Good afternoon, dear leaders and colleagues from the Global South. I'm humbled and grateful for the opportunity to partake in this seminar, alongside all of you. I extend my heartfelt appreciation to the sponsors and organizers of this seminar. The discussions we have had yesterday and today have been profoundly meaningful and will remain with us.
We are living through a time of significant global turbulence. Yet, it is often within such periods of uncertainty that great historical transformations emerge. This gathering has provided an invaluable opportunity for us to share experiences, knowledge, and achievements, and deepen our understanding of one another.
The theme of my speech is "Media Hegemony and Popular Movements in Ideological Struggle in Latin America". I will explore this topic through three key dimensions: popular movements, media hegemony, and ideological struggle. First, despite what was discussed in yesterday's meeting and what appears on today's agenda, I must reaffirm a fundamental premise: the countries of the Global South, across Asia, Africa, and Latin America, are confronting the persistent challenge of Western hegemony.
There are two central reasons why Latin America, in particular, is engaged in this battle against Western hegemony. On one hand, the people of Latin America, like many across the world, continue to suffer under the dominance of bourgeois and imperialist Western hegemony. On the other hand, we share a common goal to build a world founded on equality, international solidarity, and the sovereignty of peoples, a world free from all forms of exploitation. As President Xi Jinping has said, we must work together to build a community with a shared future for humanity; that is our common dream. The struggles of the working class have already borne visible fruit, and this dream is gradually taking root.
Returning to the core issue of our meeting, I would like to begin by discussing popular movements, particularly the rural workers' organization to which I belong. I understand that for those outside Latin America, it may be challenging to fully grasp the reality of rural workers' organization. Therefore, I look forward to sharing more about who we are, what we do, and what we aspire to achieve, so that you can understand us better. In 2024, this farmers' organization will celebrate its 40th anniversary. Never in the 520 years since Brazil was colonized by Europeans has a farmers' organization endured for so long. Historically, each time farmers attempted to unite, their efforts were often as fleeting as a spark quickly extinguished.
Our organization strives to achieve three complementary goals: First and foremost, to secure land for landless farmers. Second, to advance land reform; that is, to transform the ownership structure of land in Brazil. It is essential to recognize that Brazil has never undergone genuine land reform in its history. The ruling class, which had several opportunities to launch land reform in terms of capitalist productivity, continued to export agricultural products throughout the first four centuries of our history. This model is defined by four features: the extreme concentration of wealth in the hands of large landowners, monoculture production, dependence on slavery labor, and integration into international market trade. In other words, 430 of Brazil's 520 years of history have been dominated by this economic model reminiscent of 18th and 19th century Europe. The ruling class had never advocated the democratization of land ownership for the purpose of self-sufficiency for farmers. It is for this reason that land reform has become the central banner under which our farmers and the lower classes unite in struggle.
Our third objective is to pursue profound structural change: to challenge bourgeois society and the capitalist mode of production, and to advance gradually toward socialism. As a photograph shown earlier writes: "A brave new world may exist, so long as we are convinced it is a socialist world." That is the future our organization is committed to building.
To this end, we are guided by Lenin's teaching that the fundamental task of a revolutionary organization is to elevate the basic level of social consciousness and to continually strengthen organizational ties at this level. Without understanding the dual objectives of the land reform, even politically conscious individuals, namely those capable of critiquing their own conditions and improving working-class or popular forms of organization, may find it difficult to fully comprehend the nature of our country's land reform.
The landless farmers movement represents a crucial dimension of the land reform. Its complexity lies in the fact that once farmers gain access to uncultivated land, they are able to transform it into productive farmland. When families secure land ownership, they can organize themselves into settlements, serving as the incubators of a new society. Therefore, farmers obtaining land is not the conclusion of the land reform. Through our approach to land reform, we are also exploring a social model better than capitalism.
One of the challenges we confront is agribusiness. It is not part of a national development initiative, but was imposed by international financial capital on countries across the Global South. These nations are forced to integrate into global markets as primary commodity exporters. Agribusiness emerged in the late 1980s and early 1990s to meet the needs of international capital rather than the interests of the Brazilian people.
The second enemy of the land reform is the ruling class itself. As previously mentioned, land reform in our country is not what the ruling class wants. For them, controlling land is not just for economic gain but, more importantly, to achieve political, social and cultural control of the rural population. Thus landowners monopolizes access to unused land as a means of dominating the rural population.
The third enemy is media hegemony. In an interview with journalist Isabella, she asked whether the current Lula government has legitimized the land reform. She referred to our movement as contentious. I would like to address both points.
Firstly, regarding the hegemonic role of the media in land reform. The issue of legitimacy is fundamental. Our struggle is legal, and based on laws. The 1988 Federal Constitution mandated that all wasteland be expropriated and included in the land reform program. There are about 150 million hectares of wasteland in the country. In accordance with the Constitution, the government should expropriate these areas and allocate them to landless farmer families. However, the reality is different. Whether the government identifies as left-wing or progressive, the state continues to represent bourgeois interests, and its structures obstruct the expropriation.
The second factor which legitimizes the struggle is that the Social Democratic government of 1996 (under the leadership of Fernando Cardoso) made April 17 National Land Reform Fight Day (rather than Land Reform Day) after the farmers’ massacre. We fight under a law signed by Cardoso. Yet, the media seeks to criminalize the fight using its hegemony.
This leads to the second part of Isabella’s question: Is our struggle truly so contentious in society? My answer is yes. In a society divided by class where the ruling class holds the narrative hegemony, the struggles of the lower classes are always contentious. We must not deceive ourselves into believing that the ruling class would treat these struggles with neutrality or fairness. As the media have shown, they have been criminalizing popular movements.
I would also like to talk about the role of the media in maintaining hegemony. In a bourgeois society, the struggles between the ruling class and the majority, for access to knowledge and information (a tool to consolidate the rule over the majority), can never be fair and equal.
A third feature of hegemonic media is that they eventually disseminate imperialist interests on the soil among the masses and act as the imperialist spokesmen on the national stage. So when it comes to popular movements, we are confronting media hegemony that undermines our efforts to build a new society. In the face of such a powerful enemy, it requires more than organizing landless workers to achieve our goal – the struggle for land, for land reform, and for socialism. To cultivate an organized social base, we need concrete and practical tools of resistance. That is why as the land reform struggle develops, we feel the need to establish a national school for Marxist political education to lay the foundation for a new society. We considered it necessary to unite with our comrades in creating a social research institute, establishing the Brasil de Fato (our own media outlet), setting up a publishing house (to give farmers access to books), and founding a cultural center (to engage the public in dialogs about our values and proposals).
This is not merely a struggle for land reform, it’s a political struggle for working class dominance, a political consensus around the working class, and a shared vision for the future.
I would like to conclude my remarks by quoting the words from former President José Mujica of Uruguay: "We must advance the ideological struggle to unite the will of the people, democracy and revolution, confront the crisis that faces us, and realize the emancipation of all humanity."
Thank you!
(Transcribed from recording and edited.)