Liberation Theologians are often considered the leftist branch of the Christian church. Their ideology was, in part, influenced by the call to update the Catholic Church during the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965) that encouraged Christians to build solidarity with the oppressed and those in marginal contexts. In Latin America, crucial to the dissemination of liberation theology was the work of Gustavo Gutiérrez and the gatherings in 1968 in the framework of the “Conferencia del Episcopado Latinoamericano” (CELAM) in Medellin, Colombia. See: Gustavo Gutiérrez. Teología de la liberación: Perspectivas (Lima: Universidad de Lima, 1971); as well as Pope Paul VI, Gaudium Et Specs, Rome, December 7, 1965.
Júlia Dolce, “Popular Agrarian Reform and the Struggle for Land in Brazil,” The Tricontinental, Dossier No. 27, April 3, 2020. For an account of the various historical processes that led to land concentration in Brazil by an elite landed class, see: Leandro Vergara-Camus, “Peasant struggles and primitive accumulation,” in Land and Freedom, (London: Zed Books, 2014), 43-46, 50-56.
For more on the relation between the landless and the church see: Ivo Poletto, “Churches, the Pastoral Land Commission, and the Mobilization for Agrarian Reform,” in Challenging Social Inequality. The Landless Rural Workers Movement and Agrarian Reform in Brazil, ed. Miguel Carter (Durham: Duke University Press, 2015), 88-111; Gabriel Ondetti, Land, Protest, and Politics: The Landless Movement and the Struggle for Agrarian Reform in Brazil (State College, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2008), 52-54. Crucial in this regard is the role of the Pastoral Commission of Land (CPT) founded in 1975.
See “Title VII, Chapter III,” Agricultural and Land Policy and Agrarian Reform, Articles 184 through 191 of the Constitution of the Federative Republic of Brazil 1988, amended in 2010.
For a crucial account of the emergence of MST in relation to popular educational practices, see: Isabel Camini and João Pedro Stedile, “Paulo Freire’s Meeting with the MST,” Friends of the MST, 2021. See ➝.
See the role of the MST’s communication sector in Miguel Carter and Horacio Martins de Carvalho, “The Struggle on the Land: Source of Growth, Innovation, and Constant Challenge for the MST,” in Carter, ed., Challenging Social Inequality, 257.
Ondetti, Land, Protest and Politics, 98-101, 116.
Among the most important educational initiatives for MST activists are CEPATEC (Centro de Formação e Pesquisas Contestado), their first training center, located in Santa Catarina; Instituto Técnico de Estudos e Pesquisas da Reforma Agrária (ITERRA); and, since 2005, the Florestan Fernandes National School (ENFF / Escola Nacional Florestan Fernandes). For a comprehensive account on the educational sector of MST, see: Rebecca Tarlau, Occupying Schools, Occupying Land: How the Landless Workers Movement Transformed Brazilian Education (New York: Oxford University Press, 2019).
Ondetti, Land, Protest, and Politics, 114.
As political theorist Gabriel Ondetti argues, “if {MST members in temporary encampments} could be made to understand the deeper, radical purpose of the MST, they would be more likely to resist cooptation and repression and to remain committed to the MST’s struggle once they gained land.” Ondetti, Land, Protest, and Politics, 114.
Alessandro Mariano and Rebecca Tarlau. “The Landless Workers Movement’s itinerant schools: occupying and transforming public education in Brazil,” British Journal of Sociology of Education 40, no. 4 (2019): 544.
For a discussion on these influences, see: Ondetti, Land, Protest, and Politics, 71.
“The insistence that the oppressed engage in reflection on their concrete situation is not a call to armchair revolution. On the contrary, reflection—true reflection—leads to action … As they {the oppressed} attain this knowledge of reality through common reflection and action, they discover themselves as its permanent re-creators.” Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed (New York: Continuum. 2005), 66, 69.
Alessandro Mariano and Rebecca Tarlau emphasize the importance of “collective classroom planning” in the inclusion of “portions of reality” in the classroom. Teachers plan together by making an “inventory of reality” that collects and organizes the multiple topics and spaces that will be discussed during the academic year. See: Mariano and Tarlau, “The Landless Workers Movement’s itinerant schools,” 546.
On Mosey Pristrak in relation to MST, see: V.A. de Oliveira Feitosa, A.M. de Araújo Stedile, M.C. da Silva Barroso, and R. Alves Feitosa, “Moisey Pistrak (1888-1937) and the Unified Labour School: Analysis of Soviet Pedagogical Thinking for the Education of the Homo Novus,” Journal for Critical Education Policy Studies 19, no. 1 (May 2021); Tarlau, Occupying Schools, Occupying Land, 71.
Among the most common extra-curricular activities included throughout all MST educational programs is mística. Mística is an important practice in liberation theology. It aims to cultivate symbolic representation through songs, chants, poetry, speeches, stories, theater, samba, etc.
See: Mariano and Tarlau, “The Landless Workers Movement’s itinerant schools,” 552.
Isabela Camini, “Paulo Freire y la Escuela Itinerante del MST,” Decisio 55 (Sept 2020-April 2021), 66. Translation by author.
Tarlau, Occupying Schools, Occupying Land, 198.
Rebecca Tarlau describes this as “scare tactics” exerted by the government to intimidate many landless communities.
Benjamín Nahoum and Gustavo González, Escritos sobre los sin tierra urbanos: Causas, propuestas y luchas populares (Montevideo: Trilce, 2011), 49-96.
FUCVAM, Declaración de Principios, Asamblea Nacional, Paysandú, November 1999. Please note that I have added my emphasis here. FUCVAM outlines: collective property, mutual aid practices, direct democracy and self-management. I have however, included the latter within the principle of direct democracy and included technical assistance as it is present in every FUCVAM cooperative and required by law.
The law was approved on December 17, 1968, under the presidential administration of Jorge Pacheco Areco. While the articles dedicated to housing cooperatives in Chapter X have created many legal mechanisms to expand access for the urban poor, at the time it was considered a strategic anomaly by a conservative government interested in polarizing society. To consult Chapter X of Law 13728 see: Benjamin Nahoum and Heriberto Duverger Salfrán eds., Las Cooperativas de Vivienda por Ayuda Mutua Uruguayas: Una historia con quince mil protagonistas (Andalucia: Junta de Andalucía, 1999), 203-222. The law was in part drafted by architect Juan Pablo Terra, see: Juan Pablo Terra, Proceso y significado del cooperativismo uruguayo (Montevideo: Arca Editorial, 1986).
FUCVAM, “Propositos y Objetivos de la F.U.C.V.A.M.,” Boletín no. 1 (March 1971).
“El mito de la marginalidad,” La Reforma Urbana, Va!, Asamblea Nacional Extraordinaria, XXVI (February 1991), 6.
“Himno de las Cooperativas,” written and composed by Ruben Olivera, 1982.
Two moments are crucial in this respect: FUCVAM’s nation-wide mobilization against the privatization of cooperatives proposed by the dictatorship in 1984 and the land occupations of 1989 throughout Montevideo that pressured the government to grant collective land rights to cooperatives in formation. For more see: Gustavo González, Escritos sobre los sin tierra urbanos, 49-72.
In regards to collective land rights, it is crucial to remember the role of FUCVAM in advocating for the institutionalization of an official land portfolio (“Cartera de Tierras”) to facilitate access to land for the working classes. For more see: Junta Departamental de Montevideo, “Cartera Municipal de Tierras para Vivienda,” Decreto 24654, 1990; Benjamín Nahoum, “Cartera de tierras: una sociedad por la ciudad,” Escritos sobre los sin tierra urbanos, 123-132.
Belén Riguetti and Gustavo González. “50 años de FUCVAM: más de 30.000 familias accedieron a una Vivienda por el Sistema de ayuda mutua,” La Diaria, July 6, 2020. See ➝.
For more information about the process and time involved in mutual aid and self-construction within FUCVAM, see: Benjamín Nahoum, “Horas funcionales, ¿sí o no?," in Algunas Claves: Reflexiones sobre aspectos esenciales de la Vivienda cooperative por ayuda mutual (Montevideo: Trilce 2013), 125-128.
Alicia Dambrauskas, “Educación cooperative autogestionaria,” We Effect América Latina, Ciclo 1, Curso de formación COCEAVIS. See ➝.
Mariana Menendez, Educación en movimiento, unpublished Master’s degree thesis (Nov 2014), 82: “Lo interesante es que la totalidad de la accionar de las cooperativas y la federación es en sí mismo un proceso educativo” (entrevistado B, dirigente nacional, etapas 2 - 3, Abril, 2014).
Alicia Dambrauskas, Proyecto: El maestro de la comunidad (FUCVAM: Comisión de Desarrollo Social: Departamento Infancia Cooperativa, 2003).
Alicia Dambrauskas, “En clave de ‘Y’: educación y trabajo, trabajo y educación,” Revista Temas de Profesionalización Docente, no. 4 (2020).
Dambrauskas, “En clave de ‘Y.’” Among other influences on the idea of collective work as education, Dambrauskas names: Miguel Soler, Julio Castro, Pedro Figari and Arturo Ardao.
Alicia Dambrauskas, El maestro de la Comunidad II: La puesta en marcha de la experiencia—El salto de la idea a la acción (FUCVAM: Comisión de Desarrollo Social, 2004), 13.
Alicia Dambrauskas, Proyecto, 15.