MST broke new ground by tackling land reform itself, by "breaking...dependent relations with parties, governments, and other institutions,"[11] and framing the issue in purely political terms, rather than social, ethical, or religious ones.

[13] Continuing the policy favored economies of scale, given the limited number of landowners, but simultaneously made it difficult for small planters and peasants to obtain the land needed to practice subsistence agriculture and small-scale farming.

Policy makers and scholars across the political spectrum believed that it was an objective economic necessity to permit the end of Brazilian rural society through mechanized agrobusiness and forced urbanization.

[clarification needed] Despite the efforts of these groups, land ownership continued to concentrate, and Brazil to this day has had a highly dynamic and robust agricultural business sector at the price of extensive dislocation of the rural poor.

[39] In 1969, at the most repressive point of the dictatorship, the 1967 constitution was amended via a decree (ato institucional) by a junta that held interim power during the final illness of president Arthur da Costa e Silva, and authorized government compensation for property expropriated for land reform.

[58] The smashing of the peasant leagues following the 1964 coup opened the way for commercialized agriculture and concentration of land ownership throughout the period of the military dictatorship, and an absolute decline in the rural population during the 1970s.

Curió enforced the blockade ruthlessly;[65] most of the landless refused his offer of resettlement on the Amazonian frontier, and eventually pressured the military government into expropriating nearby lands for agrarian reform.

But the more aggressive tactics of the MST in striving for access to land gave a political legitimacy that soon outshone CONTAG, which limited itself to trade-unionism in the strictest sense, acting until today as a rural branch of the Central Única dos Trabalhadores (CUT).

[76] In 2002, the MST occupied the family farm of then-president Fernando Henrique Cardoso[77] in Minas Gerais, a move publicly condemned by Lula, then-leader of the leftist opposition,[78] and other prominent members of the PT.

[94] In a memoir written after he left office, Cardoso expressed sympathy for land reform, stating, "were I not President, I would probably be out marching with them," but also countering, "the image of mobs taking over privately-owned farms would chase away investment, both local and foreign.

[101] In the words of an American scholar, despite its efforts in resettlement, the Cardoso government did not confront the prevailing mode of agricultural production: concentrated, mechanized, latifundia-friendly commodity production—and the resulting injustices.

[107] Such a view is shared by some academic authors, who argue that, behind its avowedly "peasant" character, the MST, as far as class politics is concerned, is mostly a semi proletarian movement, consisting of congregations of people trying to eke out a living in the absence of formal wage employment, out of a range of activities across a whole section of the social divisions of labour.

[116] On March 7, 2008, a similar action by women activists at another Monsanto facility in Santa Cruz das Palmeiras, São Paulo, destroyed a nursery and an experimental patch of genetically modified maize, slowing ongoing scientific research.

[90] The march was held to demand, among other things, that President Lula implement his own limited agrarian reform plan, rather than spend the project's budget on servicing the national debt [Ramos, 2005].

[131] Lula's election to the presidency raised the possibility of active government support for land reform, so conservative media increased their efforts to brand the MST's actions as felonies.

However, its report met no support from the PT members of the commission, and a senator ripped it up before TV cameras, saying that those who voted for it were "accomplices of murder, people who use slave labor, [and] who embezzle land illegally.

"[141] Nevertheless, based on this report, a bill presented to the Chamber of Deputies in 2006 by Congressman Abelardo Lupion (Democrats- Paraná), proposed making "invading others' property with the end of pressuring the government" a terrorist action, and therefore, a heinous crime.

[144] Eucalyptus, a non-native plant, has been blamed for environmental degradation in northeastern Brazil,[145] as well as reducing the availability of land for small agricultural production, called by some as "cornering" producers (encurralados pelo eucalipto).

[171] Both political pundits and activists thought Rousseff's first term was a lean period for land reform, and mainstream media called the MST "tamed" by the two consecutive PT administrations, and drained of mass support by steady economic growth and expanding employment—denying the movement its chief raison d'être.

MST National Coordinator João Paulo Rodrigues said that the federal government's reliance on agribusiness exports for procuring hard currency was the main reason the Rousseff administration did not advance land reform, and even went backwards in some cases.

"[184] The resumption of sustained general economic growth in the Lula years might have greatly diminished social demand for land reform, especially among the informally and/or under-employed urban workers, who formed most of the movements' later membership.

They have invaded the headquarters of public and multinational institutions, and begun to resist the appearance of fields of genetically modified crops, carrying out marches, hunger strikes, and other political actions.

It is a communal experience (often linked keenly with the emergence of CEBs) that often sees participation from the assembled group, rather than an individual, and this change was brought about by the influence of liberation theology on the MST in the late sixties.

[201] Additionally, as historian Daniela Issa notes, mística is a process by which communities associated with the MST can narrate their own history by reviving a collective memory of the oppressed, often in contexts where censorship and state violence are commonplace.

[202] The form of mística associated with the MST also draws on a variety of cultures and origins, with roots in Catholic ritualism, as well as Afro-Brazilian religious practices that had first been introduced after the migration of slavery into Brazil in the 16th century.

"[209] As far as its steads are concerned, the movement has adopted a mostly private enterprise-friendly stance: with the monies it has procured, it has financed mechanization, processing enterprises, livestock breeding, as well as granting access to additional credit sources.

With the University of Brasília, the government of Venezuela and the NGO Via Campesina, as well as agreements with federal, state and community colleges, it offers classes in pedagogy, history, and agronomy, and technical subjects at different skill levels.

For example, between 1996 and 1997 TV Globo broadcast a telenovela O Rei do Gado (The Cattle Baron), in which a beautiful female sem terra played by actress Patricia Pillar falls in love with a male landowner.

[242] The increased importance of the technicians and experts within the MST has led some sections of the movement to strive to develop and diffuse technology suitable for a model of sustainable agriculture on the land the families farm.

For example, the Chico Mendes Center for Agroecology, founded May 15, 2004 in Ponta Grossa, Paraná, Brazil on land formerly used by the Monsanto Company to grow genetically modified crops, intends to produce organic, native seed to distribute through MST.