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06/11/2005:

"Strategies of Struggle: The Centrality of Peasant Movements in Latin America"

by James Petras
For over a century social analysts of the right and left have been predicting the disappearance of the peasantry, with the advance of capitalism. Even today some of the more prominent authors of the Left, like Eric Hobsbawn, write of the marginalization of the peasantry deducing their conclusions from quantitative demographic data.

In terms of policy, on the neo-liberal right, President Da Silva of Brazil and his Agricultural Minister have provided vast resources to the agro-business export sector, and have relegated ecological, human rights, small farmers and landless workers demands to the lowest of priorities.

Despite this apparent consensus among academics and politicians, the peasantry refuses to disappear, or to play a marginal role. Despite the decline in the relative percentage of rural inhabitants, the peasantry over the past 20 years has re-emerged as an historical actor, playing a central role in changing regimes, determining national agendas, leading struggles against international trade agreements (ALCA or Free Trade Area of the Americas) as well as establishing regional and local bases of power. In many countries coalitions of landless farm workers, small family farmers and peasants have been central to national struggles against neo-liberal regimes and free trade policies. In some cases rural movements have detonated larger struggles, activating urban classes, trade unions, civic groups and human rights organizations.
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