abolished except for maize and beans, markets for which were supposed to be slowly liberalized until they became fully subject to ­NAFTA competition in 2008. However, the Mexican state has liberalized maize and bean markets much more quickly than planned. On 1 January 1999 and

again in January 2007 the tortilla subsidy was substantially lowered.

2  New forms of rebellion 1  According to Theda Skocpol, social revolutions are ‘rapid, basic transformations of society’s state and class structure, accompanied and in part carried through by class-based revolts from below’, and tend to happen at moments of ‘administrative-military breakdown of pre-existing states’ (Skocpol 1979: 287). 2  Of course, the disappearance of traditional landlords does not mean that authoritarian and repressive labour regimes do not exist in Latin America any more. There are numerous regions of Latin America, including some regions of Brazil, where coercion still plays an important role in the subordination of peasants or rural workers. 3  Because he considered that studies on peasant rebellions focused on extraordinary circumstances, James Scott followed his work on peasant rebellion (1976) with a study of the everyday forms of peasant resistance (1985), which, according to him, characterize the normal state of affairs in the countryside. However, since my focus is on peasant revolts, I will not consider Scott’s Weapons of the Weak (1985) in this chapter. 4  This trend has been reversed since, but in 2003 Chiapas still accounted only for 2.97 per cent of the total amount of remittances sent to Mexico from the United States (Villafuerte 2005: 473). Migration is now an important phenomenon in indigenous regions of Chiapas. However, to my knowledge, there are as yet no reliable data or studies on migration of indigenous peoples in Chiapas. The magnitude of the phenomenon is hence difficult to evaluate. The data collected by Villafuerte, for instance, show that two-thirds of remittances are received

notes to 2  |  305 by families living in municipalities that are predominantly non-indigenous, and his data do not show how the remaining third is distributed nor the amount of remittances indigenous municipalities receive (see ibid.: 479). 5  Other authors, who are probably closer to historical evidence, have shown that successful revolutionary movements have tended to win support from many kinds of rural producers, such as middle-income peasants, squatters, sharecroppers and migrant labourers, and sometimes even rich peasants and landlords (Goodwin and Skocpol 1994: 262; Wickham-Crowley 2001 [1989]: 146–7). 6  This highlights the shortcomings of the attempt to restrict the use of the term ‘peasantry’ to small independent landowning producers instead of employing it to refer to a class with internal divisions and a diversity of forms of production, which is closer to the lived experience of most peasantries. 7  As will be argued in Chapter 5, ­after Lula da Silva assumed power in 2003, the economic recovery, the increasing but still limited support for peasant families and the accelerated development of Bolsa Família, which provides monetary income to families living under extreme poverty, have changed the economic and social con­ ditions upon which the strategy of MST was based. This has brought down the number of land occupations from 285 in 2003 to just 30 in 2011 and 13 in 2012 (CPT 2012), making the main source of new activists and political strength of the MST fade away. 8  Ladino is the term used in Chiapas and Central America to refer to the local population of European descent or with non-indigenous racial features. 9  The young Zapatistas from the northern fringe of the Lacandona jungle, for instance, migrate temporarily to

Tabasco to work in the lime and lemon plantations during harvest time in February and March. 10  The construction sector is one of the major employers of temporary indigenous peasant labour in local urban centres (Collier with Quaratiello 1994). 11  However, this tendency is not uniform since, as Burguete Cal y Mayor (1999: 290–5) underlines with regard to the highlands region, a small privileged sector of the indigenous population is taking advantage of the commercialization and ‘Indianization’ of certain economic activities such as transport, usury lending, flower and coffee production, as well as artisanal crafts/handicrafts. 12  However, the experience of semi-servile subordination to a landlord remained a very vivid memory in the minds of older indigenous settlers who moved into the Tojolabal highlands on the outskirts of the jungle and the north of Chiapas between the 1950s and 1960s (see Leyva Solano and Ascencio Franco 1996: 129–31). This generation obviously had an influence on the class discourse of the Zapatistas. 13  Most certainly, the EZLN had some presence in the north of Chiapas before 1994, but its organization was not as consolidated as in the Lacandona jungle. However, since 1994 the EZLN has managed to expand into northern Chiapas by providing the political organization to protect some of these land occupations. 14  Some collective practices of ­peasant solidarity and reciprocity, such as labour corvée, called mutirão, have existed within the Brazilian peasantry but have always had minimal effects, and are not as generalized and enshrined in cultural practices as they are in other parts of Latin America. 15  Of course, this is not to say that indigenous peoples in Chiapas and elsewhere in Latin America reject m ­ odernity

306  |  notes to 2 and 3 and are not attracted by modern commodities and technology. Their relationship with modernity, like that of any other subaltern social group, is certainly a very complex and contradictory one, influenced by capitalist hegemonic discourses. The point here is simply to highlight that alienating experiences in the city often lead to a revalorization of community life in the countryside. 16  Indianismo refers to an ‘ideological and political movement, the objective of which is centred on the liberation of the Indian, not the liberation of an individual Indian but the Indian as a member of indigenous civilization, who lives in the collective memory of indigenous groups, and rather than ­having been destroyed, waits patiently for liberation’ (Velasco 2003: 122, cited by Leyva Solano 2005: 568).

3  The new modern prince 1  I use the term ‘relatively autonomous rural communities’ to highlight the fact that these communities are not completely autonomous from the ‘outside world’. They do not exist in autarky. They have an ongoing relationship with different actors locally, nationally and internationally. Moreover, I use the term because, financially, both movements receive donations not only from national and international solidarity groups but also from non-governmental organizations working in the field of international development. In the case of the MST, settlements and the organization itself also benefit from state funding and programmes. However, as will be shown, the way these movements are able to determine or negotiate external intervention in their member communities justifies the use of the term autonomy. 2  I will use the term ‘institutional politics’ to refer to political activities that are carried out within these institutions. 3  I am aware of the ambiguous and

problematic nature of the term ‘community’. Hence, my use of the term does not imply the idea of a homogeneous and non-conflictive social entity or space. My use of the term community does not mean the absence of power relations and struggles among individuals, groups or the different levels within MST and Zapa­tista communities and organizational structures. There are rivalries between individuals and between groups, friction between the power and jurisdiction of the different levels, and divergences on issues of political strategies. This chapter will explore some of these internal power relations. What is important to highlight at this point is that throughout this process of creating or reinforcing relatively autonomous rural communities, a process that Rahman calls ‘constructive engagement’ develops. People get actively involved in finding solutions to their problems and acting on them collectively (Rahman 1993: 185). 4  I recognize, as does Van der Haar (2001: 135–6) in her work on indigenous communities in Chiapas, that decisions taken in assemblies are not exempt from the possibility of conflicts, manipulations and impositions. However, they do remain forms of decision-making that tend to require and generate more participation than simple elections. 5  One of the implications of these distinctions has to do with the issue of control of or access to natural resources, but the limited space and complexity of the issue does not allow for further development. 6  I use the term ‘conquering land’ to translate the idea of ‘conquista da terra’ that landless people use in Portuguese to emphasize the idea that gaining the recognition of the right to land and the constitution of a settlement is not due to the goodwill of the state, but rather is the result of a collective struggle.

notes to 3  |  307 7  Owing to the numerous legal mechanisms whereby a landlord can appeal in order to contest and postpone expropriation, a landless family can live in one or many of these encampments for anything from two to four years, sometimes more. 8  These values are a mixture of different left-wing ideologies, notably Marxism and socialism, but also have a strong connection to Catholic values, especially those inspiring liberation theology, which was crucial in the first years of the movement. 9 The agro-villa is a type of geo­ graphic organization of the settlement, where family homes are close to each other and regrouped in a small ‘urban area’ (villa) within the settlement. Although many types of agro-villa exist (from single villa to multiple small villas, comprising housing lots with little garden space or with a large garden space) the agro-villa is the opposite of the traditional Brazilian peasant settlement, where each family lives relatively far away from the nearest neighbouring family. 10  This could also obviously be the case in encampments and settlements of the MST, as the work of Wolford suggests (2010). However, I was not able to discern these mechanisms during my fieldwork. In contrast to indigenous communities, the peculiar and more open nature of the encampment, as people can decide to join or leave the encampment when they want, does not make it a closed corporate community. The settlement is also not a closed corporate community because the title to the plot is not attributed or controlled by the community, but by the state. Maintaining access to land is thus not dependent on following a specific political ideology or cultural norms. 11  Avecindados, sometimes also called agregados (the added people),

are the sons and daughters of the original ejidatarios, who have joined the community but have no land title. Only ejidatarios have land titles and are allowed to participate in the ejido assembly where decisions are taken. Because the ejido title can be inherited by only one member of the family, all the other members of the family, if they stay in the ejido, become avencidados. They normally live on the residential lot of their parents and either work with their parents, have a sharecropping arrange­ment with an ejidatatio, or work as wage labourers for another ejidatario or outside the ejido. 12  Rancho recuperado is the name used to refer to the communities that were created on land that Zapatista peasants expropriated from private ranchers. See Chapter 5. 13  During the fieldwork in Santa María, only twice did all families gather to discuss and make a decision. The first time, it was to determine the measures to take to protect themselves against possible aggression by opposing priístas within the community. The second time it was in the lead-up to a regional meeting of political representatives, where issues of future strategies were to be discussed (most probably the preparation of the series of encounters in the summer of 2005 that led up to ‘The Other Campaign’ of 2006). We were not allowed to attend either of the two assemblies, although in the case of the first assembly, because our personal security was threatened by the priísta factions of the community, the rationale behind the decision was explained to us after the meeting. 14  Compas is short for compañeros or compañeras (comrades). It is used by Zapatistas to refer to members of the EZLN. 15  For coverage of the ‘dismantling’ of the autonomous municipalities of

308  |  notes to 3 and 4 Ricardo Flores Magón, Taniperlas, Tierra y Libertad and El Bosque, see La Jornada, 12, 15 and 18 April 1998, 2 and 7 May 1998, and 11 and 21 June 1998, as well as Proceso no. 1128, 14 June 1998. 16  See Comandante Tacho on this matter in LeBot (1997: 295). 17  For the original exposition of the idea of mandar obedeciendo, see communiqué ‘Mandar obedeciendo’, 26-01-94, in EZLN (1994b: 175–7). 18  CEB stands for Comunidad Eclesiastica de Base, or grassroots ecclesiastic community. 19  This holds especially for the more geographically isolated indigenous communities in Chiapas. In the highlands, such as in Amatenango and Chamula, this is less the case, as women have gone out of their communities to sell arts and crafts since the 1970s (Nash 2001: 97). 20  Most of the time, children go to school in nearby towns and the struggle is focused on having the municipality pay for bus transport. 21  In 2013, when I returned to Chiapas, I was told that the clinic was jeopardized because of tensions and conflicts between Zapatistas and priístas around the right of Zapatistas to use the ejido space where the clinic was located.

4  Resistance, alternative development 1  As we will see later in this chapter, the imperative of competition does begin to take effect once they have decided to take the infrastructure loan of the state and are obliged to repay it. 2  Information gathered during my fieldwork in June 2003. 3  Even though the ejido plot cannot be legally sold or rented out, it is often treated as an individual possession over which the ejidatario has exclusive rights. The sale or rental of plots is thus c­ommon practice in many regions of

Mexico, and is even often recognized by the ejido assembly (Goldring 1996: 272). 4  The struggle of Fazenda Primavera was one the first land struggles of the 1980s. It was carried out without an organizational structure but it counted on the support of sectors of the Catholic Church. 5  The term finquero refers to the owner of a finca, which is the Chiapanecan equivalent of the hacienda. 6  Tojol means real, authentic, genuine, and represents an attitude of straightforwardness and honesty. One is not born ‘Tojolabal’ but rather becomes and remains one as long as one acts appropriately. Tojol is not a static characteristic but rather a constant challenge (Lenkersdorf 1996: 22–3). 7  Pozol is a fundamental element of the diet of indigenous people in the ­Lacandona jungle. It is made by com­ bining ground maize paste to make tortilla (nixtamal) with water (sometimes sugar is added). Families drink it many times a day and often it is the drink that women will serve to greet visitors. It is also served for lunch and brought to the field in a bottle. 8  Although I did encounter some cases in which settlers had decided to adopt agro-ecological techniques, my fieldwork did not allow me to determine how widespead this decision is within the movement. 9  According to an FAO survey carried out in 1992, in southern Brazil the average monthly earnings of a settler are 3.7 times the minimum wage in Brazil, close to the national average of 3.82 times the minimum wage and significantly superior to those of the average farm or urban worker. There is, however, significant variation between regions, the average settler’s income in southern Brazil being 5.6 times the minimum wage, while it was 2.3 times in

notes to 4  |  309 the impoverished north-east (Hammond 1999: 480). 10  At the time of the fieldwork in 2003, approximately US$300–600 and US$900–2,250, respectively. 11  By creating cooperatives or production groups, settlers can petition for another credit line within PROCERA to buy collectively machinery that would not be accessible individually. 12  For example, in 1997, out of the US$900 million spent on the agrarian reform, US$830 million was used for that purpose. In comparison, only US$214 million was used for credit for settlements (Sparovek 2003: 28). One of the reasons for this has been the excessively high cost of compensations conceded by tribunals to landowners. For instance, in the north, compensation conceded by tribunals was 9.09 times higher than what INCRA had evaluated; in the north-east it was 4.93 times higher, in the centre-west 11.97, in the south-west 14.64 and in the south 1.2 (INCRA 1999). 13  At the time, approximately US$31 and US$100 respectively. 14  Acahual is the land left fallow after some years of cultivation. Most of the time, within a few years, vegetation is already relatively dense on fallow land, but an appropriate regeneration of the soil would necessitate fifteen to twenty years (Toledo 2000: 143). Con­sidering demographic pressure on the land, it is doubtful that families have been able to wait that many years. Hence the average area of mountain land is surely much less than 29 per cent today. 15  These eight-hectare plots are not necessarily representative of the amount of land distributed in each community in Zapatista territory. According to Toledo, in the Cañadas region of the Lacandona jungle, which comprises the municipalities of Ocosingo, Las Margaritas and Altamirano, the average

plot is between 15 and 20 hectares (Toledo 2000: 111). The average size of the ejido plot for Chiapas as a whole, according to official data, is 16.69 hectares (Villafuerte et al. 1999: 87). However, in the highlands the average size of an ejido plot is 3.9 hectares. Hence, in many areas, because of the size of the plots, rotation of land is not practised, which jeopardizes future soil fertility (INI 1995). 16  Coyote is the name given to people specializing in buying and selling agricultural products or consumption goods between communities. 17  CONASUPO and DICONSA are state-funded networks of community stores where low-income Mexicans, mainly from marginalized commun­ ities, can buy consumption goods at a discount. 18  The term ganaderización is derived from ganado, which means cattle in Spanish, and is used to refer to the process whereby cattle ranching becomes the main agricultural activity of a region or community. 19  Nescafé, also known as ‘pica pica mansa’ and ‘frijol terciopelado’, has many uses. According to Toledo it is ‘a plant brought by the Gods’. It is a natural fertilizer and, if planted on a hectare, can produce up to 150 kilograms of nitrogen. It helps to avoid soil erosion and ­maintain soil humidity while impeding the spread of weeds. Moreover, it eliminates the need to burn the field and reduces the danger of forest fires. Finally it can also be used as animal feed and its seed can be used to make a drink similar to coffee. More importantly, the use of nescafé alongside other crops or in rotation with maize can double or triple maize production, and a plot sown with nescafé for two years can have the same effect on land recovery as leaving land follow for five years (Toledo 2000: 147).

310  |  notes to 5 5 Revolution 1  One started from the south in São Paulo, the other from the south-east in Governor Valadares in the state of Minas Gerais, and the other from the west in Rondonópolis in the state of Mato Grosso. 2  For an analysis of the Brazilian market-friendly agrarian reform and a comparison with similar programmes in South Africa and the Philippines, see Borras (2003). 3  Under these programmes, any family living in extreme poverty is entitled to a maximum of 95 reis, the equivalent of US$43 per month. In return, their children have to remain in school and be taken to local clinics for regular medical examinations. 4  A study revealed that within Lula’s first governing coalition, thirtyone deputies from the Partido Liberal (Liberal Party, PL), the Partido Trabalhista Brasileiro (Brazilian Labour Party, PTB) and the Partido do Movimento Democrático Brasileiro (Brazilian Democratic Movement Party, PMDB) could be identified as defenders of the interests of large landowners (Pompeu 2003: 12). 5  Throughout 1994, Marcos exchanged views through letters with ­major Mexican intellectuals from the left and the right, such as worldrenowned writers Carlos Fuentes and Octavio Paz, and established dialogue with many others in later years. 6  On 25 May 2014 in the aftermath of the assassination of Galeano, a Zapatista education promoter, on 2 May in La Realidad, the EZLN decided to symbolic­ ally kill Subcomandante Insurgente Marcos. Marcos himself argued that he had been created to play the game of the media and be the bridge with civil society. With the consolidation of the Zapatista autonomy and the emergence of a new generation of leaders, he was no longer needed.

7  Every time the EZLN has wanted to convey an important message to broader Mexican society, to propose the creation of an organization or to call for the planning of an event, it has issued a ‘Declaration of the Lacandona Jungle’. To date, the EZLN has issued six such declarations. 8 These panistas (as members of the PAN are called) were Vicente Fox, Gonzalez Schmall, Bernardo Batíz and Pablo Emilio Madero, who were clearly differentiated from the ‘neo-panistas’ who had collaborated with President Carlos Salinas de Gortari, such as Diego Fernandez de Cevallo (EZLN 1995a: 66). 9  Ley de Concordia y Pacificación en Chiapas (Law of Agreement and Pacification in Chiapas). 10  The COCOPA was a parliamentary commission, composed of deputies and senators from the different parties represented in National Congress, created to assist in the negotiations between the federal government and the EZLN. 11  It was only in 2006, in the midst of his campaign against electoral fraud in the presidential elections, that Andrés Manuel López Obrador, the defeated candidate of the PRD, revived the idea of refounding the nation by rewriting the Mexican Constitution. 12  Both later abandoned the PRI and Salazar in particular, because of his conciliatory attitude, gained great political capital for the future. Indeed, Pablo Salazar won the 2000 elections for governor of Chiapas, under a local alliance of various parties, which included the PRD, and became one of Fox’s strongest supporters among state governors. 13  According to the EZLN, 2,854,737 people participated in the referendum; 120,000 people were involved in the ­organization; 14,893 panels and ­assemblies were held; 2,358 brigades were created, involving 27,859 people;

notes to 5 and conclusion  |  311 and 4,996 Zapatista delegates visited 1,141 municipalities throughout Mexico (Subcomandante Insurgente Marcos 1999). 14  Zocalo is the name given to the central plaza of any town or city in Mexico. The zocalo of Mexico City is considered the ‘political centre’ of the Republic and traditionally all major political events, celebrations or protests took place there. 15  According to the vast majority of indigenous organizations, the indigen­ ous law ratified in April 2001 does not correspond to the spirit of the COCOPA law (Bartra and Otero 2005: 402; Rus et al. 2003: 21).

Conclusion 1  Of course, state funding and international cooperation have been very important for the implementation

of the development alternative of the MST. The same is not true in the case of the EZLN, as the Zapatistas have relied almost exclusively on international solidarity. In both cases, however, the principles and objectives guiding their development alternatives cannot be said to be c­ onditioned by their sources of funding. 2  Victor Jara is an iconic songwriter from Chile. A member of the Communist Party, he supported working-class ­struggles throughout the 1960s and early 1970s. He was tortured and assassinated by Pinochet’s military junta in the early days of the military coup of September 1973. 3  ‘Gracias a nuestro triunfo, es que ahora estamos viviendo “como gente”, se dice. Tenemos nuestro sitio, nuestra casa … que es la población Herminda de la Victoria.’

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INDEX

Abramovay, R., 105 acahual, 204 acampadas/os, 85–6, 98, 99, 100, 127, 172, 254 acampamentos see encampments access to land, as political strategy, 66 see also land, access to accountability, 8, 128, 129 accumulation logic, 79 Acteal massacre (Chiapas), 119 Acuerdo nacional para el campo, 281 Acuerdos Agrarios, 180 agrarian reform, 4, 51, 52, 53, 55, 56, 59, 70, 238, 254; approaches to, 32–3; stalled by ethanol boom, 256 agrarian studies, debates in, 17 agrarian transition, 30–43, 49–51 agribusiness, 33, 36, 60, 67 agriculture: commercialization of, 88; commodification of see commodification, of agriculture; modernization of, 22, 54–5, 59, 67, 70; practices and objectives of, 11; restructuring of, 25, 65–72 (neoliberal, 62) see also mechanization of agriculture agro-ecology, 191–200, 213; of the poor, 195, 214, 294 (in Zapatista practice, 200–15) agro-villas, 104 Akram-Lodhi, Haroon, 32, 35, 40, 61 alcohol, consumption of, 110, 113 Alianza Democrática, 56, 226, 234 alienation, 64; of labour, concept of, 18, 19, 85, 90, 91, 166, 290; process of, 39 alliances, 233, 261, 272, 273; creation of, 88, 225, 274, 283, 286, 288; politics of, 3, 215 Almeida, Lucio Flavio de, 230 alternative development, 12–19, 158–215,

291; approach, 293–5 (limitations of, 16); non-capitalist, 159 alternatives: building of, 295–302; developmental, 12–19 (offered by MST and EZLN, 11); to neoliberalism, 3, 6–12, 25, 26, 158, 289, 295–302 Amazon, land legalization, 253–4 Ana Maria, Comandante, 141 another way of doing politics, 257–84 anti-capitalist impulses, 84–91 anti-globalization movement, 5, 12 anti-power, concept of, 298 armed struggle, 9, 257–8, 274 army, confrontation with, 145 Articulação, 223 Asamblea de Barrios (Mexico City), 222 Asamblea Estatal del Pueblo Chiapaneco (AEDPCH), 274 Asamblea Popular de los Pueblos de Oaxaca (APPO), 283 Asociación Rural de Interés Colectivo– Unión de Uniones (ARIC–UU), 116 assemblies: of communities, 120, 143; of schools, 148 assembly-type decision-making, 8 assentamento settlement, 8, 183, 184 Atenco massacre, 283 autonomization of civil society, 156 autonomous communities, 95, 115–22, 156; dismantling of in Zapatista territory, 136 autonomous rural communities, 11, 26, 72, 82–3, 92–157, 214, 216, 288 autonomy, 9, 62, 73, 90, 142, 168, 257, 258, 259, 267, 276, 291, 295, 297, 298, 299; construction of, 158; definition of, 150; different forms of, 84–91; differentiation of concept of, 300; extending experience of, 282; form of people’s power, 146–57; from market and state, 181–2, 192; from political

index  |  333 parties, 242, 261; from the state, 90, 298; in Chiapas, 271; in Zapatista movement, 147, 155 (levels of, 118); meaning of, 146; of civil society, 13; of communities, 240; of MST settlements, 147; of peasantry, 12; of structures of popular power, 301; of working life, 87; political, 11, 14, 214; within organizations, 101 see also autonomous rural communities and village autonomy avencidados, 114 ‘Banco da terra’ reform, 231 Barmeyer, N., 113, 120 Bartra, Armando, 39, 160, 167–9, 189, 190 bases de apoyo, 117, 118, 130, 141, 150, 155 beans, production of, 197, 204, 206 Bernstein, Henry, 6, 11, 36, 164–5, 190 biodiesel, production of, 252 Bobrow-Strain, Aaron, 84 Bolsa Família programme, 29, 254–5 Borras, S., 61, 310 Brazil: as New Agricultural Country, 54; crisis of peasant agriculture in, 65–72; development of capitalism in agriculture of, 49–51; ruling class (sponsor military coup, 52–3; strategy of, 51–6) Brenner, Robert, 34, 38, 41, 43, 162 Burguete Cal y Mayor, Araceli, 118, 149 Byres, Terence, 33–5 caciques, 149 Calderón, Felipe, 283 Canudos millenarian community, 46 capitalism: development of, 11, 30–43 (in agriculture, 49–51); impulse to accumulate, 37; political and coercive nature of, 42; social relations of, generalization of, 40 capitalist commodity production, 165 capitalist market relations, encroachment of, 65–6 Cárdenas, Cuauhtémoc, 222, 263–4, 267 Cardoso, Fernando Henrique, 199, 223, 228–32, 234, 237, 239, 240, 242, 250, 251, 254, 256

cash crops, 58, 105, 194 cash transfer programmes, 28–9, 250 Catholic church, 52, 56, 232; expropriation of land of, 46–7; preferential option for the poor, 87; privatization of land of, 48 cattle: as insurance policy, 212; production of, 195, 204, 208, 210–11 (crisis in, 211; loses importance, 212–13); ranching, growth of, 54 Central dos Movimentos Populares (CMP), 238–9, 284 Central Única de Trabalhadores (CUT), 222, 234, 284 changing the world without taking power, 298 Chayanov, A. V., 191 Chiapas, 3, 8, 9, 57, 66, 83, 257; crisis in, 68–9, 205, 210, 213; land occupations in, 177, 180; maize production in, 205–6; militarization of, 277; peasant community of, 79; peasant unity in, fall of, 274–5; remittances received by, 71–2; tendency towards subsistence agriculture, 79 childcare: collective, 138; done by children, 196, 202; done by women, 137; services for mothers, 138 children: as family agriculture workers, 79; work of, 196, 201–2, 207 chilli: marketing of, 208–9; production of, 191, 204 Citizen Caravan, 238 citizenship, new, 90 civil society, 272–84; mobilization of, 218, 264–7; MST strategy towards, 232–41; relations with, 12 class, as fundamental social category, 78 class, political construction of, 170 class composition, 7 class consciousness, 75, 94, 245; construction of, 93 class for itself, 75, 92 class forces, agrarian question of, 32, 34 class in itself, 75 class position of rural producers, 163 class struggle, 35, 43–56; analysis of, 42; between landlords and peasants, 35

334  |  index clientelism, 221 coalitions, creation of, 9, 216, 220, 285, 287 coffee: crisis of, 71; marketing of, 208–9; prices of, 68–9; production of, 191, 203, 204 collective agency, 301 collective forms of production, new, 4 collective intellectual, political party as, 94 collective production, 178, 203 collective property rights, 47 Collor de Mello, Fernando, 223, 226, 254 colonato system, 50 colonization, politics of, 43 comandante, position of, 141 Comisão Pastoral da Terra (CPT), 232 comisario ejidal, 115 Comisión para la Concordia y la Pacificación en Chiapas (COCOPA), 268, 270, 271 comité, role of, 118 Comité Clandestino Revolucionario Indigena–Comandancia General (CCRI-CG), 117–18, 120–1, 122, 129, 141 commercial relations, retreat from, 80 commodification: of agricultural social relations, 190–1; of agriculture, 66, 195, 215, 294; of collective resources, 36; of household, 196; of land, 40, 61, 62, 188, 289–90; of social relations, 294; resistance to, 189, 190 commodities, importance of, in peasants’ lives, 190 commodity fetishism, 18, 38, 160, 170–1 commodity production, 160 communal rights, protection and reinforcement of, 294 Communist Party of Brazil (PCB), 52 community self-reliance, 158 comparison: four types of, 23; incorporating, 24 (singular form of, 25) comparison between MST and EZLN, 5–6, 10, 11, 22–5, 125, 145–6, 147, 294, 295–302; regarding questions of alliance, 216; regarding questions of property and tenure, 171–89

competition, 160; imperative of, 34, 38, 40–3, 54, 62, 199, 215; in capitalist production, 166 compromiso, 109 CONASUPO food agency, 57, 209 conciliation in Chiapas, 268 conditional cash transfers, effect of, on MST membership, 254 see also cash transfer programmes Confederação Nacional dos Trabalhadores na Agricultura (CONTAG), 52, 55, 56, 227, 284; relations with MST, 233–4 Confederación Nacional Campesina (CNC), 57, 60, 281 Congreso Agrario Permanente (CAP), 281 Congreso Nacional Indígena (CNI), 274, 276–7, 280 conquistar a terra, 301 consciousness: formation of, 98; of women, 139; raising of, 104, 157 Consejo Estatal de Organizaciones Indígenas y Campesinas (CEOIC), 274 conselhos de desenvolvimento rural, 236 Constituent Assembly, proposed by EZLN, 262, 264–6, 267–8, 299 Constitution: of Brazil, 51–2, 61, 236 (agrarian clauses in, 226; negotiations over, 56); of Mexico, 264 (Article 27, 59, 60, 62, 113, 281; proposed rewriting of, 262, 266) Consulta Popular, 239 consumption goods, need for, 206, 294 controlling pace of work in the field, 85 Convención Nacional Democrática (CND), 264–5, 276 convivencia, 104 cooperatives, 8, 196; establishment of, 132, 184, 192; of women, 141 coordinating committees, 100 COPANOSSA cooperative, 196 COPAVI cooperative, 131, 196, 244 corporate food regime, agrarian question of, 33 corporatist legacy, in Brazil and Mexico, 219–24 corruption, 122 Corumbiará, massacre at, 228

index  |  335 counter-power, creation of, 15 Craske, Nikki, 136 credit, 231; access to, 67, 68, 88, 192, 197, 199, 215, 252; for agriculture, 53–4; for start-ups, 105; made available before harvest, 199; problems of, 173, 176; received from state, 294; state programmes for, 197 criminal offences, handling of, 123 criminalization, fighting against, 230–2 culture, as located in social relations, 293 David, Comandante, 260 debt, 68, 231; cancellation of, 199; crisis of, 58; repayment of, 215 (renegotiation of, 200, 252) decision-making, 95, 96, 101, 115, 125, 146; communal, 116; forms and practices of, 107–8, 129, 147; gender dynamics of, 116; imposition of, by leadership, 128; in Sumaré 1 settlement, 132; of the poor and indigenous, 156; participatory forms of, 297 demobilization of social movements, 103 democracy, 124, 125, 126, 203, 291; grassroots, 297; in MST, 233; liberal, 157 (crisis of, 302; restrictive character of, 223; transition to, 222); of power relations, 298; participatory, 300 democratic centralism see Movimento dos Trabalhadores Rurais Sem Terra, democratic centralism of democratization, 17; indigenous demand for, 149 demographic pressure on land, 198 Department of Agrarian Conflicts (Brazil), 230 dependence, freedom from, 85 development: critique of, 14; definition of, 12; endogenous, 15; from below, 15; in terms of universal potential, 12; statist model of, 12, 17 see also people’s self-development dictatorships, military, 219, 222, 234 dignity, aspect of Zapatista movement, 114 direção, 100–1

Diretas Ja campaign, 225, 241 dispossession of peasantry, resistance to, 35 distribution of land see land, distribution of division of labour, 163; gendered, 21, 27, 133, 139, 152, 157; in agriculture, 201; in household, 142; modified, 138; traditional, 143–4, 196, 292 domestic chores, sharing of, 136, 142 domestic sphere, politicization of, 138 donations, unequal distribution of, 123 Dutra, Olivio, 251 Echeverría, Luis, 69 Eckstein, Susan, 65, 81 education, 139, 148, 156, 292; in EZLN, 150–1; right to, 140; women’s participation in, 145 education promoters, 151; assistance offered to, 151; symbolic salary of, 152 Ejército Zapatista de Liberación Nacional (EZLN), 2, 3, 10, 60, 62; and meanings of land, 185–9; as anti-strategic, 298–9; as defensive or progressive, 81–4; as force for radical change, 275–7; as indigenous peasant movement, 78; as land conflict resolution body, 180; as life-changing experience, 301; as Modern Prince, 94; as semi-clandestine organization, 257–9, 285; blocked from expanding beyond Chiapas, 259; characterized as democratic and pluralist, 124; civil society mobilization of, 264–7; claims on land, 85; commitment to resistance among members of, 109–15; communiqués of, 261, 262 see also Marcos, Subcomandante, communiqués of; control of territorial space, 72; creation of autonomous communities, 93; Declarations of the Lacandona Jungle, 262, 272 (first, 263, 281; second, 264; third, 265; fifth, 270; sixth, 282, 287); emergence of, 65, 69; expansion of, 84; fieldwork with, 19–22; heritage of, 61;

336  |  index indigenous composition of, 89; institutionalization within, 156; issue of land struggle in, 70; land distribution programmes of, 30; land struggles of, 70 (character of, 29); militancy of, making of, 108–24; military structure of, 117; moral discourse of, 89–90; organizational structure of, 8, 108–24; power structures of, 154, 157; pride among members of, 110; process of politicization in, 130–1; radicalism of, 7; recruiting by, 21; reference point for popular movements, 262; refusal of state negotiation, 180; rejection of electoral politics, 220, 269, 286; rejection of institutional politics, 267–72, 297; rejection of relations with state, 217, 221 (re-evaluation of, 297); relations with political parties, 271, 285, 287; relationship with intellectuals, 262; scholarship on, 3–5; sense of territory, 89; shares characteristics of previous rebellions, 63; social composition of, 76–7, 78; strategy towards civil society, 272– 84; strategy towards institutional politics, 263–72; structure of, 115–22; view of the role of state power, 220, 263; women’s activism in, 140, 145; women’s rights in, 139–46; working with individual supporters, 273 see also leadership, of EZLN, division of, comparison between MST and EZLN and mandar obedeciendo EZLN/Civil Society Encounter, 278 ejidatarios, 29, 50, 80, 114, 117, 175, 176, 181, 188, 202, 210–11, 212; males as, 189; rights and duties of, 21 Ejido Bank, 205 ejido land tenure system, 20–2, 30, 44, 49, 57, 58, 84, 113, 115, 117, 177; assembly voting in, 176; diversified production in, 204; model of, 174–6, 179, 181; privatization of land of, 59, 60; women’s exclusion from, 143 El Campo No Aguanta Más campaign, 274, 281

El Mirador community, 179 Eldorado dos Carajás, massacre at, 229 electoral politics, participation in, 243–50 employment squeeze, 28 empowerment, 15, 102, 158, 291 encampments, 7–8, 95, 96, 97, 98–103, 106, 137, 138, 142, 157, 181; assemblies of, 101; experience of, 105; gender roles in, 137; politicization in, 128; way of life in, 104 Encounter between the Peoples of Chiapas with the Peoples of the World, 297 Engels, Friedrich, 32 environmental sustainability of development, 15 Escobar, Arturo,13–14 Escola Chico Mendes, 148 escuelita Zapatista, 284, 287 Estatuto da Terra (Land Statute), (Brazil), 52–3, 56 Estatuto do Trabalhador Rural (Rural Worker Statute) (Brazil), 52 Esteva, Gustavo, 92 Esther, Comandante, 141, 260 ethanol produced from sugar cane, 251–2, 256 ethnicity, 7, 14 exchange-value, 18, 40, 87, 168; land as, 183; predominance of, 38 exit strategies for peasantry, 71 expropriation: of labourers, from means of production, 38; of land, 56 falsification of property titles, 45 family farming, 196–7 family labour, 11, 214 family unit, non-commodified, 39 Fazenda Anoni settlement, 148; decision-making structures of, 132 Fazenda Macali settlement, 173 Fazenda Primavera settlement, 173, 182 fazendas, 50 fazenderos, 237, 244; compensation of, 172 female heads of household, 207 Fernandes, B. M., 96–9, 191, 289

index  |  337 fertility of soil, declining, 204, 211 fertilizers, 66; use of, 205 Festival de la Digna Rabia, 283 fetishism, phenomenon of, 171 feudalism see quasi-feudal relationships fieldwork: experiences of, 19–22; six aspects of study, 25 Figueiredo, João Baptista de Oliveira, 225 fincas recuperadas, 177 fiscal incentives for investment in land, 54 FOBAPROA bank rescue programme, 273 Fome Zero programme, 29, 254 Fondo de Solidaridad para la Producción (FOSOLPRO), 200–1 food baskets, distribution of, 254 food crops, choice of, 193 food security, 27, 37, 39 food self-sufficiency, 3 food sovereignty, 37 forest environment, modification of, 201 Foro Especial sobre la Reforma del Estado, 277 Foucault, Michel, 14 Fox, Vicente, 260, 280; election of, 108, 119 Franco, Itamar, 226–7, 242 Freire, Paulo, 148–9 frente de masas of MST, 127 Frente Democrático Revolucionario (FDR), 222 Frente Zapatista de Liberación Nacional (FZLN), 278–9 Friedmann, Harriet, 160, 163–4, 166–7 Froncheti, Alceu, 194 ganaderización of agricultural production, 212 García de Léon, A., 81 gender, 14, 16, 17; agrarian question of, 33 see also division of labour, gendered and gender relations gender complementarity, 140 gender relations, 133–46; transformation of, 3, 15, 26; traditional, 136–7 (transformation of, 145, 292) general strikes, 235

genetically modified organisms, 231; ban on, lifted, 251 geographic isolation of Zapatista communities, 189 globalization, 43 Gomes da Silva, José Alencar, 250 Gonçalves, R. H., 149, 154 Görgen, Frei Sérgio, 244, 247 gossip, as weapon of discipline, 144 Goulart, João, 52 governmentality, 14 Gramsci, Antonio, 3, 93–4, 130, 156–7, 217–18 see also Modern Prince grassroots politicization, 64 Green Revolution, 66 guaranteed income, 255 guerrilla movements, 70–1, 125, 130, 136, 222, 257, 259; defeat of, 1 Guevara, Ernesto ‘Che’, 259 see also Cheinspired radicalism Halperin, Rhoda, 207 harvests: in Lacandona jungle, 202–3; size of, 204 health programmes, community-based, 153 health promoters, 142, 152; training of, 153 healthcare, 156, 292; building of clinic, 152; right to, 140 Hellman, J. A., 220 herbicides, use of, 213 Hernández Castillo, R., 128, 136, 156 hierarchy, 126; nested, 297 Holloway, John, 298 household estate: commodification of, 170; use of term, 169 household production, specificity of, 164 human development approach, 16 humiliation, of landless people, 146 identity, as fundamental social category, 78 immigration policies, of Brazil, 44, 50 independent household production, 189 Indians, domination of, by Ladinos, 88–9 indigenous approach to production, 165 indigenous communities, 48; collective

338  |  index property rights of, 47; expropriation of land of, 46–7, 48 indigenous movements, lessons of, 296 indigenous peoples: cultural values of, 292 (survival of, 188); extermination of, 47; relationship with land, 187; self-determination of, 156 indigenous rights, referendum on, 279 Indigenous Rights and Culture talks, 274 industrialization, 51; peasant resistance to, 88 informal sector, 76, 90 inheritance: of right to land, 169–70; practices of, privileging sons, 115 INMECAFÉ coffee agency, 57, 68 institutional politics, strategies towards, 95 institutionalization, 240, 241–3, 263–72, 285, 300 Instituto de Terras do Estado de São Paulo (ITESP), 237 Instituto Nacional de Colonização e Reforma Agrária (INCRA), 173–4, 198–9, 227, 237; occupation of offices of, 231; prohibited from doing land audits, 230 Instituto Técnica de Capacitação e Pesquisa da Reforma Agrária (ITERRA), 102, 139 insurgentes, 117, 140 interpersonal relations, transformation of, 17 interviews, methodology of, 19–20, 101 Jara, Victor, ‘Herminda de la Victoria’, 301 Juárez, Benito, 273 Juntas de Buen Gobierno, 20, 95, 120, 122–4, 129, 154–5, 156, 180; creation of, 282 justice, regarding land rights, 82 Kautsky, Karl, 32, 34 Kay, Cristóbal, 32, 35, 40, 61, 76 kinship reciprocity, 11 kinship relations, 176, 201, 209 La Jornada newspaper, 261, 278 La Marcha del Color de la Tierra, 280

Lacandona jungle, 1, 8, 20, 70, 71, 69, 83, 84, 116, 152, 181, 206, 221, 259, 289; cattle ranching in, 210–11; diversified production in, 204; harvests in, 202–3 Ladinos, domination over Indians, 88–9 land: access to, 90, 97, 114, 153, 168, 173, 301; as exchange-value, 183; as human right, 98; as private property, 172; as something that is battled over, 301; as use-value, 183; associated with labour, 185; commodification of, 83, 166, 170, 172; concentration of, 173; distribution of, 56; for business, 87; for Mayan Indians, 186; for production, 87; indigenous conception of, 96; meanings of, 170–1, 185–9, 290; not a commodity, 183, 184, 289, 294, 300; related to personal achievement, 183–5; rights to, 82; scarcity of, 58; viewed as result of struggle, 189; viewed in terms of exchange-value, 171; viewed in terms of use-value, 171 see also commodification, of land and land rights land conflicts, resolution of, 48, 180 land grabbing, 45 land laws, enactment of, 43 land occupations, 61, 84, 89, 97, 98–103, 105, 106, 178, 181, 198, 227, 228, 230, 234, 236, 252, 275; decrease of, 226, 241, 255, 287; in Chiapas, 177, 180; in Pontal do Paranapanema, 228; increase of, 230–2; legalization of, 180; period of unity, 130–1; police repression of, 135 land registration, locally controlled, 48 land rights, 29, 91; privatization of see privatization, of land and land rights land squeeze, 28 land struggles, 221, 290, 293–4; accounting for emergence of, 10; against neoliberal restructuring, 28–9; development of, 70; first wave of, 77–8; historical context of, 26; spatialization of, 96 land tenure, 26–7; movements’ position on, 171–89; new practices of, 177

index  |  339 land titles, registering of both spouses, 189 ‘land to the tiller’ slogan, 181, 185, 188 landless people, 98, 100, 172, 178, 229, 241, 250; humiliation of, 146; registering demands for land, 231; struggles of, 85–6; youth, 113 landless rural workers, 77; class position of, 73; radicalization of, 75 landlessness, 1, 28 landlords, 34, 185; traditional, 83 (disappearance of, 64; expulsion of, 84) see also fazenderos latifundios, 52, 135, 234, 254; occupation of, 97 Latin American Cry of the Excluded, 238 Law on Indigenous Rights, 271 leadership: collective and rotating, 8, 131; election of, 126, 128; of EZLN, division of, 119–20; of women, 140 (in MST, 137; in Zapatista movement, 143–4); positions not sought after, 131; specialization of, 130–3 left, crisis of, 2 left-wing parties in Brazil and Mexico, 221–4 Lei de Terras (Land Law) (Brazil), 43, 44, 45, 46, 60 Lenin, V. I., 32, 34, 73, 162 Lenkersdorf, Carlos, 186 Ley Lerdo (Lerdo Law) (Mexico), 44, 60 Leyva Solano, Xochitl, 88–9 liberal democratic regimes, establishment of, 71 liberalization of trade, 67 Ligas Camponesas, 52 Llambí, Luis, 6 López Obrador, Andrés Manuel, 10, 272, 282 López Portillo, José, 58, 69 machinery, renting of, 195 maize: central to reciprocity practices, 210; determination of prices of, 207–8; genetically modified, 231; prices of, 68–9; production of, 193, 194, 197, 203, 204 (in Chiapas, 205–6); storage of, 202

mandar obedeciendo, 124, 129–30, 257 March of the 1,111, 278 March of the Hundred Thousands, 231 March on Mexico City, of EZLN, 280–4 March to Brasilia, 228–30, 232, 252 Marcon, Dionilson, 244, 246–8 Marcos, Subcomandante, 12, 123, 156, 203, 259–61, 267, 288; communiqués of, 257, 270, 273, 278; criticism of institutional politics, 271; goes to Mexico City, 280; importance of, 121; relationship with intellectuals, 260; relationship with leaders of popular movement, 261; writings of, 121 Marcos-like movements, 124 marginalization, alternatives to, 76–81 marginalization of peasantry, resistance to, 35 market: bypassing of, 9; integration into, 205, 206; moral limits on logic of, 181; partial delinking from, 295, 299; re-embedded in society, 296; withdrawal from, 300 see also market orientation of peasantry market dependence, types of, 39 market orientation of peasantry, 159, 161, 167, 214, 293 market-led model of agricultural production, 66–7 markets for agricultural produce, local, 208–9, 300 marriage, 144, 152; forced, 140 Martínez Veloz, Jaime, 268 Marx, Karl, 30, 32, 38, 40, 42, 43, 54, 85, 87, 91, 168, 170–1; ‘Economic and philosophic manuscripts’, 18; Capital, 18, 41, 42, 166; Preface to the Critique of Political Economy, 37; with Friedrich Engels, Communist Manifesto, 37 Marxism, 3, 13, 14, 16, 17–19, 75, 162; orthodox, 163; political, 37; structural, crisis of, 289 see also Political Marxism school Mayan Indians, view of land, 186 McMichael, Philip, 24, 36 means of production: control of, 37–40, 299; private ownership of, 18

340  |  index mechanization of agriculture, 53, 54 Mendes, Chico, 251 Mereilles, Henrique, 251 Mexican Communist Party, 223–4 Mexican revolution, 49, 50, 56, 260 Mexico: crisis of peasant agriculture in, 65–72; development of capitalism in agriculture in, 49–51; ruling class, strategy of, 56–62 micro-capitalism, 160–70 micro-villa model of settlement, 139 midwives, training of, 119 Migdal, Joel, 72 migration, 29, 65, 72, 77, 79, 153; internal, 207; of ex-slaves, 50; ties of peasants to land, 74; to cities, 51, 55, 71; to United States, 71, 207 milicianos, 117, 140 milk, production of, 195, 215 milpa system, 201; cultivation of, 151, 153; turned over to pasture, 211 minorat, tradition of, 169 mística of MST, 102, 185 mobilization, 102; period of, 137 mockery, as weapon of discipline, 112–13, 114 Modern Prince, 26, 217–18, 299; new, 92–157 modernization, 191–200, 294 modernizing extensive model of production, 192, 195 modernizing intensive mode of production, 192 Moises, Comandante, 260 monetary income, obtaining of, 206–7 monetary transactions, avoidance of, 214 monetization, 160, 176, 195, 205, 210, 214–15; of social relations, 289–90 money, 209; need for, 190; used as means to steal land, 175 monoculture, 66; shift to, 197 Monsanto, invasion of property of, 231 Montes Azules ecological reserve (Mexico), 69 Montoro, Franco, 241 Moore, Barrington, Jr, 23, 71, 72; Social Origins of Dictatorship, 73 moradores, 50

Morais, Lecio, 256 moral economy, 160–70, 181 mortgaging of land, 197 motherist movements, 134 Movimento dos Atingidos par Barragens (MAB), 233 Movimento dos Pequenos Agricultores (MPA), 233 Movimento dos Trabalhadores Rurais Sem Terra (MST), 2, 3, 56; affected by PT in power, 250, 300; and rural unions, 233–7; as defensive or progressive, 81–4; as imagined community, 102; as life-changing experience, 301; as mass movement, 5; as Modern Prince, 94; as national political actor, 232; as peasant movement, 6; attitude to state power, 220, 297; autonomy in relation to political parties, 224–50; claims on land, 85; class origins of, 6; constant creation of leaders, 246; control of territorial space, 72; creation of autonomous communities, 93; democratic centralism of, 124–33 (adoption of, 126–8); dual strategy towards state, 221; emergence of, 9–10, 52, 61–2, 65; female leadership in, 137; fieldwork with, 19–22; first wave of militants, 77; gendered roles of women in, 135–9; heritage of, 61; land distribution programmes of, 30; land questions in, 70, 181–5; land struggles of, process of, 7–8 (character of, 29); militancy of, making of, 97–108; moral discourse of, 89–90; National Plan (1989–93, 227; Second, 227, 232–3, 238); organizational structure of, 8, 97–108, 225; parity rule for women, 157, 291; political authority in, 149; politics of alliance, 286; popular power structures in, 157; process of politicization in, 130–1; professionalization of, 227; radicalism of, 7; relations with CONTAG, 233–4; relations with CUT, 235–7; relations with political parties, 285;

index  |  341 relations with state, 225; scholarship on, 3–5; second wave of militants, 77–8; Secretariat for International Relations (SRI), 19; seen as a union, 131; self-criticism in, 20; sense of belonging to, 99; settlers of, 191–200; shares characteristics of previous rebellions, 63; social composition of, 76–7; state undermining of, 230–1; strategy towards civil society, 232–41; strategy towards institutional politics, 241–3; women’s political activism in, 145 see also comparison between MST and EZLN Movimento dos Trabalhadores Sem Teto (MTST), 239–4 Movimiento de Liberación Nacional (MLN), 264 Movimiento Popular Francisco Villa – Independiente, 283 Movimiento Regeneración Nacional (MORENA), 272 multinational corporations, confrontation of, 231

new forms of doing politics, 13, 219 ‘new public’, 297 new social movements, 125, 219–20 No Genetically Modified Organisms campaign, 238 No Payment of the Foreign Debt campaign, 238 non-governmental organizations (NGOs), 16, 109, 124, 213 North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), 59, 67, 201, 281 Núcleo Agrário, 242–3 núcleos, 100, 116, 126, 127, 131, 149, 248–9 Nueva Esperanza ranch, 178–9

Nash, June, 140 National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), 273; struggles of students in, 279 National Indigenous Congress (CNI), Mexico City, 141 nature, meaning of, 170–1 neo-corporatism, 250–7 neo-developmentalism, 250–7 neo-institutionalism, 31 neoclassical economics, 31 neoliberalism, 2, 8; challenges to, 7; effects of and responses to, 26, 30, 63; mobilizing against, 237–41; peasant struggles against, 28–62; policies of, effects of, 293; resistance to, 3, 4, 28–9, 63, 222, 228, 229; restructuring of the countryside, 6, 65, 80, 90; revolution in times of, 216–88 see also alternatives, to neoliberalism nescafé fertilizer, 213 Neves, Tancredo, 226

Paige, Jeffrey, 71, 73–4 Palocci, Antonio, 251 Papma, Frans, 160, 169, 197 Paraná, family farming in, 197 participation, 15, 95, 100, 102, 103, 106–8, 116, 291; decline of, 104, 128; maintaining high levels of, 301–2; of women, 26, 116, 238, 141, 157 (in civil disobedience, 136; in education, 145; in EZLN, 142; lessening of, 137; political, 133–46; relation to domestic sphere, 138; restrictions on, 143; strategic importance of, 137); popular, 14 participatory budgeting, 222–3 Partido Acción Nacional (PAN), 222, 265, 272, 280 Partido de la Revolución Democrática (PRD), 10, 217, 220, 222, 224, 263–4, 266–72, 276, 280, 285–6 Partido dos Trabalhadores (PT), 10, 27, 56, 100, 200, 217, 220, 222–3, 224, 230, 235, 237, 241, 246, 253, 255, 256,

O Petróleo é Nosso campaign, 253 occupations of land see land occupations official records, destroyed by peasantry, 45 organic intellectuals, 94, 130, 157, 218 ostracism: as form of discipline, 112; of politically active women, 144 Otra Campaña, of EZLN, 280–4; tour across Mexico, 282–3

342  |  index 257, 285, 286–7; creation of, 225; effects of, on struggles of MST, 250, 300; in power, 250–7; moves to centre, 223; way of dealing with popular demands, 252 Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI), 21–2, 57, 154–5, 156, 177, 179, 221, 224, 262, 264, 265, 266, 269, 271, 272, 275, 280 Partido Socialismo e Liberdad (PSOL), 256 Partido Socialista Unificado de México (PSUM), 223–4 Partido Trabhalista Brasileiro (PTB), 221 paternalism, challenges to, 291 path-dependency, agrarian question of, 32 patriarchal organization of space, 133 patriarchy, 189, 196, 291 peasant, use of term, 6–7 peasant agriculture, 37–40, 160–70; commodification of, 165; crisis of, 19, 65–72; dynamics and contradictions of, 17; has no single logic, 198, 293; marginalization of, 52; persistence of, 49; strengthening of, 189–215 peasant communities, as corporate organizations, 112 peasant households, 39 peasant logic, 78–9 peasant rebellions, 4, 44, 46, 47, 48, 49, 290; as defensive reactions, 81–2; explanations of, 64; feudal model of, 83; new forms of, 26, 63–91, 291; scholarship on, 64 peasant struggles, against neoliberalism, 28–62 peasant village life, value of, 88 peasant-traditional model of production, 192–3 peasantness, 27; claiming of, 7 peasantry: as micro-capitalists, 162; autonomy of see autonomy, of peasantry; category of, problems of, 163; demobilization of, in Mexico, 56–62; differentiation within, 34–5, 42, 73, 162; disappearance of (debate about, 36; denied, 37); expulsion of, 55, 68, 71, 76, 210; marginalization of, 33; market

orientation of see market orientation, of peasantry; middle-income, 73–4, 81; noncapitalist social relations of, 299; resistance to proletarianization, 74–5; suffocation of, 60–1 pedagogy of the oppressed, 148–9 Peña Nieto, Enrique, 22, 272; election of, 180 people’s power, 146–57 people’s self-development, 14 pesticides, 66; use of, 205, 213, 294 Petras, J., 17 petty commodity production, 164 Piquetero movement (Argentina), 296–7 Plano Brazil Sem Miséria, 255 Plano Nacional de Reforma Agraria (PNRA), 226 Plaza de Mayo, mothers of, 134 Polanyi, Karl, 41, 296 police: confrontations with, 100, 134–5, 145; negotiations with, 101; use of female officers, 135 political activism, cooling of, 103–8, 103 Political Marxism school, 42 political parties, 219; dependence on, 302; functions of, 156–7; relations with, 12; role of, 93–4 political strategy, adoption of, 298 politically constituted property, 41 politicization, 130–1, 157, 158, 291; depoliticization of women, 138; ultrapoliticization, 103; within MST, 102 politics from below, 283 Pontal do Paranapanema, land occupations in, 228 poor, as undifferentiated category, 16 Popkin, Samuel, 161–2 popular power, building of, 155 Porfirio Díaz, 47 post-development approach, 13, 14 post-modernism, 289 post-structuralism, 289 Post-Washington consensus, 30 poverty, 68, 86, 255; alternatives to, 76–81; demobilizing effect of antipoverty programmes, 255–6; in Chiapas, 258; reduction of, 198–9, 200–1, 250, 254–5; shared, 111

index  |  343 power: diffusion of, 121; state-like character of, 298 prestige: aspect of commitment to EZLN, 114; mechanism of, 187–8 prices for agricultural produce, 68; falling of, 80; guaranteed, 57; regulation of, 5, 50 Primero de Enero ranch, 178–80 primitive accumulation, 30, 42, 43–56 private accumulation, 40–3 private and public spheres, boundaries of, 137, 138, 143 private property, 181; absolute, 41, 42, 49, 166 (dominance of, 38); challenges to, 19, 82, 94; establishment of, 38; large-scale, 48, 56; limitation of, 49; rights, establishment of, 43; sanctity of, questioned, 63; titles to, 173; universalization of, 290 privatization, 60; of land and land rights, 3, 25, 36, 45, 47, 48, 174, 176, 190 (of ejido land, 59, 60; opposition to, 44, 47); of electricity services, 279; of state enterprises, 58 PROCAMPO programme, 58, 201 Program de Crédito Especial para a Reforma Agrária (PROCERA), 195, 198, 199 Programa de Certificación de Derechos Ejidales (PROCEDE), 175–6 Programa de Subsidio Directo al Campo (PRONASOL), 58, 200 Programa Nacional de Produção e Uso de Biodiesel (PNPB), 252 Programa National de Fortalecimento da Agricultura Familiar (PRONAF), 195, 198, 199 Programme of the Brazilian People, 225 proletarianization, 6, 32, 45, 64, 74–5, 76–7, 92; resistance to, 96; semiproletarianization, 51 property: movements’ positions on, 171–89; politically constituted, 48, 55 property regimes, in Brazil and Mexico, 43–56 property rights, struggles over, 30–43 quasi-feudal relationships, 64, 91

race, 14 radicalization, in times of neoliberal hegemony, 2, 284 Ramona, Comandante, 141, 260 ranchos recuperados, 115, 177, 178 rape, 143; punishment of, 140 reciprocity, 15, 161, 207, 208, 209 Reforma journal, 261 registration of births and deaths, in Brazil, 46 relations of production and reproduction, 160 remittances, 71–2 René, a former priest, 127 repeasantization, 76 reserve army, global, agrarian question of, 32–3 resistance, 158–215; as issue of honour, 113; politics of, 21 Resistancia, 110–11 responsables, 117 revolt, right to, 62 revolution, 7, 63, 75, 81–2, 93; failure of, 71; in times of neoliberal hegemony, 216–8; Mexican see Mexican revolution; process of, 1 Revolutionary Agrarian Law of EZLN, 174, 178, 203 Revolutionary Law of Women of EZLN, 291 revolutionary subject, search for, 73–6 Ricardo Flores Magón municipality, 124, 150, 151, 152, 153 right to work, 86 rights, to land see land rights risk-taking, attitude of peasants to, 161–2 ritual practised in honour of land, 187 river, public space for women, 143 Rossetto, Miguel, 251 rotation: of duties in cooperatives, 196; of land, 213 Rousseff, Dilma, 199, 242, 250, 254, 255; MST support for, 257 rumour, as weapon of discipline, 112 Saad-Filho, Alfredo, 256 salaried rural workers, 45 Salazar Mendiguchía, Pablo, 123

344  |  index Salinas de Gortari, Carlos, 58–60, 69, 222, 258, 263, 266, 282 San Andrés Accords on Indigenous Rights and Culture, 89, 108, 264, 274, 275, 276, 281, 284, 287; second round of, 277; state refusal to recognize, 267–72, 285 Santa María: conflict in, 154; distribution of land in, 175; use of name, 20; women’s position in, 143 São Gabriel, march to, 135 schools, 22; absenteeism of teachers from, 151; locking of, as retaliation, 154; primary schools, 148 Scott, James, 81–2, 82–3, 162, 197; The Moral Economy of the Peasant, 160–1 seasonal work, predominance of, 76 seeds: control of, 36; home-grown, use of, 213 Seguindo o Sonho de Rose settlement, 148 self-consumption, 74–5, 193, 194, 203, 205, 206 self-provisioning, concept of, 213 self-reliance, 300; achievement of, 15; importance of, 292 self-subsistence, 183 self-sufficiency in food, 158, 191, 193, 206 semi-feudalism, concept of, 26 semi-proletarianization, 76, 78, 81 Sen, Amartya, 16 settlements, 103–8 sexual harassment, 143 shock of changes, 81 Silva, Luiz Inacio ‘Lula’ da, 10, 198, 223, 240, 242, 250, 251–2, 253, 254–5, 286; distribution of land, 254; elected president, 28, 199; seen as neodevelopmentalist, 256 Silva, Marina, 251, 253 simple commodity production, 163–4 Sindicato Mexicano de Electricistas (SME), 279 Sindicatos de Empregados Rurais (SERs), 235–6 Sindicatos de Trabalhadores Rurais (STR), 234 Sistema Alimentario Mexicano (SAM), 58

sit-ins in public buildings, 228 Skocpol, Theda, 23 slashing and clearing of land, 202, 213 slavery, 47; abolition of, 43, 46, 50; transition from, 45 Slim, Carlos, 282 social movements, 4, 16, 17, 297, 298 socio-territorial movements, 96 solidarity, 11, 15, 72, 98, 208 Soto, Hernando de, 31 sovereignty, recovery of, 149 sowing techniques, 202 soybeans, production of, 194, 197–8, 215; expansion of, 53–4 space, control of, importance of, 296–7, 296 squatting, 45 Stédile, João Pedro, 242–3, 242 state, 158–215, 237; as alien terrain, 146; as interlocutor of MST, 225; as main class enemy, 221; as mal gobierno, 122; as proprietor of national lands, 69; autonomy from, 90; avoidance of relationship with, 108–9; changing nature of, 24; dependence on, 110, 122, 301, 302; extended, concept of, 93, 217; funding of programmes by, 148; inefficiency of, 31; legalization of land occupations, 180; policy of non-relationship with, 113; relations with, 9, 12 (rejection of, 10, 27, 70); replacement of, 146, 147, 157, 295; resistance to, 91; role of, 17, 34; strategy towards, 217; Zapatista policy of resistance to, 122 see also Ejército Zapatista de Liberación Nacional, rejection of relations with state state formation, in Brazil and Mexico, 11, 29 state power, 219–24; challenging of, 295; views of, 27 state-led model of agricultural production, 66–7 strikes see general strikes struggles for land see land struggles subsidies, elimination of, 58 subsistence agriculture, 6, 19, 38, 49,

index  |  345 78–80, 86, 91, 165–7, 191–200, 206, 215, 293, 294; as fallback strategy, 295; marginalization of, 22–3, 22 subsistence ethic, 160, 161, 164, 191, 293 sugar cane, production of, 204 sugar plantations, in Brazil, 50 Sumaré settlement, 104 Suplicy, Eduardo, 230 sustainable livelihood approach, 16 Tacho, Comandante, 260 Tellez, Luis, 59 territorialization of struggles, 289 territory, control of, 26, 295–6 Thompson, E. P., 7, 92, 181; approach to culture, 293 Tilly, Charles, 23 Tojolabal nation, 186 trade unions, 274; new unionism, 222, 234–5; rural, 9 (democratization of, 55) transnational corporations, 33, 57 Umbelino de Oliveira, Ariovaldo, 254 UN Development Project (UNDP), 16 unemployment, 66, 76, 85, 86, 87, 239, 293; crisis of, 78; rural, 28; urban, 29 unemployment insurance, 255 Unión Nacional de Organizaciones Regionales Campesinas Autónomas (UNORCA), 59, 60 unidad socio-económica campesina, concept of, 167 see also Bartra, Armando United States of America (USA), 34; dominance of world food regime, 66; land turned into private property, 44 ‘unproductive’ land, 56 use concession on land, 173–4, 181 use-value, 19, 40, 87, 168, 186, 189, 190; land as, 183 Vale do Rio Doce company, privatization of, 239 Van der Haar, Gemma, 178, 185 Van der Ploeg, J. D., 190 vanguardism, 94 Vargas, Getúlio, 51, 221

Veltmeyer, H., 17 Via Campesina, 231 vida digna, 296 Villafuerte, D., 79–80 village: as arena of reproduction, 167; importance of, 161 village autonomy, 48, 49 village egalitarianism, 161 village life, valorization of, 88 violence: against women, 140; confronted by women, 136; of landowners, 100, 228 voices and demands, hearing of, 114 water, for drinking, access to, 21 wealth equalization, mechanism of, 187–8, 187 wheat, production of, 194; expansion of, 52 Wickham-Crowley, 77 Wolf, Eric, 111–12; Peasant Wars of the Twentieth Century, 73–4 Wolford, Wendy, 95, 106, 147–8, 149, 181, 182, 245–50 women: agricultural work of, 207; as comandantes, 141; as family agriculture workers, 79; assume role of protagonists, 292; collective action of, 134; collectives for, 142; in Zapatista military troops, 140; indigenous, achievement of political space, 291; limited mobility of, 143; participation of see participation, of women; rights of, 268; subordination of, 160; talking to police or army, 134–5; tend not to have land titles, 189 women’s commission, 140 women’s house, building of, 108 women’s organizations, 137 Women’s Revolutionay Law, of EZLN, 139–46, 139 women’s sector in MST, 157 Wood, Ellen, 38–9, 41, 42, 43, 48, 162 working class: as hegemonic class, 218; concept of, 235 Yaqui nation, extermination of, 47

346  |  index Zamberlam, Jurandir, 192, 194 Zapata, Emiliano, 174 Zapatista movement, 12, 49, 62, 257–84, 294; as indigenous movement, 4; discussion of nature of, 78; failure to create national organization, 277; focus on food production, 205; global aspects of, 5; leadership position of women in, 143; model of rural development, 5; national strategy of,

261–2; organization of communities, 1, 116; origins of, 4; outmanoeuvred by state, 284–5; policy of resistance to state, 108–9, 113, 122; political project, 4; postmodern interpretations of, 125; rituals and ceremonies of, 188; views on agriculture, 203 Zedillo, Ernesto, 260, 265–6, 266–7, 268; counter-insurgency campaign of, 118, 269, 277