Abstract
This chapter analyses the civil resistance campaign of the Roofless Workers’ Movement (MTST) for the right to housing in the periphery of large cities of Brazil. It explains how this social movement of workers used direct action, including land occupations and political actions, to achieve its objectives. Irrespective of the political parties in power, the movement mobilized against the state and private companies to denounce the violation of the right to decent housing, from which many Brazilians who live in the suburbs of cities have been deprived, and press for an effective urban reform. Without knowing much about civil resistance, its members adopted many of its principles in their nonviolent struggle for the recognition of the constitutional right to housing.
What is the use of a house if it does not have a tolerable planet to sit on?
Henry David Thoreau
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- 1.
The PMCMV programme contracted 4.2 million housing units until the beginning of 2016, out of which 2.7 million were actually delivered. During the seven years of implementation since 2009, the programme reportedly invested R$300 thousand billion. According to Carolina Freitas, journalist and social researcher, “it is a number that, proportionally in time, makes it the largest housing programme in the history of the Brazilian government” (Freitas 2017: 2).
- 2.
In order to better understand the inner workings of the social base of those who participate in the occupations, Carolina Freitas points out some peculiarities of the MTST militancy. Accordingly, a study of occupation in the periphery of São Paulo revealed that the occupiers mainly consisted of women (54%), black men and women (61%), young people (26% of young people up to 14 years old and 15% of young people from 15 to 24 years old). Many attended school until the age of 14. Many lived in rented buildings (69.3%), others on plots of land in leased houses (21.5%) and some in favelas. Still others acquired their own house, but were unable to pay the loans. It is important to highlight that 73.1% are economically active in some occupation. The rate of wage earners was 60.4%, which means that more people in these settlements had temporary work or were self-employed (Freitas 2017).
- 3.
See: “Taque à democracia. Impeachment de Dilma é golpe de Estado, decide Tribunal Internacional”, retrieved from: http://www.redebrasilatual.com.br/politica/2016/07/impeachment-de-dilma-e-golpe-de-estado-decide-tribunal-internacional-2792.html (accessed February 20, 2018).
- 4.
The celebration of the 20 years of the MTST took place from 8 to 10 December 2017 in São Paulo, where the initiative to join the “Urban Resistance Front, Territories for a dignified life and good living” emerged. See: http://www.lohaine.org/20-anos-del-mtst-un (accessed February 5, 2018).
- 5.
See MTST website: http://www.mtst.org/quem-somos/as-linhas-politicas-do-mtst/ (accessed February 28, 2018).
- 6.
“Nonviolent direct action” and “civil resistance” are near-synonyms (Roberts 2009: 3).
- 7.
This is in tune with Nelson Mandela’s statement during a visit to the United States in 1990, according to which “nonviolence is a good policy when conditions permit”, cited in Arlene Tickner “Mandela and (non)violence”. El Espectador, Opinion Section, December 10, 2013, retrieved from: http://www.elespectador.com/opinion/mandela-y-la-no-violencia-columna-463422.
- 8.
Although with a slight improvement as compared to measurements taken before PT-led administrations, in 2014, Brazil scored a total of 51.1 out of 100 in the GINI index of inequality. See World Bank’s data at: http://datos.bancomundial.org/indicador/SI.POV.GINI?locations=BR (accessed March 10, 2018).
- 9.
Paragraph 22, Chapter 1 of the 1988 Political Constitution of the Federative Republic of Brazil states: “the right to property is guaranteed; XXIII private property will serve its social function; XXIV the law shall establish the procedure for expropriation for reasons of necessity or public utility, or for social interest, through just and prior compensation in money, except in the cases provided for in this Constitution”; Article 7 of Chapter II states: “These are the rights of urban and rural workers, as well as others that tend to improve their social status”, and paragraph 19 states that they “establish guidelines for urban development, including housing, basic sanitation and urban transport”. This is complemented in Article 23 of Chapter II, which assumes that “It is a common competence of the Union, the States, the Federal District and the Municipalities […] [to] promote housing construction programs and the improvement of habitability and basic sanitation conditions”. Finally, Article 184 of Chapter III states that “The Union has the power to expropriate, for social interest and for purposes of agrarian reform, the rural property that is not fulfilling its social function, through prior and fair compensation in agrarian debt securities, with a preservation clause of the real value, redeemable in a term of up to twenty years, starting from the second year of its issuance, and which use will be defined in the law.” Article 191 further provides that “He who, despite not being the owner of a rural or urban property, holds as his own, for a period of five consecutive years and without opposition, a plot of land in rural area not exceeding 50 hectares that he has brought into production with his work or that of his family, and lives in it, shall acquire the property.” [emphasis added].
- 10.
See MTST website at: http://www.mtst.org/quem-somos/a-organizacao-do-mtst/ (accessed February 20, 2018).
- 11.
In an environment of high inflation, product of the political and economic crisis, on 1 January 2017 Law No. 13.152/2015 established that the minimum salary would be R$937.00, equivalent to US$299 at the time.
- 12.
In the alternative press in Brazil, it is common to find press releases of human rights organizations expressing solidarity with members of the MTST who have been violently repressed.
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Interviews
Goulart, Débora, interviewed by Mario Ramírez-Orozco, 22 November 2016.
Pazello, Ricardo Prestes, interviewed by Mario Ramírez-Orozco, 30 November 2016.
Texeira, Luiz Belmiro, interviewed by Mario Ramírez-Orozco, 23 November 2016.
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Ramírez-Orozco, M. (2019). Nonviolent Resistance in the Struggle for Housing in Urban Areas of Brazil: The Direct Action of the Roofless Workers’ Movement. In: Mouly, C., Hernández Delgado, E. (eds) Civil Resistance and Violent Conflict in Latin America. Studies of the Americas. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-05033-7_8
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