While veteran leaders and organizers continue to play a fundamental role in Latin America’s most vital social movements, the emergence of new youth leadership from within has proved both a significant force for change and a guarantee that organizations will carry on their struggles into the future. Brazil’s Landless Rural Workers’ Movement (Movimento dos Trabalhadores Rurais Sem Terra, or MST) is a prime example of this. The MST, recognized as one of the world’s largest popular movements, was created in the early 1980s by landless families beginning to reorganize in the wake of decades of repression at the hands of the military dictatorship.
With the passage of time, the face of the MST has grown markedly younger; currently, many of its militants are barely older than the organization itself. “Our movement, since its origin, has had massive participation by youth at the most varied levels of the organization, from the base to the leadership,” says José Luis Patrola, 29, member of the movement’s national coordinating body. “Young people are the principal source for replenishing social militants. On our National March, for instance, the majority of the participants were youth. This shows the potential of peasant youth and their ability to help construct the history of the MST.”
A major feature of today’s MST is the participation of landless youth helping to guide the movement through its various sectors and collectives, particularly in the areas of culture and communications. During the National March for Agrarian Reform in May 2005, young actresses and actors staged theatrical performances in the campsites as part of a strategic cultural action, and thousands of young people participated in a youth assembly replete with hip-hop, poetry and Guevarist affirmations. “It’s not enough for our youth to have access to theatre and cinema—what we want is to create radio, literature, theater. Whether in the countryside or in the city, once these opportunities exist for youth to develop themselves as human beings, we will certainly achieve a different kind of society,” says Márcia Merisse, 25, of the MST’s Youth Collective.
Brazilian youth culture is usually associated with big cities like Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo, but Merisse expresses a worldview that MST youth often emphasize: the distance that separates countryside and city is a social construction. “We’re speaking here of needs—rights—that are out of the reach not only of landless youth, but that are denied to poor youths wherever they live. It’s not just about making sure that the youth will stay in the countryside, but about claiming rights and doing away with the over-concentration of wealth—our real problem,” asserts Merisse.
Young sem-terras have been taking their message to youth across Latin America and globally. Events such as last summer’s World Youth and Students Festival, held in Caracas, and the Second Latin American Assembly of Youth, which took place in Guatemala last October, have been key spaces for strengthening alliances and building joint strategies. As their numbers and influence continue to grow, the young activists in the movement are building upon the message that the veterans have made clear for over two decades—that the struggle of the MST is not just for land, but for a new societal project, one that includes the democratization of culture and knowledge, access to healthcare and the kind of education that motivates its young militants to remain firm in their revolutionary ideals.
