The centrality of peasant movements in Latin America: achievements and limitations.

• Author: Petras, James
• Position: Shaking Off El Norte - Report

For over a century, social analysts of the right and left have been predicting the disappearance of the peasantry with the advance of Capitalism. Even today, some of the more prestigious authors of the left, like Eric Hobsbawn, write of the marginalization of the peasantry, deducing their conclusions from quantitative demographic data. On the neo-liberal right, President da Silva of Brazil and his Agricultural Minister have provided massive resources to the agro-business export sector, relegating ecological, human rights, small farmer and landless worker demands to the lowest of priorities. Despite this seeming consensus among academics and politicians, the peasantry refuses to disappear.

Over the past twenty years, the peasantry has reemerged, playing a central role in changing regimes, determining national agendas, leading struggles against international trade agreements (ALCA or Free Trade Area of the Americas), as well as establishing regional and local bases of power. In many countries, coalitions of landless farm workers, small family farmers and peasants have been central to national struggles against neo-liberal regimes and free trade policies. Rural movements have detonated larger struggles, activating urban classes, trade unions, civic groups, and human rights organizations.

Data from most Latin American countries over the past quarter of a century demonstrate that peasant and other rural movements have become increasingly central to any process of social change and resistance to neo-liberals. Paradoxically, this occurs at a time when the urban population has increased but the level of class organization and internal cohesion of the industrial working class has been substantially weakened. The weak link in any potential peasant-worker alliance is to be found in the decline of militancy and organization among industrial trade union leaders, not from the rural organizations.

Writers on the peasantry have emphasized their "local," "parochial," or "sectoral" interests--as opposed to national, universalistic, and class interests. A contemporary version of this perception is found in many writers, NGO leaders, and journalists who focus on "micro-interests"--local participation and projects of the peasant communities and their "identity politics."

Another school of thought emphasizes the revolutionary potentiality of the peasants, a perception more commonly found in past writing than in the present. Neither of these schools captures the complex, changing, and dialectical struggles in which peasant movements are engaged. Almost all of the major peasant movements in Latin America engage in local, national, and even international struggles and campaigns. Local struggles over immediate grievances (human rights violations) become the basis for national mobilizations and international solidarity campaigns.

Most of the movements have built local bases of political hegemony as a springboard to national power and challenges for state power; the cases of CONAIE (National Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities) in Ecuador and the Cocaleros (coca farmers) in Bolivia are illustrative. While revindication of ethnic or Indian/African-American rights and autonomy are central to many peasant movements, they are strongly linked to class interests and horizontal alliances with other exploited classes.

Both the micro and macro conceptions of peasant struggles are mechanical, one-sided, and fragmented perceptions of dialectical activity in which peasant movements combine local and national struggles, social and political demands, class and ethnic consciousness. One cannot extrapolate these patterns of peasant activity from specific times and places. For example, in a time of severe political repression or political disillusionment, peasant movements may shift their agendas to local demands, specific projects and defensive activities. In contrast, in a period of expanding membership and victorious struggles, peasant movements tend to raise national issues and challenge the authority of the central political powers.

Most peasant movements are directly engaged in one or another form of political action. With one notable exception, all of the major peasant leaders think and act to accumulate political power and, hopefully, to transform, share, or take state power.

Peasant movements vary in their attitudes toward direct action and electoral strategies. In some cases, the movements modify their strategies, depending on external circumstances and internal changes. Generally, peasant movements rely mostly on direct action strategies--occupying large estates, blocking highways, taking over municipal offices, etc. Electoral activities take various forms: creating new political organizations or supporting an existing urban "leftist" or "populist" party.

A careful analysis of the peasant movement experience over the past 25 years with different political strategies leads to the conclusion that direct action methods have been far more effective and positive than electoral strategies in securing short and medium term peasant goals, regardless of the stated formal identity of the electoral party. For example, in Ecuador, the CONAIE, through direct action, was able to overthrow two corrupt neo-liberal presidents, secure positive social reforms, and strengthen their mass support in civil society. When CONAIE turned toward electoral politics, influenced by its fraternal party, Pachacutic, and supported President Gutierrez, the results were totally negative: declines in social expenditures, greater political repression, and divisions and disillusionment in the movement.

Similar experiences occurred temporarily in Bolivia, Brazil, and elsewhere, where peasant movements relying on direct action strategies were able to expropriate large estates through occupations and road blockages and overthrow corrupt neo-liberal presidents. On the other hand when the movements relied on electoral "center-left" politicians, the results were wholly negative. In Brazil, the MST (Rural Landless Workers Movement) under the Lula regime witnessed a significant decline in land expropriations, increased pressure from and displacements by agro-export elites and high levels of repression. In Bolivia, the Cocaleros, who initially supported President Mesa, suffered coca eradication programs, a regressive petroleum law providing few resources for rural development, and a series of broken agreements.

State and movements

Recent history demonstrates that peasant movements exercise significant power in civil society. They organize, mobilize, and...