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Agrarian Reform and the Rural Workers' Unions of the Pernambuco Sugar Zone, Brazil 19851988 Author(s): Anthony

W. Pereira Source: The Journal of Developing Areas, Vol. 26, No. 2 (Jan., 1992), pp. 169-192 Published by: College of Business, Tennessee State University Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4192077 . Accessed: 14/10/2013 02:40
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The Journal of Developing Areas 26 (January 1992) 169-192

Agrarian Reform and the Rural Workers' Unions of the Pernambuco Sugar Zone, Brazil 1985-1988
ANTHONY W. PEREIRA Agrarian reform can be an important catalyst for economic development. The transfer of landownership or control to those who actually work the land can reduce inequitable distributions of income and wealth in the countryside, increase domestic demand and savings, and increase agricultural output.' It is therefore significant that the federal government in Brazil, the largest and most populous country in Latin America, announced plans for a major agrarian reform in the spring of 1985. That reform has proved to be a failure, with very little of the land planned for redistribution actually changing hands. Various explanations for this failure have been put forward. The political power of the landed elite (especially its Sao Paulo wing) and opposition from within the ranks of the military high command have been cited.2 Other arguments mention the lack of resources and inefficiency of the land redistribution bureaucracy and the absence of a strong urban base of support for the reform.3 Without discounting these powerful explanations, this article will explore a relatively neglected cause of the reform's demise. This is the skepticism and nonparticipation of the major representatives of the reform's beneficiaries: rural trade union leaders. The data presented here are derived in part from a survey I conducted in the sugar zone of the northeastern state of Pernambuco in 1988. In this survey, conducted in a region in which the majority of rural laborers are wage workers with no access to land, I interviewed 50 trade union leaders in 42 different unions.4 While the Pernambuco sugar zone is not typical of Brazilian agrarian conditions (no region is), it offers a good case
Assistant Professor, Political Science Department, New School for Social Research, New York, NY. The author wishes to thank Marisol Oliveira de Sousa and Jose Lauryston for help in data collection; the Inter-American Foundation, Organization of American States, and Harvard's Center for International Affairs for financial support; and Jorge Dominguez, Frances Hagopian, Robert Fishman, Cliff Welch, William Nylen, John French, James Ho-Adler, and the anonymous reviewers of the JDA for comments on an earlier draft of this article. ? 1992 by Western Illinois University.

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study because it is a region with a relatively active and powerful rural trade union movement and a progressive governor, Miguel Arraes, who was elected in 1986. If one expected rural union support for agrarian reform anywhere in Brazil, therefore, one would have expected it in the Pernambuco sugar zone. This expectation is further enhanced when one considers that land reform in this region has historically referred to access to land on the part of wage laborers, rather than the transformation of laborers into small farmers. Union leaders would therefore have had no reason to fear that agrarian reform would lead to the demise of the unions themselves by turning their members into independent smallholders. The argument presented here is that rural trade union leaders did not push strongly for the agrarian reform for three reasons. First, many unionists simply did not believe that the federal government was committed to large-scale land redistribution in 1985 and acted accordingly. Second, the regime change of 1985 did not profoundly alter local power relations in most rural areas; thus trade unionists saw little probability of defeating landlords in their area even if they had believed in the federal plan. Finally, trade unionists were suspicious of other members of the proreform alliance, most notably church and left-party activists, whom they saw as competitors in the struggle to mobilize the rural poor. For these reasons, rural union leaders tended to adhere to a low-risk, incremental strategy of representing members within the established labor bureaucracy rather than confronting landlords in an effort to force the redistribution of land. Such behavior was common not only in the Pernambuco sugar zone, but in the rest of rural Brazil. In order to understand the rural unionists' behavior on a deeper level, one must examine both the relationship that exists between the unions and the state, and the way that agrarian reform was enacted. This article does this in four parts. The first part describes the relationships of rural poverty, the unions, and the state with each other. The second notes the failure of the central government to protect the rural poor (especially in the areas of labor law and landowner violence), while the third points out that a consequence of this nonaction is a widespread alienation from the state on the part of rural union leaders. Finally, the fourth section examines the fate of the agrarian reform plan both nationally and in the Pernambuco sugar zone. Rural Poverty, Trade Unions, and the State About 30 million people, or 73 percent of Brazil's total rural population, are considered to be poor.5 The majority of them are wage workers of one kind or another, the most numerous being the category of temporary worker (see table 1). Of this population, about 10 million wage workers, tenants, sharecroppers, squatters, and small landowners are members of rural trade unions.6 Thus, when the newly established civilian president, Jose Sarney, after 21 years of military rule, announced in 1985 that millions of landless workers would be given land rights over the next 15 years, union leaders were vitally interested. Most of the intended beneficiaries of what promised to be a massive land reform were members of their unions, and agrarian reform had long been a principal demand of the rural labor movement. The slogan of the union umbrella

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Anthony W. Pereira TABLE 1


LAND OR WITH LIITLE LAND, BRAZIL WORKERSWITHOUT 1978 AND 1984 NUMBER

(In Thousands) 1978 1984 Minifundistas Owners 1,469 1,872 Occupiers 505 644 273 433 Sharecroppers 122 180 Renters Permanent wage workers 1,104 2,147 Temporary wage workers 2,560 4,260 Other nonsalaried workers 713 1,104 Total 6,746 10,640 SOURCE: Ministerio da Reforma e do Desenvolvimento Agrario (MIRAD), Proposta para a Elaboracao do 10 Plano Nacional de Reforma Agraria da Nova Republica (Brasilia: MIRAD, May 1985), p. 13.
CATEGORY

the most unequal in the world. Holdings exceeding 1,000 hectares (ha) or more account for only 1 percent of all rural properties but cover 45 percent of the total cultivated area. Those farms of less than 100 ha (minifundios) equal 90 percent of all holdings but have only 20 percent of the total area.7 Many small cultivators, an estimated 39 percent of all farmers, farm the land under some form of precarious tenure. The structure of Brazilian agriculture is dualistic.8 On one hand, large estates produce export crops requiring heavy capital investment and/or high levels of inputs (soybeans, coffee, sugar, tobacco, cocoa, citrus). On the other hand, minifundios (small farms) with under 100 ha produce the bulk of the domestically consumed food crops such as beans, rice, manioc, potatoes, and corn. Within this structure there is little room for medium-sized, capital-intensive family farms of the type that, until recently, played such a vital role in U.S. food production. The empresa rural, the Brazilian equivalent of the family farm, accounts for only 3.3 percent of all properties and 5.0 percent of the total cultivated area in Brazil.9 Rural Brazil, therefore, is polarized between an elite of large landowners and a great mass of small landowners, tenants, and the landless. Despite the existence of acute poverty in rural areas, land in Brazil is not scarce. An estimated 160 million ha of fertile land, or four times the total area occupied by the minifundios, is unused.'0 Much of this is held purely for speculative purposes. Important transformations in the Brazilian countryside began to take place in the 1950s and early 1960s. As the commercialization of agriculture proceeded and the value of land increased, landlords ousted tenants who had previously enjoyed land-use rights on the latifundios. Most of these tenants migrated to towns and became wage laborers in agriculture or the urban informal sector. This breakdown in patron-client ties led to new forms of organization among workers, and rural trade unions were founded and recognized by the government. There were about 500 recognized rural trade unions at the time of the 1964 military coup." The Rural Worker Statute had also been passed in 1963; this statute

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simply reemphasized the 1943 Consolidated Labor Laws and stipulated that rural workers should enjoy all the legal rights of urban workers. The military government that came to power in 1964 in its first months of office passed a Land Statute with the ostensible goal of eliminating the latifundio-minifundio complex and creating a system of efficient family farms. In fact, the policies of the military regime (1964-85) chiefly benefited the latifundiarios, who received a disproportionate share of the public goods provided to agriculture by the state, and from whom taxes were often not collected.'2 Land concentration and rural poverty both increased during this time.13 The government became highly involved in all stages of production on the large estates, from research on seeds and planting techniques to the management and subsidy of exports. Through a network of state-owned banks, large estates were granted cheap credit; rural credit increased fivefold in real terms in the years from 1968 to 1978.14 With credit, the large estate owners bought machinery, pesticides, fertilizers, and other inputs. At the same time, the state built up rural infrastructure including roads, electricity grids, dams, and irrigation networks. This policy of capitalizing large estates meant that the latter often displaced tenants, squatters, and smallholders.15 Toward the organizations representing these latter groups, rural unions, the military adopted a policy of selective rewards and punishments. Immediately after the 1964 coup, activists, especially Communists, were expelled from the unions. In Pernambuco, scores of unions had their leaders replaced by workers handpicked by the Ministry of Labor. An unknown number of rural workers were killed by landlords or the army; others were jailed and/or tortured. The Peasant Leagues, civil associations that had been active throughout the Northeast, were abolished. Competition for the right to represent rural workers was prohibited and replaced by a unitary system in which the Ministry of Labor granted exclusive rights of representation to unions in given areas. The unions were rigorously controlled and permitted to concern themselves only with social welfare and wage issues. Collective bargaining was not allowed; wage settlements were issued unilaterally by labor courts. Strikes were, in effect, prohibited. In the late 1960s, the military government expanded FUNRURAL, a system in which unions provided medical and dental services to members with funds provided by the government. This encouraged the foundation of unions, and rural unionization accelerated rapidly in the 1970s. In 1971, PRORURAL, a rural social security system, was set up, providing further impetus to the formation of unions. By 1987, CONTAG was the largest confederation in the Brazilian labor relations system. Rural unions under the military regime, however, functioned more as welfare agencies than as conduits for collective worker demands in the areas of land and working conditions. The Central Government's Neglect of the Rural Poor Under the military regime, the state mobilized an impressive array of resources in modernizing the export-oriented large estates. The state's welfare programs for the rural poor, however, were modest. Rather than supply medical services itself, the central government instructed unions

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to do all of the provisioning themselves. In the poverty-stricken Northeast, the burdens imposed by this injunction were severe. Government funding for the program was often late and inadequate. Similarly, rural social security reached a small number of people because relatively few rural workers survived until 65. The pension, 50 percent of the minimum wage for workers, 30 percent of the minimum wage for surviving spouses, was probably below subsistence level. Nevertheless, the military regime tried to appease, if only symbolically, the land hunger that the commercialization of agriculture was creating. In 1966, the first national agrarian reform plan, based on the 1964 Land Statute, was put in place. It amounted to a few, scattered colonization projects.'6 In 1968, a second plan was promulgated; it focused primarily on colonization in the Amazon as a substitute for land redistribution in settled areas such as the Northeast. By 1985, the National Institute for Colonization and Agrarian Reform (INCRA) had given titles to 83,000 families in the Amazon.'7 This was a small number compared to the number of migrants settling in the Amazon without titles, and to the total number of landless in Brazil. These gestures toward land reform underscore the fact that the Brazilian central government has delivered little to rural unionists. The army and the Ministry of Labor combined to repress workers' organizations at the time of the 1964 coup. At almost all other times, the central government has been conspicuous in the countryside by its absence and inaction. Rural welfare measures were enacted much later than in urban areas and on a diminished scale. Land reforms were promised by INCRA but not enacted. And a legal order was not enforced. For example, a system of labor law has still not been consistently imposed in the Brazilian countryside. Although Brazil's first labor law concerned rural labor, it was not generally implemented.'8 Later, the Consolidated Labor Laws (1943) were not effectively applied to rural workers. This is partly because most rural laborers at that time were not full proletarians, but had some kind of dependent relationship with a landowner, exchanging labor or part of a crop, for example, for land-use rights. In addition, rural labor was not well-organized enough to demand the legal protection of its rights; vertical patron-client ties were stronger than horizontal class ties. Even in 1963, with the passage of the Rural Worker Statute, enforcement of labor law was patchy and exceptional. Today, the most significant violation of labor legislation concerns the illegal hiring of seasonal employees, called boias-frias (literally, "coldlunches") in the south, and clandestinos in the Northeast and north. This is usually done through a labor contractor (empreiteiro), who is in a position to exploit workers. Daily wages paid to illegal workers are not necessarily lower than those paid to legal workers, though they often are. By hiring "off the books," however, the employer saves taxes and makes none of the extra payments required by law for social security, holiday pay, and worker union dues, for example. By the same token, while illegal workers have great flexibility in employment (although their dire poverty often negates the freedom of choice inherent in this arrangement), they enjoy none of the benefits and security of workers who have

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a carteira assinada (worker's card signed by both the worker and the federal Ministry of Labor). In my survey of 50 trade union leaders in the Pernambuco sugar zone, 44 said that illegal workers are "a problem for the union." The Pernambuco rural workers' federation, FETAPE (Federacao dos Trabalhadores na Agricultura do Estado de Pernambuco-Federation of Agricultural Workers of Pernambuco State), claims that more than 50 percent of the workers hired to cut cane during the harvest are illegals, many coming from the interior of the state. Although illegality is a problem, only 10 of the union leaders surveyed reported, in an open-ended question following up on the preceding one, that they had contacted the local Ministry of Labor office or another government office about it. Two of these said that the labor ministry had been effective in reducing illegal hiring, while two said that ministry officials had repeatedly failed to appear as promised in their area. What these responses show is the low expectation on the part of union leaders that the central government will enforce labor law, an expectation reinforced by the Ministry of Labor's poor performance in monitoring reported violations. The majority of leaders surveyed, 33 of 50, answered that they were trying to solve the illegality problem solely with their own organizing efforts by talking with workers, making agreements with local owners, coordinating with nearby unions, and so on. In the Pernambuco sugar zone, unions struggle most for the enforcement not of labor law in general, but of a statewide collective contract (dissidio coletivo). The collective contract is signed each year by representatives of employers and workers in the sugar sector and is supposed to be enforced by the local office of the Ministry of Labor. This contract details the piece rates at which cane cutters should be paid. It also contains numerous provisions relating to working conditions. Of the 50 leaders interviewed, 47 cited violations of the collective contract as one of the most common complaints that their members bring to the union (especially in the area of piece rates). Furthermore, in an open-ended question about the union's principal problems, 48 percent of respondents cited the owners' lack of respect for the collective contract. Similarly, only 6 percent of the officials said that all the provisions of the collective contract were being enforced at the time of the interview. Another problem for the union officials concerns the labor courts, where disputes between employers and employees over such matters as severance pay are adjudicated. Many leaders complained that the courts were too slow, taking up to five or six years to resolve a case. Others questioned the impartiality of the labor court judges and pointed out that the latter were in the same social class and often had frequent social contacts with landlords. This is what was implied by one leader when he said of the judges, "The river always runs to the sea." While 82 percent of the respondents felt that Brazilian labor law should be changed (the majority of these saying that it operated against the workers), it seems that the simple enforcement of existing labor law by the Ministry of Labor would create a revolution in social relations in the sugar zone. Landlord violence against rural labor is another area in which the

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Brazilian central government has failed to enforce a legal order. Violence against rural workers and peasants has increased in recent years (see table 2). Reports have documented this violence, which is typically carried out by landlords' hired gunmen against workers with whom the landlord has a labor or land dispute.'9 One of these reports, published by Amnesty International, stated that despite "notorious, widespread and persistent" killings, "the Brazilian Government has failed at every level to take effective measures to stop them." The human rights group was concerned about "allegations that full and impartial investigations by the competent authorities into such killings are not being carried out" and that, consequently, "those responsible for killings, threats, and other brutal acts of intimidation against the rural poor enjoy de facto immunity from prosecution, which encourages further killings and violence."20 Responsibility for this state of affairs rests with the three main law enforcement agencies in Brazil: the civil, military, and federal police. The response of the civil police to killings of rural workers, many of them allegedly carried out on the orders of local landowners, has been inadequate. Members of both the military and civil police have been implicated in acts of violence against rural workers. The federal police, relatively free of local political pressures, represent a force capable of properly investigating these acts. The federal government, however, has not ordered its federal police to do this. Government officials explain that this is against the Constitution and that "the restoration of democracy . . . [can] best be achieved by trying to strengthen local institutions. "21 The judiciary has also been responsible for the escalation of violence. It is dependent, both financially and administratively, on state government, and judges are susceptible to political pressure. A common explanation for the failure of judicial authorities to investigate assassinations of rural workers, understandable owing to the current fiscal crisis in Brazil, is lack of resources and staff.22 Despite the fact that the collective contract prohibits plantation foremen and supervisors from carrying arms without special authorization,

TABLE 2
KILLINGS OF RURAL WORKERS AND PEASANTS IN BRAZIL AND THE STATE OF PERNAMBUCO, 1982-1987

1982 1983 1984 1985 1986 1987 Total Pernambuco 3 4 8 5 7 9 36 Brazil 58 96 123 222 20(+a 200+a 899+ SOURCE: Movimento dos Trabalhadores Rurais Sem Terra, Assassinatos No Campo: Crime e Impunidade 1964-1986 (Sao Paulo: Global Editora, 1987); Comissao Nacional dos Bispos do Brasil (CNBB), Regional Nordeste II, Terra: Nossa Necessidade e Nosso Direito (Recife: CNBB, 1984); Diario de Pernambuco, various dates; Amnesty International, Brazil: Authorized Violence in Rural Areas (London: Amnesty International, 1988); and U.S. Department of State, Country Reports on Human Rights Practices for 1988, report submitted to the House Foreign Affairs and Senate Foreign Relations Committees (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1989). aPrecise data from 1986 and 1987 are unavailable owing to discrepancies in reported killings for those years.

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this provision is broken regularly. In the fields, cane cutters are accustomed to working under the eyes of armed foremen who, in the words of one of them, consider walking unarmed to be "a sentence of death."23 In such a setting, workers who demand rights or participate in union activities risk being threatened, harassed, beaten, and ultimately killed. To an open-ended question about rural violence, 15 of 50 officials mentioned that a worker or workers in their area had been killed in recent years in conflicts with landlords. At one union the president said that his predecessor had been gunned down in 1985, while at another their lawyer had been murdered in 1982, and their current lawyer was being threatened. Almost everyone in the sugar zone is aware of incidents such as these. Seventy-four percent of respondents said that there was violence against rural workers in their area. Forty-eight percent said that they knew a member of their union who had lost his job for union activity, while the same percentage knew a member who had been jailed for the same reason. The potential costs of union activity, therefore, are constantly presented to workers, dampening the zeal of all but the stouthearted. As one leader said, "I don't want to end up on the side of the road with flies in my mouth." For others, the violence provokes a greater determination to resist. "If they kill one of us," said a young union secretary, "we only get stronger." The central government is seen by rural unionists as against them, because its Ministry of Justice cannot protect them and their members against violence. This, in turn, affects trade union strategy; having little faith in ability of the central government to address their concerns, union leaders spend relatively little energy pressuring it directly. The following case illustrates this point. Several days before his labor court hearing against his former employer, on 4 April 1988, rural worker Jose Batista da Silva was abducted from a Recife market by civil policemen. The latter, who had no arrest warrant, said that they were taking the worker to his former employer for questioning. Batista was not seen again. Hearing about the case, leaders of Batista's rural union in Cabo decided to take action. Significantly, the action was not a legal one. Instead, the union decided to use public space to bring attention to its plight.24 It planned a march to protest what it considered to be another act of violence on the part of landowners, this time in conjunction with the police. The march was scheduled to end in front of the police station in Cabo. In a meeting with the trade unionists, however, the state Secretary of Public Security indicated that if the march passed in front of the police station, he would not be responsible for anything that happened.5 The workers thus decided to change their route. On May 15, supported by various organizations, the march took place, avoiding the heavily guarded police station. The Cabo case reveals a lack of faith in the legal system and the central government on the part of the union leaders. Although the abduction of their member was blatant and illegal, the union's main response was to try to convince the public of the rightness of its position rather than to seek official redress. While the state governor appointed a special delegate to investigate the kidnapping, this was done at the request of the employer and his association, the Sindicato dos Cultivadores de Cana de

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Pernambuco (Pernambuco Union of Cane Planters). In addition, after union officials denounced the landlord as responsible for the kidnapping, they, along with the worker's wife and brother, were sued for calumny and defamation by the landlord.26 Rural violence increased markedly around the time of the transition to civilian rule in 1985, and the new regime was unable to contain it. This is because the transition, and the proposed agrarian reform plan that accompanied it, created a climate in which it seemed that the demands of the landless might be met. Landlords, facing direct action on the part of workers and peasants, feared the loss of their property and privileges. Employing private gunmen and retaining their traditional influence over the local police, they answered the workers with violent confrontation. The death toll, and the lack of protection from the Ministry of Justice, created a reaction on the part of the rural workers' movement, a reaction to which we shall now turn. Union Leaders' Alienation from the Central Government The fact that neither the federal Ministry of Labor nor the justice ministry adequately enforces the law in rural areas has consequences for the attitudes and behavior of rural trade union leaders in the Pernambuco sugar zone. Put simply, it engenders a sense of alienation toward the central government and a belief that positive social changes will come about only through the efforts of rural workers themselves. While benefits from the government would naturally be welcome, they are not really expected, and the request for commitment to any particular government program is viewed with suspicion. Second, because the state is marginal to the day-to-day struggle of the union leaders, regime change-a modification in the personnel and institutional arrangements of the central government, such as occurred in 1985-are also seen as relatively unimportant. This view stems from the nature of work relations in the sugar zone. The cane workers were originally bound to plantation owners in a kind of quasi-feudal system of paternalistic relations, bonds of peonage that went far beyond the sphere of work and extended to family relations (compadrice, or godfatherism) including ceremonies of birth, death, harvest, and the like. While most workers became full proletarians in the 1960s, a fully capitalist attitude toward work-contractual, monetary, shortterm, impersonal-has not permeated the region, not least because a small but significant portion of the work force still lives on the plantation. The landlords' abandonment of traditional obligations created a sense of injustice among those abandoned. The landlords, most of whom now live in the city, see the proletarianization of the labor force as inevitable, necessary, and progressive. For them, it is part of the capitalist modernization of the plantation, a process from which they have benefited. The workers, on the other hand, see their expulsion from the plantations as neither necessary nor progressive.27 They were not consulted in the decision to change the relations of production; they experienced the decision as something done to, not for, them. Their nostalgia for a golden age when they were on the plantation, growing their own food within a small, pastoral, and essentially nonmonetized community, contrasts sharply

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with their frequent criticism of life in the towns, with its stress, confusions, and demands for cash.8 Although some among the younger generation now prefer the town, a surprising number share their elders' belief that times were better on the land. Because the workers feel a sense of loss due to the destruction of patronclient ties, their image of the landlord is ambiguous. The landlord is criticized as a wealthy man who, despite his wealth, is willing to trample on any worker's right in pursuit of his own gain-a "fox among the chickens" whom only a guard dog (the union) can restrain.30 But this criticism is based on an image of an ideal landlord who personally protects and rewards his workers. Such an image is implied in comments about the landlord such as "his heart is in his wallet," "he doesn't treat the worker with compassion," and "he chews up the worker and throws away his skin as he would an orange."-31 What the landlord could and should be, the concept of the ideal employer, is held up to rebuke the real landlord for his perceived harshness and insensitivity. This dualistic image of the landlord is analogous to the workers' image of the central government.32 The union leaders surveyed made frequent comments that the government should help them, reflecting an assumption that the federal ministries are neutral agencies capable of acting on their behalf. This contradicted a radical skepticism, also frequently expressed, that the government only protects tubaroes (literally sharks: capitalists, landlords), exploits the poor, is headed by corrupt and dishonest politicians, and would not help them.' This latter view led many leaders to declare that the situation would only change if workers did something for themselves. It also manifested itself in an "us vs. them" mentality, and a belief that government would only become benevolent when some of "us" (rural workers) were elected to office. In the 1988 municipal elections in Pernambuco the rural movement acted upon this belief when a record number of union officials-over 100-ran for local political offices.34 Trade union officials' criticism of the state and the social order over which it presides can be sweeping. One secretary, for example, said that "in this country, justice is money."35 In this view, the legitimate rights of the poor are denied and the rich and powerful are able to act on every whim, no matter how unlawful or immoral, with impunity. Such a social order is upside-down, radically unjust, because "he who has a right does not have a right, and he who does not have a right has a right," as one worker said.36 Such a vision approaches the evangelical's millenarian picture of the world before the Second Coming of Christ, a world of unconstrained evil in which the weak are set upon by the powerful and the depraved, sustained only by a faith that the social order will eventually be turned right-side-up and the "meek shall inherit the earth." Although potentially a basis for political action, this attitude can also become a justification for a resigned, otherworldly passivity in the face of oppression. It is not surprising, therefore, that evangelical Protestantism has found many converts among the rural poor.37 Rural unionists' anger toward the central government, like their anger toward the landlord, stems from its perceived inability to consider and

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protect workers' interests, and takes a personal form. In expressing disgust for President Sarney, they implied that because he was a large landowner, he would be unlikely to sympathize with the rural poor. Theirs was not a liberal conception of the state, in which the latter's role is merely to enforce certain rules of the game, although, as has been argued, they decry the fact that rules are unenforced. Similarly, their view of citizenship goes beyond that implied by a representative model of democracy, in which their right as citizens is essentially that of choosing between competing elites.' Instead, they see the necessity of federal officials listening to their demands, then intervening on their behalf, and granting them material benefits. The unionists experience alienation because this so rarely happens. The survey results reflect these attitudes. Of 41 out of 50 respondents who claimed that the Sarney government was not democratic, only one gave as a reason that "it was not elected by the people." But 22 replied that it does not side with the people; 13 that it favors landlords and other capitalists; and 10 that it did not practice democracy in making decisions.?9 Of 34 respondents who were asked whether it "is important to consider the consequences for the government when making demands," 47 percent said no, and 12 percent said, "Only the state government.' In the words of one respondent, "For us the struggle is to think of our members, and not the government." Similarly, when asked what recent political changes had given them the most hope, 15 percent of the 39 answered 4"nothing," and 26 percent described something to do with increased union organization. Of the latter group, typical responses were "the force of the union itself is our hope"; "who betters the situation of the worker is the worker and the union"; and "we don't work with the union waiting for party political benefits." A common feeling among rural union leaders was that the union is the union, the government is the government, and never the twain should meet. In this view, union contacts with politicians or government officials are always harmful to the union. Thus, 28 percent of the 50 respondents said that they had no contact with local politicians (mayors, city councillors), and 36 percent said that they had no contact with state politicians (only 10 percent claimed they had contact with federal politicians). The fears expressed here were that politicians, and especially parties, could divide the union and might try to manipulate it for their own ends. Furthermore, asked whether "the political change marked by the inauguration of President Sarney [was] important and positive for the unions here," 77 percent of the respondents said no. Most telling of all, 96 percent did not believe that the Sarney government had the will to carry out a land reform.40 And when asked if there was a country that they admired for its political system, 21 of the 33 who said yes mentioned Cuba, typically giving land reform and a high standard of living for rural workers as reasons for their choice.4' The responses of those surveyed also reveal an ambivalence about the importance of regime change. Asked if the situation of their union had improved after direct elections for governor were reintroduced in 1982 (after 18 years of military-appointed governors), an equal number (46 percent) said no as said yes. Similarly, 41 percent saw no difference

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between military and civilian rule at the federal level, while 54 percent did. Asked what political change had given them most hope in recent years, only 4 of 39 respondents mentioned the election of Tancredo Neves in 1985 (the first election of a civilian president since 1960). Of far greater importance were the union's own activities (15 of 39). Documentary evidence suggests that state policies, and in particular the 1985 land reform proposal, were also viewed skeptically by rural union supporters. A proland reform pamphlet published in 1985 described the civilian regime as "the same dog with a different collar." Speaking for rural workers, it asks, What changed for us in the New Republic?" and cautions that the change of regime was a "maneuver of the powerful to weaken our movement and postpone the solution to our problems." The promise of land reform, it argued, merely confused workers by encouraging them to wait for government handouts, rather than to fight for the right to land themselves. The New Republic offered only the vain hope that "you can have a society of a fox with a chicken."42 In summary, rural union leaders have an alienated and bifurcated view of the central government, in which the reality of repression and neglect prevails over hopes deriving from an ideal state. This view results in a defensive and rather passive political strategy. The leaders can mobilize members strongly to defend themselves against possible losses, as they do at the peak of each year's cane harvest, when a salary campaign precedes negotiations with landlords over the collective contract. But they are far less likely to mobilize in response to possible gains. They are skeptical of government programs, especially when, as in the case of land reform, pushing for those programs in the past has resulted in political defeat (i.e., after the 1964 coup), and the programs require sustained and intensive government commitment in order to work.43 The unions can avoid defeats, but they have difficulty winning in the political arena.4 The unions' choice of political strategy is complicated when, as in the case of Pernambuco after 1986, the state government is regarded more positively than the federal government. As will be argued in the next section, the transition to civilian rule in Pernambuco saw the unions enter a political coalition that included landowners and sugar millowners, weakening their stated commitment to land reform and putting them at odds with church and party activists who placed land redistribution above loyalty to the ruling coalition. The unions' political bargain also created dissension within its own ranks, and in 1988 leaders' attitudes toward Governor Arraes, a politician who identified himself as a protector of the rural poor, ranged from unquestioning devotion to bitter disappointment. Regime Change and the Agrarian Reform Plan Agrarian Reform on the National Level. At the national level, it is telling that the 1985 agrarian reform plan was issued as a decree-law, in the style of the old military regime, rather than as a bill requiring a majority of votes in Congress. The plan had been announced in May, with much fanfare, at a CONTAG congress of thousands of rural unionists in Brasilia. It projected the expropriation of almost 450 million ha and the granting of land title to 7.1 million people by the year 2000.

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The plan was supported by the progressive wing of the church, particularly its comissoes pastorais da terra (CPTs; pastoral land commissions), left-wing parties such as the PT (the Workers' Party, an important advocate of land reform), the Movimento dos Sem Terra (Landless Workers' Movement, MST), and CONTAG. The agrarian reform plan officially approved on 10 October 1985 differed substantially from the May proposal. Whereas the plan presented to the CONTAG delegates made the reform the task of the central government, the October plan gave regional government agencies the right to select the land for expropriation, opening up the reform to all sorts of local pressures. Also, only properties that neglected their "social function" would be liable for expropriation. Issuing an official note in response to the October plan, CONTAG called it a repudiation of the promises made to the workers' representatives in May. One of its complaints was that sugar plantations were not made a priority for land redistribution. On 18 October 1985, the superintendent of INCRA, Jose Gomes da Silva, and his entire staff resigned, alleging that the final text of the plan had disfigured the original proposal. The revision of the plan between May and October reflected the power of agrarian interests and the opposition of elements within the military, but it also revealed the weakness and division of the proreform movement. Ostensibly united in a national campaign, middle-class reformists, church and left-party activists, and rural trade union officials formed an uneasy alliance. CONTAG, in particular, had a difficult relationship with other supporters of land reform. It regarded church organizations of the landless such as the CPTs as potential rivals to the unions.45 In addition, CONTAG was affiliated with the CGT, the General Workers' Central, the politically more moderate of the country's two major central labor organizations. The other central, the CUT (Unified Workers' Central), heavily influenced by the PT, had a more radical strategy on agrarian
reform.46

That strategy was to encourage direct, and at times illegal actions, such as the occupation of unused land and government offices, rather than to wait for government programs to distribute benefits from above. A CUT document published in 1986 declared that "the agrarian reform means to struggle against the New Republic, wresting victories in confrontations with the powerful and reaffirming . . . the power of the workers, the only type of power capable of. . . realizing a real agrarian reform under the control of workers."47 In contrast, the CGT favored a more legalistic approach, urging proponents of land reform to wait for the government's land management bureaucracies to do their work. It felt that illegal actions had provoked a violent rightist backlash and endangered the transition to democracy. Church activists and PT members in the countryside tended to agree with the CUT's strategy, while old-line union leaders most often sided with the CGT position and supported the ruling Partido Movimento Democratico Brasileiro (PMDB; Brazilian Democratic Movement Party). Sometimes, these differences would flare up during union elections when

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leaders with opposing positions would compete, or during land occupations when CONTAG officials kept a distance and church and PT activists took up the cause of the occupiers. The proreform lobby, while counting on the passive support of millions of rural poor, lacked strong urban and party political support. Most parties of the left and center, including the PT, were based primarily on the support of the urban working and middle class, to whom land reform offered only indirect benefits. In rural areas, nationwide elections for state offices in 1986 meant that most left and center parties were subdued on the land reform issue, because they feared alienating landowners whose campaign contributions they wanted. One INCRA official, exasperated by the slowness of the reform, commented that "the mobilization of those interested in agrarian reform has to be . . . balanced, because any false step could serve as a pretext for a retrocession. It is like walking in a mine field."48 The reform as envisaged was expensive. Owners of expropriated land were to be compensated-in cash for their home and surrounding plot, and in agrarian debt bonds (titulos da divida agraria, TDAs) for all other lands. The federal government would also incur costs for mapping and surveying services, transport for staff, issuing land titles, and so on. The high costs of the plan, combined with the fiscal crisis of the government, bothered its supporters from the outset.49 In December 1985, 25 state agrarian reform plans were prepared by the regional directorates of INCRA and given to President Sarney. These plans were drawn up without the input of potential reform beneficiaries, rural workers, or their trade union representatives. To oversee the reform's implementation, agrarian commissions, of which 3 of 9 members were trade union officials, were set up in the states in August and September 1986. But this was long after the state plans had been approved by the president, in May. The institutions meant to ensure trade union participation in the planning of the reform were thus set up too late, after the plans were already complete. Furthermore, the government minister who had first announced the plan to the CONTAG congress, Nelson Ribeiro of the newly created Ministry of Agrarian Reform and Development (MIRAD), was fired in May 1986. Altogether, MIRAD had four different ministers in the 1985-88 period. The land expropriation procedure employed by INCRA was complex and highly centralized, capable of being blocked by landlord pressure at numerous stages. Although the original plan had stressed that the "participation . . . of rural workers" was a "vital requisite" for the plan's success,50 such participation did not occur in practice. INCRA selected beneficiaries for land, using its own confidential surveys. Land expropriation decrees always came from Brasilia, where they required the signature of the president, and listed the number of parcels of land into which the expropriated plot must be divided without any local input. Once granted a parcel, beneficiaries usually had to install themselves on the land at their own expense, although in some cases INCRA provided money for three months, until the first harvest.51 The state agrarian commissions, designed to increase participation in

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the reform, had nothing to do. A little over a year after their establishment, in October 1987, the federal government abolished INCRA and transferred its responsibilities to MIRAD. CONTAG interpreted this as an abandonment of the reform by the government and withdrew its members from the commissions. A vital blow to the reform was dealt on 10 May 1988, when the Constituent Assembly, then writing a new constitution, placed a clause in the document stating that "productive" land could not be expropriated. By withholding "productive" land from the reform, critics argued, any property with a few head of cattle or some machinery could be exempted from expropriation; land speculation would be protected. This was one of the most bitterly fought issues in the making of the Constitution. While CONTAG officials argued against the clause, a well-funded organization of landowners, the Uniao Democratica Ruralista (UDR, Democratic Rural Union), lobbied for it. After seven separate votes in the Assembly, a majority was attained. The exemption of "productive" land was upheld on 29 August 1988, in a second round of voting, with 83 of 168 PMDB congressional deputies voting for it.52 Before this vote, the government had the law, but not the will, to enact agrarian reform; now, it lacked the law as well. The rural unions considered the "productive" clause of the Constitution a betrayal. The federation in Pernambuco published posters with the title "Traitors of the People" after the August vote, showing pictures of congressional deputies who had voted for it. A union song with the same title was sung in meetings in the sugar zone. "The deputies who voted against agrarian reform betrayed the Brazilians," lamented the lyrics, "leaving the masses saddened, crushing us who are rural workers."'5 By the end of 1988, it was reported that the agrarian reform plan had failed to meet its objectives. Of the 27 million ha targeted for the 1985-88 period, only 7 percent had been expropriated. Of the 850,000 families slated to receive land, only 40,000, or 4.7 percent, actually had.M4 Nelson Ribeiro, the ex-minister of MIRAD, had written optimistically in 1987 that land redistribution, by "atomizing . . . [the] concentration of power" of the large landowners, would "give the most decisive contribution to the strengthening of democracy for all."' Instead, the power of the large landowners, and the weakness of its supporters, had atomized the reform. Nonreform in the Pernambuco Sugar Zone. In Pernambuco, a northeastern state, the transition to civilian rule was quickly followed by the return of Miguel Arraes to the governorship. Arraes had been governor in 1963/64. During his brief administration, rural workers had won the right to a written collective contract, and a successful general strike in the sugar zone had resulted in a dramatic increase in their wages. Arraes, simply by recognizing the unions' right to bargain on behalf of their members, had altered the balance of power in the sugar zone. Because of improvements in worker welfare under his administration, he won from many workers a loyalty and gratitude that borders on worship, reflected in the popular saying, "Deus no Ceu, Arraes na terra" (God in Heaven, Arraes on earth). On the other hand, he earned the enmity of many landlords for allowing "chaos" and "agitation" to reign in the fields, and

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he was deposed by the military in the 1964 coup. After a 15-year exile, he returned to Pernambuco politics in 1979. The 1986 governor's race pitted Jose Mucio, a millowner of the Partido Frente Liberal (PFL, Liberal Front Party), against Arraes of the PMDB. Campaigning on behalf of Mucio and running for federal deputy was Francisco Juliao, a lawyer/politician who had advocated agrarian reform in the early 1960s and, like Arraes, been forced into exile after the 1964 coup. Juliao wrote an open letter to the sugar zone's millowners urging them to set aside 10 percent of their lands and, out of a sense of Christian charity, give it to their workers. He later claimed that, had Mucio been elected, he would have been appointed state secretary for agrarian reform, with the power to confiscate land from owners.' Rural workers were unsympathetic to the campaigns of both Mucio and Juliao. Both candidates lost badly in the election. Of those trade union leaders surveyed, 94 percent responded that they had voted for Arraes against Mucio, and only 6 percent said they voted for Juliao. The latter was widely seen to have become a "turncoat," allying with a millowner for his own political advantage. The winning Arraes coalition in 1986, therefore, received the strong support of FETAPE, but it also received the support of a segment of the state's landowning elite. It is estimated that 30 percent of the campaign money spent by sugar millowners in 1986 went to Arraes's Frente Popular (Popular Front).57 One of the Frente's PMDB candidates was Antonio Farias, a sugar millowner who won a seat in the federal Senate. And 17 of the 23 PMDB state deputies were former members of ARENA (Alianca Renovadora Nacional), the dominant party during the military
regime.58

The rural union leaders thus knew that this would be a different Arraes government from the one elected in 1962.59 Many were cautious, recalling those earlier days when activists had militated in favor of union rights and land reform and paid heavily for it after the 1964 coup (when about 300 rural workers were purged from the movement, some losing their lives). Although the prospects of military intervention looked remote, union officials adopted a wait-and-see attitude toward the Arraes government. Not all of that government's early appointments and policies met with the approval of the unionists. While the new secretary of labor was a former FETAPE lawyer, the important secretary of public security, in charge of the civil police, was a general in the army reserve named Evilasio Gondim. Gondim had been head of the Servico Nacional de Informacoes (SN, National Intelligence Service) when that agency was accumulating evidence that Arraes, then exiled in Paris, was a subversive. Furthermore, Arraes's appointment for chief of the military police, Fernando Gonzaga Pessoa, was head of the infantry regiment in Socorro, where Arraes was imprisoned after being deposed in April 1964. Finally, Arraes's secretary for administration had been a driver transporting political prisoners after the coup.f6 Clearly, in composing his second administration, Arraes made substantial concessions to political forces that had strongly opposed his first government in 1963. Arraes's position on agrarian reform was ambiguous, partly because he

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had ambitions for higher office and did not want to antagonize rightwingers. While rhetorically supporting the reform, he maintained that it was a federal matter and should not involve the state government. On 4 May 1986, when President Sarney met with the presidents of CONTAG and FETAPE at Recife's airport to discuss the state's newly drafted agrarian reform plan, Governor Arraes did not attend the meeting. In the sugar zone, reactions to the reform plan were mixed. The FETAPE president, Jose Rodrigues, said that "the plan leaves much to be desired," and accused the federal government of having caved in to landlord pressures and given away substantial concessions in relation to the initial proposal.61 The president of the state Sindicato dos Cultivadores de Cana, the cane growers' association, said that the growers supported reform, but only if it were done on "unproductive" land. Governor Arraes, for his part, continued to avoid the issue and instead initiated a local program of voluntary land donations on the part of the sugar mills. These donations, heavily publicized by the governor's press office, did not involve more than symbolic amounts of land or people.62 They allowed Arraes, however, to be seen as supportive of agrarian reform without getting entangled in the messy conflicts that the federal reform entailed. The millowners, on the other hand, seemed to participate in Arraes's program in the hope that it would obviate the need for them to participate in the national plan. In the second half of 1986 the state agrarian commission for Pernambuco was set up, ostensibly to assist in the enactment of the national plan. As in many other parts of Brazil, this body never really exercised its function. When INCRA was abolished in October 1987, FETAPE, along with the other state federations, withdrew its members from the commission. If at this point the union leaders were not expecting agrarian reform in Pernambuco, some landless families, acting out of desperation, took matters into their own hands. On 23 August 1987, 199 families moved on to an area of unused land belonging to the powerful Lundgren family, about 50 miles from Recife on the border of Abreu e Lima and Igarassu counties. They demanded title to the property. The case went to court, the squatters were ordered to be removed, and the state government settled each of the families on 10 ha of land belonging to the Ministry of Agriculture, in Igarassu. The original plot of land, however, called by the squatters Pitanga II (a previous land occupation in another area had been called Pitanga I), became the focus of a legal and political battle that lasted for over a year. The squatters were determined and patient, occupying the grounds of the MIRAD building in Recife three times during the ensuing year. They had no faith that they would receive land in the official reform.63 They succeeded in getting some help from local trade unions and later from the state government, which sent food and provided medical care to the squatters on a weekly basis. Despite this, the squatters' leaders were critical of FETAPE. They claimed that the federation was not advocating their cause strongly for fear of embarrassing the state government and alienating supporters in the ruling PMDB. The church's CPT, based in Recife, became the squatters' most steadfast political ally. In February of 1988, FETAPE paid for a group of squatters and union

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representatives to go to Brasilia for a meeting with the MIRAD minister, Jader Barbalho. Barbalho promised to recommend expropriation of Pitanga II to President Sarney. The squatters' leaders returned to wait with their companions at their bleak settlement, where 11 children died of illness between August and April. On April 11, Governor Arraes declared himself against the expropriation of Pitanga II, citing the opinion of the federal Forestry Institute (IBDF) that settling the squatters on Pitanga II would cause unacceptable ecological damage. The next day he gave in to pressure from his secretary of labor and FETAPE's President Rodrigues and sent a telegram to MIRAD asking for the "immediate expropriation" of the area. On April 20, President Sarney signed a decree expropriating 1,120 ha of Pitanga II. Rodrigues hailed the decision, crediting it to the "firm position of the state government" when, in reality, Governor Arraes only took action in support of the squatters' claims a full seven months after the land was first occupied.64 On July 4, carrying pots and pans, mattresses, and food, the Pitanga II squatters occupied the MIRAD building as they had earlier in the year, this time to demand title to the expropriated land. They denounced the "lack of support from FETAPE" and declared that only the church activists of the CPT were behind themi65 The squatters were tired of promessas da boca (oral promises) and wanted a written guarantee that they could settle on the land. One squatter explained: "I don't understand laws, I understand right. The laws were made by men; right comes from God."' Finally, on 25 November 1988, the federal government issued a title of 840 ha for 102 families at Pitanga II (other families had abandoned the struggle or been resettled elsewhere). One year and three months after the initial land invasion, the squatters appeared to have achieved their goal. The Pitanga II case illustrates several points about land reform in Pernambuco. First, the small amount of land that got redistributed tended to be the result of direct action on the part of the rural poor themselves, rather than the work of the unions or of the government's land reform bureaucracy. Second, because of his unwillingness to offend landowners, the state governor was reluctant to back the demands of the landless. He was willing to provide food, in part to avoid an embarrassing encampment in front of the Governor's Palace, but he did not push for federal expropriation until it seemed that the squatters simply would not go away. Finally, the trade unions, as supporters of the governor, shared his dilemma. Criticized by the squatters for not doing enough, they could not be seen to be doing nothing. They did provide essential help in the eventual resolution of the problem, but land for the landless was, throughout the period, a secondary issue for them. The wages and working conditions of the mass of their members remained the top priority. Despite the promises that accompanied regime transition, and the successes of isolated groups of squatters such as the people of Pitanga II, little change in the pattern of landownership in the Pernambuco sugar zone occurred. Excluding the Pitanga II case, the government had expropriated a mere 1.78 percent of the land targeted in its plan and granted land to 1.4 percent of the projected beneficiaries by the end of

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1987. In absolute terms, this amounted to 21 families receiving 400 ha, a small number in an area containing hundreds of thousands of rural
poor.67

Conclusion The skepticism and limited participation of rural trade union leaders in the 1985-88 Brazilian agrarian reform constitute a neglected factor in explaining the failure of that reform. The rural trade union leaders did not push strongly for land redistribution because they doubted the government's commitment to its own plan, were never asked to participate meaningfully in its enactment, and did not want to neglect daily struggles in order to fight for the program. Not only was their expectation of success low, but the expected cost of failure-a landlord backlash such as occurred in the wake of the 1964 coup-was high. A recent study of 16 modern land reforms concludes that reforms only succeed when the beneficiaries, workers and peasants, gain land through pressure exerted by their own organizations, and "when these organizations have substantial input into the conditions and structure of the reform."' Given this condition, it is fair to say that as a result of the way its implementation was designed, the 1985 Brazilian reform plan was doomed to failure from the outset. The roots of the rural trade union leaders' attitude toward the reform can be found in both the nature of Brazil's central government as it operates in the countryside, and the nature of the 1985 transition to civilian rule. The Ministries of Labor and Justice have failed to protect rural unionists, not only historically, but by their contemporary inability to enforce a legal order. In the areas of labor law and violent crime, most critically, the Brazilian government has not consistently enforced rules in the way that it has in other areas. Because of this failure, and the exploitation and violence against the rural poor that it permits, rural trade union leaders are extremely critical and suspicious of the federal government, directing relatively little of their energy toward getting benefits from it. As a consequence, they are frequently unimpressed by regime change. Government proposals such as land reform have limited credibility in their eyes, whether made by military or civilian ruler's. Finally, the 1985 Brazilian regime was marked by considerable continuity of both policy and personnel at the elite level. The supporters of agrarian reform faced a strong and well-organized opposition and suffered from internal division. In the case of the Pernambuco sugar zone, the winner of the 1986 gubernatorial election, while drawing massive support from the rural trade union movement, was also backed by a significant minority of large landholders. This meant that even when the state government proved sluggish on the land question, rural unionists were reluctant to criticize or pressure it. This in turn led to conflict between the unions and other representatives of the rural poor, such as church and left-party activists, who favored more vigorous direct action in favor of the landless. But the union federation did not break with the state government. Instead, like most rural union federations in Brazil, it concentrated on its chief field of interest, the wages and working conditions of its members.

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NOTES
1. There is a vast literature on the role of agrarian reform in development. For assertions of the benefits of agrarian reform in Latin America, see Everett E. Hagen, The Economics of Develpment (Homewood, IL: Richard D. Irwin, 1975), p. 122; Ignacy Sachs, Studies in Political Economy of Development (Oxford: Pergamon Press, 1980), p. 76; Michael P. Todaro, Economic Development in the Third World (London: Longman, 1977), pp. 214-15; and F. E. Trainer, Abandon Affluence! (London: Zed Books, 1985), p. 140. 2. Frances Hagopian and Scott Mainwaring, "Democracy in Brazil: Problems and Prospects," World Policy Journal (Summer 1987): 502-4. 3. Dirceu Pessoa, ed., Politica Fundiaria no Nordeste, vol. 1, Pano de Fundo (Recife: Fundacao Joaquim Nabuco, Instituto de Pesquisas Sociais, Departamento de Economia, 1986), pp. 121-22. 4. I conducted this research between April and November 1988, using a written questionnaire containing over 50 questions. Respondents were all elected members of union directorates: presidents, vice-presidents, treasurers, and secretaries from unions in both the northern and southern sugar zones. Interviews covered 42 of the region's 45 sugar unions so as to incorporate unions of different size, degree of militancy, and political orientation in the sample. A copy of the questionnaire and aggregated responses is available from the author on request. 5. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations, Rural Poverty (Rome: FAO, 1988), Annex 2, p. 17. Figures are from 1980. The FAO defines poverty as the "incapacity to become inserted in the socio-economic environment in a way that continually allows for the satisfaction of basic necessities of life." For measurement purposes, absolute poverty is "that income below which a set of basic necessities cannot be afforded." From ibid., p. 7. 6. The National Confederation of Agricultural Workers (CONTAG) has approximately 9,700,000 members, with 22 state federations and 2,822 unions (Jornal do Brasil, 26 July 1987, p. 4). A different source lists CONTAG membership as 8,000,000: see Biorn Maybury-Lewis, The Debate over Agrarian Reform in Brazil, Institute of Latin American and Iberian Studies Paper no. 14 (New York: Columbia University, 1990), p. 11. 7. Ministerio da Reforma e do Desenvolvimento Agrario (MIRAD), Proposta para a Elaboracao do 10 Plano Nacional de Reforma Agraria da Nova Republica (Brasilia: MIRAD, May 1985), p. 4. 8. Caio Prado, Jr., Historia Economica do Brasil (Sao Paulo: Editora Brasiliense, 1953), pp. 231-87. 9. Angela Kageyama, "Algumas Caracteristicas das Categorias de Imoveis Rurais no Brasil em 1978," Reforma Agraria 16 (December 1986-March 1987): 50. The data are from a 1978 study by the Instituto Nacional de Colonizacao e Reforma Agraria (INCRA) that was not released until 1985. 10. Ibid., p. 52. The existence of this quantity of unused land has been disputed, rather unconvincingly, by agronomist Francisco Graziano Neto; see "Reforma no Brejo," Veja, 7 November 1990, pp. 5-7. 11. Robert E. Price, Rural Unionization in Brazil, Land Tenure Center Research Paper Number 14 (Madison: University of Wisconsin, 1964), p. 68. 12. The value of the debt of latifundiarios who had not paid the land tax (imposto territorial rural) between 1980 and 1985 was estimated in the latter year at 3.6 trillion cruzeiros. From Campanha Nacional Pela Reforma Agraria (CNPRA), Reforma Agraria, Para Que? (Rio de Janeiro: CNPRA, August 1985), p. 11. 13. Between 1970 and 1980, the number of rural poor rose from 27.6 to 28.8 million (FAO, Rural Poverty, p. 7). Brazil's Gini coefficient for land concentration went from 0.85 in 1960 to 0.86 in 1980; ibid., pp. 48-49. Properties of more than 1,000 ha increased their share of the cultivated land from 47 percent in 1967 to 58 percent in 1984. Small properties of less than 100 ha had their share of land decrease through these years, from 19 percent to 14 percent (MIRAD, Proposta, p. 4). 14. David Goodman et al., "Agro-Industry, State Policy, and Rural Social Structures: Recent Analyses of Proletarianisation in Brazilian Agriculture," in Proletarianisation in the Third World: Studies in the Creation of a Labour Force under Dependent Capitalism, ed. Barry Munslow and Henry Finch (London: Croom Helm, 1984), p. 198. According to the 1975 Agricultural Census, rural properties of 100 ha or more got 68.1 percent of

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all credit; some of this credit was not used for agriculture at all, but was instead invested in urban property. See Instituto Brasileiro de Analise Socio-Economico (IBASE), Alguns Dados sobre a Estrutura Agraria Brasileira (Rio de Janeiro: IBASE, 1981), pp. 3-4. 15. Many of these displaced peasants went to the cities; rural-urban migration is estimated at 30 million for the 1960-80 period. 16. An FAO mission that came to Brazil to monitor the reform in 1968 reported that the number of families that had received land until that date did not exceed 329. From Carlos Enrique Guanziroli, Politica Agraria do Regime Pos-64 (Rio de Janeiro: IBASE, 1984), p. 1. 17. FAO, Rural Poverty, p. 74. 18. Price, Rural Unionization in Brazil, p. 5. 19. Americas Watch, Rural Violence in Brazil (New York: Human Rights Watch, 1991). See also Amnesty International, Brazil: Authorized Violence in Rural Areas (London: Amnesty International, 1988); and U.S. Department of State, Country Reports on Human Rights Practices for 1988, report submitted to the House Foreign Affairs and Senate Foreign Relations Committees (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1989). 20. Quoted in U.S. Department of State, Country Reports, p. 471. 21. Amnesty International, Brazil: Authorized Violence in Rural Areas, p. 67. 22. Ibid., p. 10. 23. Jornal do Brasil, 9 September 1984. 24. For a discussion of urban trade unionists' use of public space in Barcelona, Spain, see Robert Fishman, "Protests in Public Places: Underpinnings of Working Class Opposition in Franco Spain" (Paper delivered at the Conference of Europeanists, Washington, DC, 30 October -1 November 1987), pp. 6-11. 25. The president of the union complained about this veiled threat, because the state secretary had been appointed by a governor (Miguel Arraes) who had received strong support from rural workers. "We find the position of the secretary very strange," he said, "because all the rural workers voted for Arraes, and it isn't possible that his police now line up against us." From Diario de Pernambuco, 14 May 1988. 26. The Cabo union president told me on 22 September 1988 that there was a pending legal action against the policemen thought to be responsible for the abduction of Batista, but it is not clear whether this was brought by the union or another party. 27. Lygia Sigaud, Os Clandestinos e Os Direitos (Sao Paulo: Livraria Duas Cidades, 1979). 28. Eighty-two percent of those surveyed felt that the standard of living of the rural workers was higher during Miguel Arraes's first term as governor (1963/64), when the majority of workers had access to subsistence plots (sitios), than it is today. 29. The opinion that the standard of living of the workers has declined since the expulsion from the plantations is just as prevalent among the young (who had no adult experience of the former time) as it is among the old. In the survey, 85 percent of those 40 or younger and 80 percent of the over-40 category, hold it. 30. Fifty-seven percent of those who said they were in favor of the right to strike (which was 92 percent of all respondents) justified their stance by saying that landowners only make concessions in the face of strikes or threats of strikes. 31. Author's field notes, April-November 1988. 32. For an analysis of the dualistic view of the national government among rural workers in Sao Paulo state in the early 1970s, see Verena Martinez-Alier and Armando Boito, Jr., "The Hoe and the Vote: Rural Labourers and the National Election in Brazil in 1974," Journal of Peasant Studies 4 (April 1977): 160. For an analysis of a different, and highly dependent view of the national government among urban workers in the early 1970s, see Youssef Cohen, "The Benevolent Leviathan: Political Consciousness among Urban Workers under State Corporatism," American Political Science Review 76 (1982): 46-59. 33. For example, one union official said to me: "The government isn't [democratic] because it gives a lot to the rich. It only looks after the rich, even the middle class it doesn't look after. A democratic government would look after everyone." From field notes, Camutanga, Pernambuco sugar zone, 17 November 1988. 34. Few workers seem to consider the danger that union officials may abandon their roots once in local government, developing new interests and bases of support, i.e., that one of "us" may turn into one of "them" if given the chance. The fact that this danger is a real one is reflected in the rueful observation of one union official, commenting on the performance of a former union president who became mayor, that although "we had

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access" to him, "he wasn't the mayor we had hoped for." From field notes, Paudalho, Pernambuco, 18 July 1988. 35. Interview in Vitoria de Santo Antao, Pernambuco, 2 May 1987. 36. Rural worker in Maraial, Pernambuco, 30 November 1988. 37. In Pernambuco, the total population has doubled from 1950 to 1980, from about 3 to 6 million. During the same period, the Protestant population (traditional and Pentecostal) has quadrupled, from 80,000 to 325,000. From Instituto Brasileiro da Geografia e Economia (IBGE), Servico Nacional de Recenseamento, Censo de 1960, Volume II, Tomo VI, Parte Ia, Pernambuco (Rio de Janeiro: IBGE, 1961); and IGBE, Recenseamento Geral do Brasil 1980, Volume I, Tomo VI, No. 12, Censo Demografico, Pernambuco (Rio de Janeiro: IBGE, 1981). 38. Carole Pateman, Participation and Democratic Theory (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1970). 39. This was an open-ended question to which most people gave more than one answer, the reason that the total is greater than 41. 40. Admittedly, this question was asked in 1988, three years after the agrarian reform plan had been first announced. But documentary evidence confirms the view that many trade union leaders were skeptical of the government's commitment to reform in 1985. 41. One respondent said of Cuba, "They say that there, the children of the worker don't die, the sugar mills don't have an owner, the conditions of work are better and the wages are better." 42. Centro Educacao Popular do Instituto Sedes Sapiente (CEPIS), Reflexao sobre a Violencia no Campo (Sao Paulo: CEPIS/Movimento Sem Terra, 1985), pp. 14-15. 43. Rural union officials, in talking about land reform, usually said that land itself was not enough, but that the small farmer needed government credit, technical assistance, help with marketing, and so on. A 1988 study by Brazil's development bank, the BNDES, revealed that this kind of help was noticeably lacking in the Sarney land reform. In a study of 1,517 small farmers who received land in 12 different states, the bank concluded that in many cases, recipients of land ended up selling their lots or only growing enough for subsistence, working as wage laborers for someone else. The government did not provide the smallholders enough inputs to become viable commercial farmers, so they fell back into their previous condition of poverty. From Relatorio Reservado 24, no. 1173, 24-30 July 1989. 44. This is the point made by Alain de Janvry and Elisabeth Sadoulet in "The Political Feasibility of Rural Poverty Alleviation" (University of California, Berkeley, 1989), p. 22. The authors suggest that the rural poor can only win politically if positive gains from a particular policy also accrue to the nonpoor. Groups from the latter category can then take the initiative in mobilizing the poor in support of the policy. In the case of Brazilian land reform, the nonpoor did stand to benefit from land redistribution in the form of cheaper food prices and lower rates of urban crime, but these benefits were quite indirect. This accounts, perhaps, for the relatively low level of political pressure for the policy on the part of the nonpoor. 45. At the Fourth CONTAG Congress in Brasilia in May 1985, delegates expressed the fear that religious groups had the objective of "dismantling the union movement" in the countryside. From Yves Chaloult, "Uma das Contradicoes da Nova Republica: 0 Projeto Nordeste" (Brasilia, 1985), p. 12. 46. For more on the differences within the proagrarian reform alliance, see MayburyLewis, Debate over Agrarian Reform in Brazil, pp. 11-14. 47. Maria Lia Pandolfi, "Forcas Sociais e Articulacoes no Encaminhamento da Reforma Agraria" (Fundacao Joaquim Nabuco, Departamento de Sociologia, Recife, 1987), p. 182. 48. Pessoa, Politica Fundiaria no Nordeste, pp. 121-22. For the author of those words, the minefield exploded. In September 1987, he and three other INCRA officials were killed in a plane crash in southern Para in mysterious circumstances. Although the official government investigation of the crash ruled out foul play, southern Para is an area of intense land conflict, and some commentators believe that the INCRA plane was sabotaged by landowners who felt threatened by the agency's apparent commitment to land redistribution in the area. 49. CNPRA, Reforma Agraria, Para Que? p. 6. 50. MIRAD, Proposta, p. 26. 51. Pessoa, Politica Fundiaria no Nordeste, pp. 115-16.

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52. "O Que Esta na Constituicao," Folha de Sao Paulo, 11 September 1988, p. A-10. 53. "Traidores do Povo," union song lyrics distributed in Nazare da Mata, Pernambuco, 2 October 1988. 54. Jan Rocha, "Landowners Claim Total Amazon Rights," Manchester Guardian Weekly, 29 January 1989. INCRA data uses a longer time frame and differs slightly from those presented here. Between May 1985 and May 1988, it reports, 2,966,902.4 ha (11 percent of the target) had been expropriated, and this land was capable of sustaining 78,229 families, or 9.2 percent of the beneficiaries planned for settlement by the end of 1988. There was no data on how many of this latter figure had actually been settled on land. From Instituto Nacional de Colonizacao e Reforma Agraria (INCRA), Superintendencia Estadual de Pernambuco, Divisao de Projetos de Colonizacao, Secao de Programacao e Controle, Areas Obtidas para Assentamento (Recife: INCRA, 1988), p. 1. 55. Nelson de Figueiredo Ribeiro, "A Reforma Agraria na Constituinte: Uma Opcao pelos Pobres," Reforma Agraria 16 (December 1986-March 1987): 30. 56. From author's interview with Francisco Juliao, Cuernavaca, Mexico, 24 May 1988. 57. Roberto Aguiar, "Os Financidores das Campanhas," manuscript for the Folha de Pernambuco, September 1988. 58. From "Esquerda Vou Ver," Folha de Sao Paulo, no, date. 59. Because illiterates did not have the vote in 1962, mosf rural workers did not vote in that election. By 1986, illiterates had the vote, and rates of illiteracy had declined in the sugar zone, ensuring the participation of almost all rural workers in the election. 60. From Veja, 18 March 1987. Gondim was the same man who threatened the rural workers' march in Cabo, described earlier. 61. Pandolfi, "Forcas Sociais e Articulacoes Politicas," p. 180. 62. Primeria Pagina, a newspaper published by the state government, reported that 1,200 ha had been donated in the program as of 4 April 1988. Given that INCRA defined the minimum plot size to sustain an average family in the sugar zone as 15 ha, this would allow 80 beneficiaries to get land. Yet there are said to be 100,000 to 150,000 unemployed cane cutters in the sugar zone during the slack season. 63. The following exchange between a landless demonstrator occupying the MIRAD grounds and a policeman was reported in the local press. Demonstrator: "We want land to cultivate." Policeman: "But President Sarney wants to enact an agrarian reform." Demonstrator: "Only in another state, sir; here, no." From Diario de Pernambuco, 14 April 1988. 64. Jornal de Comercio, 22 April 1988. 65. Diario de Pernambuco, 5 July 1988. 66. Jornal de Comercio, 7 July 1988. The difference between leis (laws) and direito (right) is an important one among the rural poor. Leis are seen as unfair, easily manipulated, and stretched. Direito is what is right in accordance with popular notions of justice and credited with divine origin. There is a parallel between lei and direito and E. P. Thompson's "market" and "moral" economy; see "The Moral Economy of the English Crowd in the Eighteenth Century," Past and Present 50 (February 1971). 67. Comissao Nacional dos Bispos do Brasil (CNBB), Regional Nordeste II, Setor de Pastoral Rural, Os Descompassos da Reforma Agraria em 1987-Pernambuco (Recife: Centro de Estudo e Acao Social, Setor Rural, 1987), pp. 2-3. 68. John P. Powelson, "Land Tenure and Land Reform: Past and Present," Land Use Policy 4 (April 1987): 120.

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