Stones, nights and poems

the Landless Poetic Word as a Political Weapon”

Abstract

In these brief reflections, we seek to highlight the role taken on by Culture and Art in building the Popular Agrarian Reform project of the Landless Workers’ Movement (MST) and, in particular, the literature produced by its activists, organized within the Frente Palavras Rebeldes (Rebellious Words Front). In an effort to understand how the Landless literature serves this project, we organized our investigation into four themes: 1.The role of Culture and Art in the MST, emphasizing their organizational and educational character; 2. The Frente de Literatura Palavras Rebeldes and the tasks it takes upon itself; 3. The Popular Agrarian Reform Program as a cultural revolution; 4. The partnership between the Frente Palavras Rebeldes and the Gender Sector as a concrete case that allows us to bring forth the emancipatory potential of Landless literature. Through the analysis of documents and literature produced by the Movement itself and by authors such as Paulo Freire (2015), Antonio Gramsci (2000; 2006), Walter Benjamin (1985), and Anatoly Lunatcharsky (2018)—who discuss the role of art and culture in revolutionary processes—we aim to highlight the character of Cultural Revolution present in the MST’s Popular Agrarian Reform project, insofar as it seeks to articulate the shaping of subjectivity with changes in the productive matrix.