The Voices and the Visual History of Landlessness: The Music, Poetry and the Photographic Archive of the MST (Movement of the Landless Agraraian Workers) in Brazil

Organized and edited by Else R. P. Vieira. Translated by Bernard McGuirk

The bilingual anthology of the literature and lyrics produced by the members of the MST (Movement of the Landless Agraraian Workers in Brazil), founded in 1984, considered by many Latin America's greatest and better organized social movement today, congregating many of the estimated 4 million landless families throughout the country, is compiled by Else R P Vieira (The Federal University of Minas Gerais/Brazil and the University of Nottingham) and translated by Bernard McGuirk (Professor of Romance Languages and Literatures, the University of Nottingham). The project is supported by the Postgraduate School of Critical Theory and Cultural Studies of the University of Nottingham. Agreements have been made for a site including the anthology and the supplementary material (see below) to be organized by Professor George P. Landow (Brown/National University of Singapore) as part of the Postcolonial Website. It is envisaged for the anthology to be also published in book form by a publisher in England with an outlet in the USA.

The anthology of music and poetry will further include:

• supporting statements by international intellectuals who ppledge their solidarity with the Movement or with the misfortune of the dispossessed
• a glossary of culture-specific terms and events
• brief theoretical studies on the subject
• CDs produced by the MST (sound)
• An archive of the visual history of the MST
• Notes on contributors

A detailed breakdown of the contents of the anthology is attached, but attention is drawn, for example, to the Movement's Anthem in one of the CDs, sung by the choir of the University of São Paulo, and the fact that the emerging artists and organic intellectuals of the Movement donated the copyrights of their production to the proposed Project.

The importance of the anthology derives from the unpublished material being the work of MST's own intellectuals and in the Movement's speaking for itself. Publicizing its work in English will guarantee its members a world-wide audience. This publication will foment further similar collections and related projects on the international stage. The preparatory work for the project revealed that the literature of the Movement is largely unpublished in Brazil. It is hoped that the website and volume will be launched in September, in time for the photographic exhibition of Sebastião Salgado's Terra and coincideing with the international colloquium Landless Voices, to be held at the University of Nottingham.

Contents

Brief supporting statements by international intellectuals

• Noam Chomsky (political dissident, Professor of Linguistics the MIT)
• Jacques Derrida (philosopher, director of studies at the �cole des hautes �tudes en sciences sociales)
• Saramago (Portuguese writer, awarded the Nobel Prize)
• Eric Hobsbawm (historian)
• Haroldo de Campos (Brazilian writer)
• Antonio Candido (Brazilian literary critic, writer of Brazilian literary history)
• Chico Buraque de Holanda (composer associated with Brazilian Popular Music, singer, playwright)
• Oscar Niemeyer (Brazilian archictect, designer of Bras�lia)
• Jo�o Pedro St�dile (agrarian economist, founding ideologue of the MST)
• Paulo Freire (Brazilian educator, author of The Pedagogy of the Oppressed, 1921-1997)
• Darcy Ribeiro (antrop�logo brasileiro, 1923-1997)

Glossary of culture-specific terms and events

Brief introductory studies

• Bernardo Mançano Fernandes: The Gensis of the MST
• Pl�nio Arruda Sampaio: The culture of the MST: the m�stica as a prelude to the journeys of appropriation, political marches and meetings and its genealogy in Liberation Theology/ Pastoral of the Land
• Sàvio Bones: The constitution of the MST organic intellectuals
• Else R. P. Vieira: The emergence of the literature and music and its role in the MST culture

CDs produced by the MST (sound)

• Arte em Movimento
• Uma prosa sobre n�s
• Plantando Cirandas
• Can��es que abra�am os sonhos

The visual history of the MST

Illustrations accompanying the main moments in the history of MST, which was formed in 1984, and its main themes (see below), comprising:

• Archive of 39 photos donated to the Project by geographer Bernardo Mançano Fernandes
• Complementation of the visual history with the archives of the MST itself made available to the Project

Selected poetry and lyrics of the MST, according to the following topics

• The role of art and of the mission of the cantador (poet/singer) in the MST
• Art builds the historical archives of resistance and the conquest of space
• Art builds the historical archives of massacres of the excluded

• The struggle against expropriation
• The march
• The appropriation of improductive latifundia
• The settlement
• The houses of black canvas
• The pedagogic project
• The cooperatives
• Caressing the earth
• The cio [cycle of fertility] of the land

• Rehabilitation of country culture
• Writings in defence of the dispossessed native populations
• The project for the landless woman
• Music and poetry of the pedagogic project for landless children
• Life projects: The writings of the Sem Terrinha (MST children) on the country they envisage

Last modified: 14 May 2000