The conflicts over the right of access to land have been one of the most surprising phenomena in Brazil in recent years. Headed primarily by the Movement of the Landless Rural Workers (Movimento dos Trabalhadores Rurais Sem Terra-MST), these social struggles have managed to keep the agrarian question on the national agenda. This chapter presents and analyzes the history of the MST, whose creation in the early 1980s was spurred by the characteristics of the final period of the military regime then in power, by the action of progressive sectors of the Catholic Church, and by the economic changes as well as transformations in production occurring in the rural areas. The author identifies the phases of the Movement's development, focusing on the second half of the 1990s when it reached an extraordinary political prominence and influence, aided by a favorable political conjuncture which included the weakening of the lobbying power of the big landowners.

The chapter analyzes in particular the "organization of the landless" and the strategies and actions selected by its major body of leaders and activists. As a result, there emerges a critical interpretation different from most existing analyses since it scrutinizes a set of internal processes and political options in the field of collective action which seriously deflate the image of efficiency that common sense has been disseminating about the organization. The author argues that if the actions supported by the MST, on the one hand, contribute to expanding the access to land in Brazil-thus increasing the opportunities of life and work for the poorest rural families-on the other hand, however, they open only marginal possibilities for political emancipation, due to an organizational rationale which maintains characteristics of social control, as well as non-democratic practices. As a consequence, although it is one of the most successful cases of popular mobilization in this period of nearly twenty years, the MST has actually done little to change the patterns of social domination typical of Brazilian political history.