The Landless Rural Workers Movement (MST) and New Agrarian Questions in Brazil

ABSTRACT

The Landless Rural Workers Movement of Brazil (MST) primarily organized occupations of large‐scale farms, forcing the redistribution of land for creation of agrarian reform settlements. In the past 20 years, however, land occupations and the establishment of new agrarian reform settlements have consistently declined, while the MST shifted strategies to strengthening existing agrarian reform settlements, increasing marketing mechanisms through government purchasing programs and direct rural–urban connections, cultivating new financial instruments, advancing agroecological transformations to strengthen production and contesting space in governance and discourse about sustainability, rural development and socio‐ecological wellbeing. We argue this shift represents not an abandonment of the agrarian question but its adaptation, reflecting transformations of agrarian capital and social, ecological and political dynamics nationally and internationally rather than internal decisions within the MST alone. Thus, we theorize why, where and how new agrarian questions change in specific places over time, transforming and being transformed by social movements.