Collective Action and Political Change: Public and Semipublic Strategies of Brazilian Rural Movements (1990s–2017)

• Date: 01 September 2020
• Published date: 01 September 2020
• DOI: 10.1177/0094582X20933972
• Author: Priscila Delgado de Carvalho
• Subject Matter: Articles

https://doi.org/10.1177/0094582X20933972

LATIN AMERICAN PERSPECTIVES, Issue 234, Vol. 47 No. 5, September 2020, 113–130

DOI: 10.1177/0094582X20933972

© 2020 Latin American Perspectives

113

Collective Action and Political Change

Public and Semipublic Strategies of Brazilian

Rural Movements (1990s–2017)

by

Priscila Delgado de Carvalho

A study of the Brazilian Movimento dos Pequenos Agricultores during recent moments

of regime change suggests two main strategies for understanding the impacts of political

change on social movement action: assessing the degree of political proximity between

activists and the government and the presence or absence of institutional venues for inter-

action and looking beyond the public expressions of contention to consider semipublic

action. When there is political proximity the public activities of movements tend to be less

contentious, and when there are institutional venues for interaction protests will be rou-

tinized rather than disruptive. When proximity is lacking activists are likely to perform

disruptive protests and to give priority to disputing meanings within society and within

their own constituencies.

Um estudo do Movimento dos Pequenos Agricultores do Brasil durante momentos

recentes de mudança de regime sugere duas estratégias principais para entender os impac-

tos das mudanças políticas na ação do movimento social: avaliar o grau de proximidade

política entre ativistas e o governo e a presença ou ausência de espaços institucionais para

interação e olhar além das expressões públicas de discórdia para considerar a ação semi-

pública. Quando há proximidade política, as atividades públicas dos movimentos tendem a

ser menos contenciosas e, quando existem canais institucionais para interação, tende-se a

rotinas de protestos pouco disruptivos. Quando falta proximidade, é provável que os ativ-

istas dêem prioridade a protestos disruptivos e a disputas de significados na sociedade e

dentro de seus próprios quadros.

Keywords: Social movements, Regime change, Semipublic action, Repertoires of contention

In 2016 Brazil experienced the second impeachment of its New Republic

period. The controversial process was called a parliamentary coup d’état

(Santos, 2017), a judicial-legislative assault (Miguel and Biroli, 2017), and an

event that could signal the end of the longest democratic period in Brazilian

history (Avritzer, 2018). Disagreeing with the impeachment, left-wing social

movement organizations in Brazil shifted to opposition of the new govern-

ment, creating new coalitions and organizing national demonstrations. The

Priscila Delgado de Carvalho is a postdoctoral researcher at the INCT Instituto da Democracia in

Belo Horizonte, Minas Gerais, Brazil. This work has received support from CAPES and FAPEMIG.

She thanks Leonardo Avritzer, Carla Almeida, Sonia Alvarez, colleagues at the University of

Massachusetts–Amherst, and the LAP reviewers for insightful comments and Venkat Ramanujam

for manuscript reading.

933972LAPXXX10.1177/0094582X20933972LATIN AMERICAN PERSPECTIVESCarvalho / STRATEGIES OF BRAZILIAN RURAL MOVEMENTS

research-article2020

114 LATIN AMERICAN PERSPECTIVES

political turmoil reshaped the patterns of state-society interaction established

during the government of the Partido dos Trabalhadores (Workers’ Party—PT)

and affected the strategies and political platforms of previously established

social movement organizations. Departing from Tilly’s (1995) repertoires of

contention, this article relates regime change to the transformation of activism

but argues that to understand these phenomena it is necessary to look not only

at changes in public and contentious actions but also at changes in semipublic

activities. By doing so, it shifts focus from the regime to activism, suggesting

that in moments of political change much of the relevant action occurs within

the movement’s constituency and is related to reconfiguring collective analysis

and strategies.

This argument is empirically based on the trajectory of one Brazilian rural

social movement organization, the Movimento dos Pequenos Agricultores

(Small Farmers’ Movement—MPA). Between 1996 and 2017 the MPA faced two

moments of regime change: in 2003, when the PT was elected to national gov-

ernment, and in 2016, after the impeachment of Dilma Rousseff. The repertoires

deployed during Michel Temer’s term in some ways represent a throwback to

the activism of the 1990s but also contain new elements. New activities headed

by women and youth show a strong capacity for adaptation but do not neces-

sarily translate into public contentious action. Recent mobilization efforts stress

internal work and local activities, and therefore the changes they engender are

better grasped by analytical lenses attentive simultaneously to public and

semipublic action.

The MPA is a rural social movement of small landowners created in the mid-

1990s. It is a close ally of the best-known Brazilian social movement organiza-

tion, the Movimento dos Trabalhadores Rurais Sem Terra (Landless Workers’

Movement—MST) (Carter, 2010). The MST has redefined patterns of activism

and changed the language of interaction between the rural poor and the state

in Brazil (Sigaud, 2000; Sigaud, Ernandez, and Rosa, 2010) with effects on both

rural and urban collective action (Rosa, 2010). The MPA was created under the

influence of the MST but soon developed its own strategies and political plat-

form (Carvalho, 2020; Niemeyer, 2014). By focusing on the MPA I remain atten-

tive to the relevance of rural activism in Brazil but intend to contribute to

diversifying the narratives about rural social movements in the country. The

MPA is a representative case, a proxy for understanding general patterns of

state-society interaction in the country (Gerring, 2007: 91).

POLITICAL CHANGE AND STATE-SOCIETY RELATIONS

IN LATIN AMERICA

The impact of political change on collective action has been a pressing issue

ever since the mid-twentieth-century social movement theories situated social

mobilizations in ordinary politics (Cohen, 1985; McCarthy and Zald, 1977;

Melucci, 1996). Two of the main analytical categories developed by political

process theory deal with transformations at some point: political opportunity

structures, focusing on how changes in the political environment create incen-

tives or constraints to ordinary people’s contentious politics (Tarrow, 1994),