Introduction

When you get to the city of Ribeirao Preto there is a large billboard along the highway that reads: ‘Welcome to Ribeirao Preto, Brazilian capital of agribusiness’. Further ahead, a contrasting sign reads: ‘Welcome to the Mario Lago Land Reform Settlement. “We don't require a lot. We only need one another” – Carlito Maia’. The contrast in the scenery is also striking: thousands of kilometres of sugar cane contrast sharply with the diverse production that is visible in the Mario Lago Settlement. This chapter explores an example of community development achieved by a group of families who are part of the Landless Workers Movement and who occupied land in Ribeirao Preto, a region in which almost all of the arable land is in the hands of the sugar cane industry.

Historical context

After the 1964 military coup, the Brazilian military–civilian regime brought together two basic strategies for the countryside: one economic, the other military. The economic strategy was to industrialise the entire country and to modernise agriculture, meeting any manifestation of popular dissatisfaction with brute force. In this way, the organised peasantry – such as the Ligas Camponesas, or Peasant Leagues, which flourished during the 1950s – were brutally repressed and extinguished by the military (Welch, 2009). During the 1970s, the modernisation of agriculture was based mostly on Green Revolution practices and the expansion of the agricultural frontier, with a policy of providing favourable credits for capital; this created the conditions for the largescale agroindustrial production of commodities destined for foreign markets. The end result was a rural exodus (Chase, 1999) and an intense cycle of proletarianisation in the countryside.

In the southern region of Brazil, the modernisation of agriculture and the expansion of monocultures such as soy devastated the smallscale production of the majority of farming families, particularly those of European immigrants and their descendants, who were subjected to the same extremely violent methods of expulsion as those in the north. In the southeast – for example, in the state of Sao Paulo – family-based production was slowly destroyed by the invasion of monoculture, principally sugar cane.