Two Days with the Women of the Landless Movement

November 2 -3, Rural Women's Movement (MMC) meeting for women in the settlements Nova Canaã and Chico Mendes

Renata and I made the trek (four buses plus a mile or so on foot) from Recife to Nova Canaã this morning, arriving at the Encontro de Mulheres just after lunch. We were both tired from the trip into the heart of the sugarcane covered Northern Forest Region of Pernambuco, but excited to participate in this event with the women in these settlements who had won the right to this land for their families after a six year struggle. After lunch in the community kitchen which women use to bake sweets to take to market or meals for events such as this, we joined in the meeting in the Association building next door. Renata and I were asked to introduce ourselves and explain why we were there. I was asked to give a special introduction, explaining my research project, my impressions so far of women in the settlements, and the women’s movement in the US. Whew!

After an introduction, I discussed my research project and how I hoped to speak with some of the women there about their lives as sugarcane cutters or with husbands, fathers, mothers, and siblings that were or are sugarcane cutters, in addition to their impressions of the sugarcane industry in their region in general. I said that I’d been impressed so far by all of the women I’d met in this and other settlements. Impressed by the fact that they’d lived through all those years of lona preta, that they’d struggled and fought for their cause, and that they now worked hard raising their families and working on their farms. It’s true. I find their stories impressive and inspiring. I cannot imagine how I would hold up under such hardship. Are these women so strong because they have no better option than to live in camps and face violence, threats, hunger, and possible eviction, torture, and arrest? Did they join the landless movement because they thought it a better option than living in squalor in the favela and selling their labor in the city? Or are they simply committed to the cause? I know it would take several years of research to really understand their motivations, but I hope to at least better understand them before I leave.

I went on to talk about the situation of women in the US. I assured them that many of the issues facing women in rural Brazil are not so different from those facing women in my country and around the world. I should have thought to prepare something before going to this meeting, but on the spot I discussed what came to my head. I said that I thought two of the biggest issues that the US women’s movement is confronting are violence against women and salary disparity. I explained these issues, and hopefully did them justice in Portuguese. I was somewhat embarrassed about discussing salary disparity in front of these women, realizing that it is a very urban and middle to upper class issue, mostly relating to white collar workers. Maybe that’s not entirely true though. I don’t really know enough about it. At this point in the meeting I was feeling ashamed for not knowing more about, much less not even being involved in, the women’s movement in my own country. Sure, it’s something that I have always supported, talked about, read about, and sent generic emails to my senators and representatives about. But I cannot say that I have ever sat in on a meeting for a women’s movement or marched with one. Sitting here with these women who face violence and discrimination every day, who are potentially putting themselves at risk of being resented, insulted, or physically hurt by their husbands simply for being there, I felt ashamed.

Some of the women, but mostly the meeting organizer, asked questions about the organization of the US women’s movement. I admitted to not knowing much. I said that I thought that the women’s movement had historically been more urban than rural, which I believe to be true, and which I believe to be the case for most countries. When they described police repression against protests by women’s groups, I said that I thought similar things, albeit less extreme, happened in my country. I tried to explain the Patriot Act and the turning political tide after 9/11, which had put radical groups and social movements, including some radical women’s groups, onto terrorist lists. Of course I found this quite difficult to explain in Portuguese, considering I don’t even fully understand it or know how to explain it well in English, but I think they got the idea. I at least succeeded in having them realize that while repression of the movement in Brazil is excessive and unjust, women around the world- yes, even in the United States, which they believe to be a just country simply because it is wealthy and powerful- face varying levels of institutional violence that perpetuates the structural violence holding us in an inferior position to the other half of the human race.


Other questions for me included inquiries about the options facing an American woman who is beaten by her husband, and if laws regarding violence against women in my country are effectively enforced. I answered these as best I could, and all of the women present listened attentively. I think many were surprised and maybe comforted (not sure if that’s the right word here…) to find out that women in my country also face violence, discrimination, and repression. That discussion established something of a bond between us, and even though my experience as a woman is so different from theirs, they at least knew that I had some inkling of an understanding of what they face in their daily lives.

Following this long introduction, the meeting continued on and we broke out into small groups to discuss different types of violence against women. In my group of about seven women we were assigned to discuss sexual violence and financial/economic violence (such as men stealing or demanding that their wives turn over any money they make to them, fathers not paying child support, etc.). It took a solid five minutes at least for anyone to start talking about examples of these types of violence in theirs of other rural communities. Once the ball got rolling, however, the stories flowed. Most of the women talked in terms of situations that their friends or distant family members had been in. Without going into detail, I will let it be known that marital rape and incest appear to be rather common, as well as all types of economic and financial abuse, particularly in the form of absent fathers failing to support their children. Back in the large group we all shared some of the stories and experiences related to the various types of violence. The idea behind this exercise was not just to have everyone talk about the difficult reality of women, but to show them that the abuses that they face are actually forms of violence, be it psychological, institutional, sexual, economic, or physical.

The meeting ended with dancing and singing while we held hands in a circle. Women and teenagers with their small children and babies together sang regional songs about the harvest, in addition to more militant songs of the landless movement praising the struggle and its martyrs. Hot and sticky from hours spent in wooden chairs in a small stuffy building, Renata and I joined three other girls on a walk to a spring. There we bathed under a flow of water that had been directed into a pipe so that it spilled down from about 10 feet up on a rock face. We bathed, laughed, played. The local girls found it hilarious that I, the internacional, had known what a bica (tap or spring) was while my urban Brazilian counterpart, Renata, had had no idea. That evening, under the light of a full moon, happy to have exchanged the aggravating racket of Recife’s streets for the chirps of crickets, I chatted with the girls about other local phenomenon such as tapioca, bola de rolo, and Pitú, in addition to a number of intimate female topics. Finding myself able to really contribute to the conversation, and even inspire laughter not just because of my lack of understanding or mispronunciation, I began to feel more comfortable in Portuguese than I had so far in my nearly five weeks in Brazil. Part of being comfortable in a language is being comfortable enough in the situation and with the people you are opening up to, so that the words flow without self-consciousness holding them back. Of course, beer can make this happen too.

Day two of the Encontro de Mulheres opened with skits representing the various forms of violence that we had discussed the day before. A skit involving a drunk father hitting and insulting his wife and daughter was so well acted out and dramatized that I found myself laughing out loud with the rest of the group while simultaneously fighting to hold back tears. The words the father used, the facial expressions, the body language, the submission, were all obviously very familiar to the actors and audience. I couldn’t help but think that they were just too good at that scene.

The skits were followed by a review of the Maria da Penha law, which criminalized violence against women and classified it as a human rights abuse in Brazil in 2002. We learned together the types of punishment that men theoretically receive for committing violence against women, and ways in which to report violence and navigate the legal system. Spreading this knowledge is of course a necessary component of educating and empowering women, but the stories they told later of women who had been repeatedly abused and had reported these abuses to police and lawyers with no repercussions, made the effort seem somewhat futile. Currently, this law exists on paper, but women die at the hands of their husbands every day in this country, like most places (every place?) in the world. Brazil’s fluffy discourse of human rights and social inclusion effectively excludes these women who, by fighting for the de-concentration of land under the Agrarian Reform, are seemingly doing more to work towards the democratization of their country than most others.

This final day ended with a long and lively discussion of recourses for women facing violence in isolated communities, and ways in which we as individual women, as an organized group of women, and as a society, can confront violence against women. We talked about things like the need to educate and concentizar men about women’s rights, and of course to continue educating women and girls. We discussed the need to connect with other women’s groups regionally, nationally, and even internationally to share resources and build strength. After a final round of singing while holding hands, we all went to lunch where we feasted on locally grown cassava and fruits in addition to rice, beans, and vegetables. I was stuffed before lunch was even served though, considering we had already had two snacks for the day and I had alone eaten the equivalent of half a pineapple, half a papaya, and at least three bananas. We feasted together, we hugged, and I was so happy to have been a part of this experience. Of course I was an outsider throughout the entire two days, but as a foreign woman amongst that group of women who were farmers, mothers, and warriors, I felt I could be more accepted and treated as one of them than among a group of men from the same community.

Two families invited me to return and spend a few days or more with them on the next visit. I plan to go back to Nova Canaã on Saturday and stay four to five days to continue getting to know that community, their twelve year struggle to win the right to their land and then build what they have there now, and to speak with them about their experiences cutting sugarcane, trying to make a living off of sugarcane, being kicked off of their land previously by the plantation owners, and struggling against the industry and its proponents to win the right to land upon which to grow food and live in the middle of that vast sugarcane desert.

Websites of interest (in Portuguese):

The Landless Worker's Movement (MST): http://www.mst.org.br/

The Rural Women's Movment (MMC): http://www.mmcbrasil.com.br/