We, who live in the fields, who live by only the labor of our hands, know that the world is like a river: the big fish eat the small. The big ones want not only our labor. What they really want is our blood. Because of this, we are dying out here. -Anonymous (Quigley, 1974, p. 56)

I. Introduction: The Struggle for Land

Land ownership leverages economic opportunity and impels human rights in Brazil. Giving impetus to social change, access to land is an inalienable human right fundamental to confronting chronic poverty and purging pervasive inequalities. Not a relatively new phenomenon, colonial structures rooted the subjugation of land rights and engendered systematic repression deep in Brazilian society. A historical lens is critical to understanding the trajectory of human rights as an extension of the struggle for land. This struggle continues unabated in rural Brazil erupting in violence and injustice. According to Brazil’s Pastoral Land Commission, military police attacks against land activists have claimed the lives of 1,517 rural workers since 1988 (Mark, 2001, para. 2). Of those cases, only fifty-six have come to trial and only seven have resulted in convictions (Amnesty International, 2005). Patterned killings of rural activists are committed with impunity and challenge Brazil’s historical commitment to agrarian reform.

Still, today forced enslavement and outward violence secure property rights and centralize economic and political control. Embedded in colonial structures and institutionalized during Brazil’s authoritarian period, a prejudiced economic production structure, coupled with a legal apparatus and used as an instrument of political repression, has denied rural Brazilians their right to land. These structural injustices have cultivated an atrocious environment that aggravates inequality and criminalizes dissent, thus trapping rural activists in a violent struggle for land.

II. Economic Production Structure

What follows documents three distinct political phases of Brazil’s history; colonialism, authoritarianism and its transition to democracy. In each phase, economic structures are marked by and, in fact, depend on acute inequalities. This section will include a discussion of how specific economic production structures have withstood the test of time, presented insurmountable obstacles for much of rural Brazil, and fostered an atrocious environment that allows for inequality but not for dissent. This environment has trapped rural activists in a violent struggle for land, and the struggle has not shown any indication of abating under democratic rule. 

A. Colonial Ties

Equal economic opportunity does not exist in Brazil, as land holdings are concentrated and exclusionary. Persistent and widespread economic inequalities find their roots in colonial structures defined by race and land. Soon after the Portuguese conquest in 1500, slavery was instituted to make the colony economically viable. Brazil depended on net slave imports to work the latifundios, as the government, not unlike today, underlined the objective of maintaining low manpower costs throughout the colonial period.

Indians, and later Africans (four million slaves total over the course of three-hundred years), constituted one half of the economic production structure that fed Portuguese demand for sugar, gold, and eventually coffee (Arraes, 1969, para. 26). From the onset, sugar production fueled the Brazilian economy and ensured Portuguese prosperity. Until the end of the seventeenth century, Brazil was the greatest producer of sugar in the world, both reflecting and reinforcing the efficacy of Brazil’s mercantile capitalist economic production structure (Arraes, 1969, para. 26). The other half of the economic production structure impeding equality of opportunity was the unequal distribution of land. Jose Murillo de Carvalho, author of The Struggle for Democracy in Brazil: Possible Lessons for Nigeria, suggests that while “natives were expelled from their lands and chased farther and farther to the interior” to advance slavery, “land appropriation took place according to the law of the strongest”(Carvalho, 2000, p. 9).

In addition, the evolution of foreign trade and mercantile capitalism polarized classes in Brazil, as author Miguel Arraes notes, “rural landowners held all the economic and political power” while “stock-farming, subsistence economy, the middle-class traders and officials-were from the outset subordinated.”(Arraes, 1969, p. 26). Acting in tandem, slavery and unequal land distribution supported a prejudiced production structure, only to be strengthened during Brazil’s authoritarian period.

B. Debt, Slavery and Authoritarian Rule

Much of Brazil’s rural landless population was, and still is, limited to agricultural work as a means to subsist. Here, however, theoretical implications conflict with practical realities, as Human Rights Watch reports that rural workers “are trapped in debt resulting from illegally low wages and inflated charges for food, shelter, medicine” and “no matter how hard they work, they cannot get out of debt. If they try to leave they are threatened with physical punishment and the pistoleros retained by the labor contractors even track down those who try to escape, and bring them back to continue working off their ‘debt’”(Human Rights Watch, 1992, p. 52).

Brazil’s rural population was enslaved by debt under authoritarian rule. Confined to servitude, rural workers not only suffered economic destitution, but political and social marginalization, as “they are left with no possibility of incentive or responsibility and are denied any cultural activity or participation in political and social life” (Quigley, 1974, p. 59). This patterned process of repression was furthered by an inability to obtain loans from banks. In a report entitled Marginalization of Peoples, Thomas E. Quigley makes clear that loans were contingent on a guarantee, or existing capital, that ensured banks a financial return on their loan.  As the report follows, “the large property owners obtain loans and large-scale financing while the workers with little or nothing obtain little or nothing in the way of financing. The banks cannot take the risk” (Quigley, 1974, p. 61). Unable to overcome clear structural obstacles or acquire ownership of capital, rural workers became engulfed in a process “enriching further the rich and impoverishing further the poor” (Quigley, 1974, p. 61).

C. Modernizing Brazil’s Economy

Under authoritarian Brazil, new world capitalism and record economic growth mirrored colonial development and aggravated inequalities even more. While colonial Brazil depended on slaves and latifundios to meet European demand, authoritarian Brazil exploited rural workers and instituted the rural enterprise to integrate into a growing world market. The government espoused the rural enterprise as an opportunity for rural workers to benefit from their hard labor, but as one rural worker contends; “In any shape or form, it does not produce for us. In this sense, the rural enterprise is to us a latifundios with another name. The only difference is that the rural enterprises are committed to carry out a project, i.e.: a plan for cattle-raising” (Quigley, 1974, p. 62). The rural enterprise set limits to types of production which restricted agricultural opportunities and erected barriers to entry for workers without specialized skills.

While the development of rural enterprises “diminish(es) employment opportunities”(Quigley, 1974, p. 62) a modernizing Brazilian economy benefited middle and industrial sector growth to the detriment of the rural worker. This modern-sector growth was spurred by state action, as Rogerio Bastos Arantes contends in The Judiciary, Democracy and Economic Policy in Brazil, that “to ensure the flow and continuity of modernization programs, the state has not only provided incentives to large national and multinational enterprises, but also heavily subsidized them” (Arantes, 2000, p. 360). This move shifted labor and capital to the industrial sector, leaving behind much of rural Brazil. In Labor Markets and Inequitable Growth, Samuel A. Morley notes that “when a country with Brazil’s dualistic production structure and undereducated labor force experiences rapid, modern-sector growth, one should expect a rise in inequality” (Morley, 1982, pp. 61-62). Morley continues, explaining that “when the average industrial wage is high and the size of the sector is small, the transfer of labor to industry during the growth process will increase the Gini coefficient.” Morley’s analysis proved insightful, as Brazil’s “Gini index of inequality in 1995, according to the World Bank, was .67, the highest in the world” (Morley, 1982, p. 62). Additionally, rapid economic growth inherently excites “excess demand for skilled labor coupled with an excess supply of unskilled labor,”(Morley, 1982, p. 62) leaving much of Brazil’s rural population without work, without land, and powerless to a socio-economic production structure that nurtures still the concentration of wealth and centralization of power.  Economic policy and growth under authoritarian rule irritated inequalities at the expense of rural workers and revealed that while economic modernization is critical to keeping pace with a new world order, even more critical to the security of human rights is equal access to land.

D. Violence and Economic Inequality in Democratic Brazil

Brazil’s legacy of colonialism and twenty year bout with authoritarian rule has left just three percent of the population holding nearly two-thirds of the nation’s arable land. Brazil’s transition to democracy has failed to address these dual injustices of land concentration and idle farms. As Amnesty International notes; “large land holdings of over 1,000 hectares occupy 50% of cultivated land. By contrast, small and medium holdings of less than 100 hectares occupy only 17.9% of cultivated land” (Amnesty International 2005). International and domestic organizations alike are devoted to combating these injustices, lobbying for agrarian reform and the rights of rural people to cultivate and occupy uninhabited land. Among them are Movimento dos Trabalhadores Rurais Sem Terra (MST), Comissão Pastoral da Terra, Instituto Nacional de Colonização e Reforma, Crédito da Agricultura Familiar, and the Inter-American Institute for Cooperation on Agriculture.

Since 1985 MST has led the movement for land reform, as it has peacefully occupied unused land where they have established cooperative farms, constructed houses, clinics, and schools for children and adults.  It has promoted indigenous cultures and a healthy and sustainable environment, and gender equality. The MST has won land titles for more than 250,000 families in 1,600 settlements” (Movimento dos Trabalhadores Rurais Sem Terra, 2005). Acting in accordance with Brazil’s Constitution, which explicitly states that land must be used for “the benefit of all society,” (Mark, 2001, p.2) progress made by the MST is still confronted regularly by violent attacks. Attacks are committed by military police and landowner’s private militias, and in “2003 alone, seventy-three rural laborers were murdered, the highest number since 1990 and up nearly 70 percent from the previous year” (Amnesty International, 2005).

As human rights violations appear unrelenting and economic conditions disable rural opportunity, President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva remains only rhetorically committed to confronting rural violence, poverty and inequality. President Lula’s policy decisions reflect greater concern for increasing exports, fiscal responsibility and the development of the industrial sector. If history is any indication, structural injustices will coalesce with President Lula’s push for economic growth and much of rural Brazil will be marginalized further without the right to own land.

III. Repressive Legal Apparatus

Charting a very similar path, the following denotes the development of Brazil’s repressive legal apparatus throughout colonialism, authoritarianism and democratic rule. In each political phase, Brazil’s legal system serves the interest of those with wealth and power at the expense of those without either. I will argue that Brazil’s legal system, anchored in impunity and corruption, and often acting as an instrument of political repression, has eroded the rule of law and allowed for perpetual injustice but not political opposition. This atrocious environment has locked much of rural Brazil in struggle for land despite democratic promises and constitutional guarantees.

A. Colonial Brazil and Rights for the Wealthy

A historical lens reveals Brazil’s legal system unambiguously tied to state interests and shrouded in impunity and corruption.  Since colonialism, law has assisted state economic and political interests and legitimized state repression. Acting as an appendage to Portuguese control, or “handmaiden of colonial rule,” Brazil’s judicial system “became identified implicitly with royal administration. Although the legal system shared in the prestige of the regime, it also drew the fire of native reaction against colonial rule” (Flory, 1981, p. 31). Judges, who were composed primarily of Portuguese citizens, served the crown’s political and economic interests. As Thomas Flory notes in Judge and Jury in Imperial Brazil:

Not understanding the dynamics of local society, politics, and economy, such judges either interpreted the law coldly, with no regard for local conditions, or they made unwise alliances which might yield monetary benefits (Flory, 1981, p. 34)

Rights of Brazilians were being compromised and subjected by their legal system, and their interest in an independent judicial body trumped by colonial patronage and corruption. Brazil’s inept legal system began, however, with an often apathetic and corrupt police force. Police and the judiciary overlapped in Brazil, and as Flory makes clear “the chaotic state of the Brazilian judiciary was reflected in the demoralization of the police…as police were not distinguished for either their temperance or their proper conduct.” While the judiciary was unabashed in their ties to Portuguese interest, “the police either connived with the criminals or stood helplessly by.” Consequently, the ineffectiveness of the police and the judiciary drove “private citizens to turn away from the established structure and seek private methods of solving their differences” (Flory, 1981, p. 42). Because the legal system could not bring justice, differences were often solved through violence, and rule of law in Brazil began to diminish.

Brazil’s colonial legal apparatus suggests an eroding rule of law which allows the powerful to leverage wealth as a means to maintain control and further impedes an individual from attaining justice or defending their rights. This repressive structure strengthened landowners’ control and marginalized further those without land.  A right to land in this sense did not only secure economic and political capital, but access to a judicial system that supported their interests.

B. Surface Level Legal Commitments and Pre-Authoritarian Brazil

If the legal apparatus under colonial rule instigated the erosion of the rule of law, then Brazil’s military regime completed the transformation. Established soon after rights were extended to rural workers, Brazil’s authoritarian period aggravated unfulfilled promises. Under authoritarian rule, military courts acted with impunity and the new conception of national security associated much of Brazil’s rural poor with subversion. In doing so, Brazil’s legal system was unable to constrain state power, and the law became an instrument of injustice and repression.

Prior to authoritarian rule, Getulio Vargas extended, in theory, rights to rural workers.  In particular “the 1946 constitution stated that minimum wage laws applied to all workers, including those in agriculture, mandating the payment of wages that met the criteria of regionally specific ‘living wage’” (Welch, 1999, p. 211). Vargas further ordered the “National Commission on Social Welfare to propose legislation to include rural workers in the social security benefits system” and additionally enacted the rural unionization law, Decree Law No. 7,038. Cliff Welch, author of The Seed Was Planted, notes that these promises impelled rural workers to make the “law…their key to a counter hegemonic assault on injustice” (Welch, 1999, pp. 210-211).

However, these surface level commitments were left unfulfilled at every stage of the legal system, and discontent amongst rural workers escalated to the point of revolt. 1949 saw the beginnings of the rural landless and workers movement, as tenants “protested high rents and demanded distribution of a large expanse of underdeveloped land, but the mayor responded by ordering the march repressed…it was a massacre” (Welch, 1999, p. 167). Therefore, Brazil’s transition to authoritarian rule in 1964 resulted in an unresponsive legal system which failed to defend the newly established rights of rural workers.

C. Eroding the Rule of Law in Authoritarian Brazil

Rights granted to rural Brazilians under Vargas signified a transition toward equality of opportunity, only to regress under authoritarian rule. The military regime leaned on Brazil’s landowners for support in the consolidation of political opposition and to enhance economic growth. As a result, the military regime was not going to enact new legislation or honor Vargas’s commitment to developing the rural sector at the risk of alienating landowners. Miguel Arraes denotes that following the Coup d’Etat of April 1964, “the really rather limited procedure for dividing up estates, as provided by the law, was not even applied.  As a matter of fact, the stubborn resistance of the landowners did not allow even the simplest measures to be put into operation” (Arraes, 1969, p. 162). Land conflicts erupted in Brazil’s countryside as the military regime refused to uphold the law and rural workers were frustrated from years of neglect.

The struggle for land was pinned as a political opposition movement to the military regime and in conflict with national security. Rural peasants fighting for land and agrarian reform became synonymous with subversion. In order to suppress any and all dissent, “the regime responded by imposing censorship, suspending habeas corpus, temporarily closing Congress, and unleashing violent repression against anyone suspected of ‘subversion’” (Pereira, 1995). As a result, between 1964 and 1979, an estimated 50,000 people were imprisoned for political reasons and another 7,367 were charged with crimes against national security (Pereira, 1995). This lot stems from attempts to purge rural activism and altogether silence opposition.

In addition, military courts fostered and furthered these injustices as the burden of finding proof lies with the defendants in order to show they were not guilty of subversion. Moreover, “defense lawyers were frequently intimidated and denied access to their clients”(Pereira, 1995).  As an extension of the courts and paralleling colonial Brazil, “the military regime created a police force that was repressive rather than investigatory, immune from control by civil society, and linked to the military” (Pereira, 1995).  Brazil’s legal apparatus served the ostensible purpose of facilitating state repression, as Anthony W. Pereira notes that “the military regime's repeated use of legal casuistry undoubtedly further degraded the legal system's approximation to the ideal-type of juridical equality for all citizens and constitutional constraint of state power” (Pereira, 1995). Therefore, military courts and the way in which national security was conceptualized criminalized much of rural Brazil during authoritarian rule.

D. Rural Violence and Impunity in Democratic Brazil

Brazil’s transition to democracy has propelled rural activism and renewed demand for the right to land. These demands have been met with violence, both by landowners, their militias, and military police. As a result, Brazil’s judiciary has been forced to confront a myriad of difficulties, difficulties that find their roots in colonial legacies and authoritarian injustices. As Amnesty International notes, “the failure to investigate and punish the crimes committed under the military government has built up an ethos of impunity within the security forces” (Amnesty International, 2005), which contributes to further human rights violations by the police force. In addition, as Human Rights Watch reports, “there is still no mechanism in Brazil to ensure that violations committed by the security forces are investigated by a body other than that accused of involvement in the violations” (Human Rights Watch, 1992, p. 52), as military courts are still used today.

Corruption and impunity within the legal system are particularly dangerous to rural activists seeking the right to own land.  Amnesty International has raised concerns about a “sharp increase in the number of reports of violence and death threats against land activists and other supporters of agrarian reform.” Amnesty continues, noting that “jurors have been threatened and the political power of landowners in rural areas is sufficient to intimidate witnesses and bias jurors. The atmosphere of violence and hostility towards land activists in the area also gave serious concern for the safety of the defendant” (Amnesty International, 2005).

While protections are clearly compromised and violence continues unabated, Brazil’s overall judicial ineptitude only adds to the problem. A United Nations observer recently noted that just 7.8% of the 49,000 murders committed every year are “prosecuted with success” (The Economist, 2004). The judicial system as a whole has been blamed for its “inefficiency, in particular slowness, lack of independence, corruption and for problems relating to lack of resources and trained staff, as well as the pervasive practice of impunity for the powerful” (International Commission of Jurists, 2002). While courts appear altogether ineffective when processing cases in defense of rural activism, “criminal charges and court orders have been used elsewhere in Brazil to curtail the activities of agrarian reform and land activists. What appear to be politically motivated charges and preventive detention orders have been issued against land reform activists and members of MST” (Amnesty International, 2005). Brazil’s judicial system thus appears slanted against rural activists, as they are not defended against violence nor are their rights upheld to occupy uncultivated land.

IV. Conclusion: The Right to Land as a Right to Life

For many Brazilians, a right to own land is seen as a right to live. Denying them this right risks heightening socio-economic disparities and serves to strengthen the potentially lethal message that rural activists can be killed with impunity.  Historical economic and legal structures have engendered inequalities and prejudices, trapping rural activists in a violent struggle not just for land, but for life. These structural obstacles nurtured an atrocious environment that heightened inequalities and prohibited dissent, threatening the survival of rural workers and activists in Brazil.

References

Quigley, T.E. (1974). Marginalization of Peoples. IDOC/North America, 56.

Jason, Mark. (2001). MST: Taking Back the Land. [Electronic Version] Global Forum Policy.

Amnesty International. (2005). Brazil: Rural Violence, Police Brutality and Impunity [Electronic Version].

Arraes, Miguel. (1969). The People and the Power. Penguin Books, 26.

Carvalho, J.M. (2000). The Struggle for Democracy in Brazil: Possible Lessons From Nigeria. [Electronic Version]. South-South Exchange Programme for Research on the History of Development, 9.

Human Rights Watch. (1992). The Struggle for Land in Brazil. [Electronic Version]. 52.

Arantes, R.B. (2000). The Judiciary, Democracy, and Economic Policy in Brazil. Marcel Dekker, 360.

Morley, Samuel. (1982). Labor Markets and Inequitable Growth. Cambridge University Press, 61-62.

Flory, Thomas. (1981). Judge and Jury in Imperial Brazil. University of Texas Press, 31.

Welch, Cliff. (1999). The Seed Was Planted. The Pennsylvania State University Press, 211.

Pereira, Anthony. (1995). The Shackled Monster: State Violence and Legal Repression in Brazil, 1964 to the Present. [Electronic Version].

The Economist. (2004, March 25). Not-so-swift Justice. [Electronic Version].

International Commission of Jurists. (2002, August 26). Brazil-Attacks on Justice. [Electronic Version]. International Court of Justice.

Charley Johnson is a third year honors student at the University of Washington, receiving a B.A. in International Studies and Economics. His research interests include post-conflict democratization, civil society building, human rights and international assistance. He hopes to attend graduate school at the London School of Economics and Political Science in International Affairs. Charley was born in Redmond, Washington and loves to travel, golf, and spend time with family and friends.

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