Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-v9fdk Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-05T11:32:00.695Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Sixteen - The Landless Rural Workers’ Movement in Brazil and Its Struggles for Access to Law and Justice

from Part Five - Real Legal Utopias: Interrupting the Law

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 August 2023

Boaventura de Sousa Santos
Affiliation:
University of Wisconsin, Madison
Get access

Summary

This chapter analyses the main legal and political strategies used by the Landless Rural Workers’ Movement (MST) in its struggle for law and justice in Brazil. It explains why these legal and political strategies are pursued jointly, and the extent to which they may contribute towards making the law and legal system more sensitive to the claims and social struggles of these workers, particularly those related to the issue of land. It shows that access to law and justice presupposes a broad political process of social transformation. This includes the creation of more substantial forms of social justice and a developing awareness that the law contains many internal contradictions that may eventually be used in the interests of the socially oppressed classes. Social movements fighting for land reform have only become aware of this fact in recent decades but the knowledge has enabled them to supplement their political strategies (such as mass land occupations) with innovative judicial and legal strategies. The resulting interconnection between legal and political initiatives has momentarily strengthened the movement’s objectives, largely due to the intervention of the people’s lawyers, who have liaised between the state legal system and the social movement. In the course of this process, the hegemonic law currently in force has been put to the test.

Type
Chapter
Information
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2023

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×