Tuesday, July 23, 2013

if you won't bust the land lords .....

"It wasn't long after the PT acquired power at the national level in 2003 that cracks in its political economic model began to show, however. Agrarian reform, the key demand of one of its most important early allies, the Brazilian Landless Workers’ Movement (MST), was effectively dropped from the PT's program. More accurately, the PT re-articulated the MST's demand of agrarian reform by strengthening the productive capacities of existing MST lands, rather than addressing Brazil's highly unequal land ownership structure, in which the top 1 per cent own 50 per cent of the land. In other words, of the three key elements of the MST's program, namely “occupy, resist, produce,” the PT opted to act only on the last point. It did so by, for example, opening avenues for the sale of products produced by MST run cooperatives, as in the case of Cooperdotchi, an agricultural cooperative in the state of Santa Catarina. This re-articulation of the MST's goals has created ongoing conflict between the government and the MST who has itself re-articulated its demand for agrarian reform "