The Politics of Transnational Peasant Struggle by Dunford Robin;

Author:Dunford, Robin;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: undefined
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Unlimited Model
Published: 2012-08-15T00:00:00+00:00

From Place-Based Struggles to Transnational Rights Demands

Through their collective mobilisations, MST members claim rights in an emancipatory manner. When placed-based alternatives are not tied to broader projects, though, they remain vulnerable in the face of transnational and global threats. Moreover, particular, place-based alternatives risk becoming entangled with, rather than providing a challenge to, wider forms of neoliberalism.

Recall, in the last chapter, that MST-led land reforms continued under Lula before grinding to a halt under Rousseff. Though some land reform occurred under Lula’s rule, peasants were given marginal lands and inferior plots. This was reflective of Lula’s broader politics, in which neoliberal corporations were allowed access to Brazil’s bounty of land and natural resources in order to provide revenue for pro-poor policies. Peasants were given some land, but they were not given the arable, well-connected land that was desired for sugarcane for biofuels, pulp for paper, soybean for animal feed and for neoliberal agro-industrial development in general. More broadly, Lula’s pro-poor policies, which included a commitment to provide better supports for small farmers in the form of credit, technical assistance and roads, went alongside an ‘enthusiastic embrace of agribusiness’.[93] Agro-industrial production intensified as the ‘Brazilian economy rode high on the commodities boom of the 2000s, with huge expansions in soy, sugar cane, and eucalyptus plantations.’[94] Unsurprisingly, the environmental consequences have been negative, with monocropping, high water use and chemical inputs working against the world of food sovereignty demanded in peasant rebellions.

Lula’s combination of limited land reform and an embrace of agribusiness forced the MST to weigh up the respective merits of calling for a ‘fundamental change in the agricultural model’ or seeking ‘a long-term coexistence of the current agribusiness model with a gradual growth of a sector of small farmers benefited by agrarian reform’.[95] The latter option, though more realistic in the short term, would risk pursuing forms of land reform that provide some peasants with rights to land and food but do not pose a challenge to the agro-industrial regime as a whole. These problems, dilemmas and potential entanglements between particular alternatives and the broader dominance of neoliberal capitalism are not exclusive to the MST. In Bolivia and Ecuador, peasants and indigenous peoples were a key factor in leftist revolutions installing indigenous presidents. Evo Morales and Rafael Correa have combined extractivist policies with policies favouring food sovereignty and peasant and indigenous autonomy. Peasant and indigenous demands for rights may be met, but only where their demands are not an obstacle to resource extraction. The ‘social’ form of extractivism practiced in these countries uses money from the extraction of resources to improve infrastructure and alleviate poverty, but also leads to ecological destruction and continues to prevent autonomous peasant and indigenous alternatives in areas rich in natural resources. Granting rights to food, land, territorial autonomy and food sovereignty to some, particular place-based activists, thus remains compatible, in the short term at least, with continued extractivist policies that deny rights to food sovereignty to those who live in areas rich in natural resources.

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