The MST bourgeoisie

At the Serra Gaucha, about 1 hour north of Porto Alegre lays the assentamento of Capela. When we arrived here, we could hardly believe our eyes. Nice fresh-painted houses, shiny cars and natural blond children playing with new bikes. Hard to describe our shock when they brought us to the special guesthouse for MST sympathizers that visit the assentamento. Our previous experience from the poor living conditions of other assentamentos brought thoughts about strange businesses going on here, like money laundering, drug trafficking, etc. However, after spending a week here things are much more clear. But lets take the story from the beginning.


Porto Alegre (P.A.) has a long history of progressive politics. In the late 80´s when the Labor Party came to power, they set up a governannce system, where citizen committees set priorities and decide a budget that the city council is unofficially bound to respect. In 2001, participants of the 1st World Social Forum discovered that Porto Alegre was itself a model of democratic political organization (many Latin American cities are now trying to copy this system). Just a short visit to P.A. gives a clear view how much this city differs from the rest of Brazil: numerous bookstores, public political acts, cultural events etc.

These conditions favoured the development of various movements and of course of the movement of the Landless people of Brazil. This is where MST became popular and starting spreading throughout the country. People went out in the streets, living in temporary tents and pressing the government to give them land. This way, the first assentamentos were created.


About 12 years ago, 100 families earned a land at the position where the assentamento Capela is laying now. People starting cultivating individually and eating what land was generously giving them. People were happy to have basic alimentation and a house to live, however 30 families wanted to improve their living conditions and they decided to join forces. They created COOPAN, a cooperative that produces rice, black beans (feijoao), milk (from cows) and pork meat. Within COOPAN, men and women work collectively the land and share the products, as well as the income from selling them to city markets.

Hoewever, business went well, so they started cultivating in bigger quantities, producing more, selling more, earning more! Thats what explains the quality of life they have right now.

Bur lets see some more dimensions of this assentamento:

Environment:
Cultivation is stricktly organic, any use of fertilizers is forbidden, products are transported with own trucks and sold from the store of MST at the central market of P.A. All activities (use of energy, water and garbage disposal etc) are with respect to the environment and preservation of biodiversity.



Internal organization:
All decisions are taken collectively by the families, problems are raised at the weekly assemblies and resolved immediately. All people are working either with the land or the animals (2 people are doing office work) and they swift roles if they wish. Everybody works very hard from early morning to late night and they all receive the same salary no matter what kind of work they are doing. Members of the cooperative usually have free and unlimited access to all products (or buy at price of cost). Finally, the earnings that stay within the cooperative are used for improvement of common spaces, buying equipment etc.

Education:
Here, more than anywhere else we have visited, education is one of the highest priorities. The school of Nova Sociedade is one of the best in the wider region. All children of the Capela families attend school and students are coming even from other assentamentos or from non-MST regions. There are also night courses for alphabetization of adults. We spent extensive time at school, following classes and talking with students and professors. Financial and infrastructure problems do exist but people are giving daily fights and the results are obvious. Classrooms are clean and better preserved than many Greek schools, 2 warm lunches are provided every day and at the school library we found books we didnt find in many libraries in Brazil. But nothing is conquered without a fight. Professors were unpaid for more than a year and transport doesnt reach the school, so on 07.08 parents and students from MST started walking from various regions and after hours arrived at the General Secretariat of Education at Porto Alegre, where they entered the building, set a tent and started giving a symbolic school class. Newspapers wrote about vandalism and TV condemned the guerrilla movement of MST.


Socialization:
The assentamento of Capela is nothing but isolated from the society. Every second Sunday a social event is taking place at the football course at the heart of the assentamento. Be it a football game, an animal market or a cultural event, people from the community are always invited to visit the assentamento together with their families, integrate with MST people, try local products and eat grilled meat prepared at the gigantic barbeque especially built for these events.

Ideology:
The people of the assentamento never forget their roots and their fight to earn this land and they constantly support the movement of MST in one way or another. Since they have more resources, they coordinate the education system within the schools of the acampamentos in the whole state, they coordinate public acts, they raise awareness on current issues and they support the movement in moral and material ways.

Of course nothing comes without a cost. When we arrived here we observed that most people had a kind of invalidity (missing fingers, toes, hands, legs etc). During work, we also observed that they were little cautious with using dangerous tools (saws, knives etc.). So it was not a surprise when we actually witnessed a labor accident (full of blood)!!!

Men and women in assentamento Capela work hard, from sunrise to sunset, many times under difficult weather conditions. And they are not ashamed to have a big house, a new car, a TV or a microwave oven. On the contrary, they are proud of their ownings that have earned working hard. They are also proud to have earned their fight against land-owners, proud to work the land and eat its products and above all proud that they can provide their children a decent living and a promising future.