Inside Latin America’s largest rural women’s movement

In Brazil, land tenure is highly concentrated in the hands of men – just as it was in colonial times.

According to the country’s most recent Census of Agriculture from 2017, men manage 81.3 percent of agricultural establishments, particularly dominating medium and large-scale ones.

But despite these inequalities, women are at the forefront of social movements fighting for systemic change. 

The Marcha das Margaridas (‘Margarida’s March’ or ‘March of the Daisies’) has achieved major victories in securing joint land ownership and improving access to financing and rural credit for women.

But how did Brazil’s land distribution become so unequal to begin with, and how are women-led social movements working to change that?

Sesmarias: The colonial roots of Brazil’s land inequality

When Europeans colonized Brazil beginning in the 16th century, they kick-started the development of large-scale estates and the destruction of nature – both driven by the patriarchal logic of extractivism.

Débora Franco Lerrer, an associate professor of social sciences at the Federal Rural University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRRJ), explains that land inequality in Brazil began with colonization and was expanded through the actions of the Portuguese Crown.

Access to land was initially handed out through so-called sesmarias – land grants distributed to beneficiaries in the name of the king of Portugal. The Crown’s goal was to occupy Brazilian territory and ensure its exploitation, primarily through monocultures such as coffee and sugarcane.

“They gave land to those they called ‘purebloods’ – people with money, status and the means to occupy the land and own enslaved people, because that’s how land was exploited during the colonial period,” Lerrer explains.

When Brazil gained independence in 1822, a legal vacuum emerged in the legislation. For the next 28 years, anyone who wanted to claim a piece of land could do so and begin cultivating it.

But, Lerrer explains, when the transatlantic slave trade was banned in 1850, the government feared that descendants of enslaved people and rural workers would gain access to land.

As a result, that same year, Emperor Dom Pedro II enacted the Land Law, which fundamentally changed the system.

From then on, land could only be acquired through purchase, not occupation. This law took 25 years to draft, led by politicians who were themselves large landowners.

In a speech to the Federal Senate during the law’s formulation, Senator Costa Ferreira argued that land should be made available only to the ‘great lords,’ claiming that so-called minority groups would lack the strength to expel Indigenous Peoples from their territories.

“Labor was now theoretically free, but the land was privatized,” says Lerrer.

For the next 138 years, the situation remained virtually unchanged. Racial minorities lacked the financial means to access land, and women were seen as property of their husband or parents. In fact, women were not even recognized as legal subjects until 1916.

“They primarily obtained land through inheritance, and even then, men were the ones managing those assets,” says Thayanna Barros, a PhD candidate in socio-environmental development at the Center for Advanced Amazonian Studies (NAEA), Federal University of Pará (UFPA).

It was only with the current constitution, adopted in 1988 – which states that “men and women are equal in rights and obligations” – that the landscape began to shift.

Data gaps undermine rural women’s rights

So, how unequally is Brazil’s land distributed? It’s difficult to say without up-to-date data on land tenure in relation to race and gender.

Barros says this lack of data has hindered the development of effective public policies to reduce these historical inequalities.

“Programs need statistics in order to be created,” she points out.

The most recent data comes from the 2017 Census of Agriculture, conducted by the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE).

Barros notes that even after consulting multiple different federal databases, it remains difficult to find up-to-date data from a single unified source.

Moreover, while she believes Brazil is becoming more progressive, this change has yet to be reflected in the way government statistics are collected.

“We’re in the midst of an ideological shift, so the statistical data still doesn’t focus on gender and racial indicators,” she adds.

There is a similar lack of data on violence against women in rural areas, says Lizandra Guedes, national leader of the gender division of the Landless Workers’ Movement (MST).

“We ask the government: ‘How do you expect to create public policy without data?’” she says. “‘What will you base it on – intuition?’”

One legal instrument that could support increased land access for women in Brazil is collective tenure. This enables joint land ownership by social groups, and Barros believes it could benefit women significantly as they are more inclined to remain in their territories and to build and nurture community ties.

But there is still significant pushback, and political lobbying by large landowners didn’t end with the monarchy. 

The Ruralist Caucus is currently the largest in the National Congress, holding 300 of the 513 seats, and often blocks debate on instruments that could advance agrarian reform.

Landless women take up the fight against agribusiness

The MST, founded in 1984, is one of Brazil’s largest and best-known social movements.

What is less known is that women have always been protagonists in the movement, even though its gender division was only formally established in the 2000s.

“The process of organizing women was more organic before that,” Guedes recalls. 

While the movement has always valued women’s leadership, it now recognizes that there are specific areas that only the gender division can lead, including conversations that challenge the binary concept of gender.

Guedes points to the historical role of female leadership in the fight for land access and tenure.

It was in 2006, after a protest by 1,800 women who occupied the Aracruz cellulose production company, that the MST shifted its focus away from fighting against unproductive large estates to opposing the agribusiness model – which plants monocultures like soy and eucalyptus on vast tracts of land.

“This land is still, in our view, unproductive. Eucalyptus doesn’t create forests, and soy is for animal feed,” she points out.

“So, women have a very important role in reshaping the fight for land. We can say that proudly.”

Margarida Alves: The mother of the march

“It’s better to die fighting than to die of hunger.”

This now iconic phrase is attributed to Margarida Maria Alves, a farmer and activist who became one of the first women to hold a leadership position in a Brazilian trade union.

At the age of 22, Alves and her family were expelled from the land they lived on by large landowners and denied the right to harvest the crops they left behind.

This inspired her to take up the fight for her rights and those of her fellow rural workers. As a union leader, she filed more than 600 labor lawsuits and was an outspoken critic of labor law violations and precarious working conditions.

Former union leader Maria da Soledade Leite, now 82, lived alongside Alves when she was president of the Rural Workers’ Union of Alagoa Grande.

Soledade recalls meeting Alves at the end of 1975, during the Brazilian military dictatorship (1964–85), when few women were involved with the union.

“When people complained about the absence of women, the men would reply that they didn’t need to attend the union if they had animals and children to care for,” Soledade recalls.

“Margarida was a dynamic person. She wasn’t afraid of threats from sugar mill owners, ranchers or farmers. She wanted workers’ rights, no matter what. Many told her to flee; her own husband asked her to leave the union.”

In August 1983, Soledade felt something was amiss in the town of Alagoa Grande, now home to about 26,000 people.

“People saw a strange car driving around town, especially on her street, a red Opala,” she remembers. “No one knew that car, but no one suspected anything,”

“That Friday [12 August], around 6 PM, the murderer arrived and knocked on her door.

“She thought it was a land worker, because she also attended to people at home when needed, but when she stepped outside, he shot her in the head with a 12-gauge shotgun.”

The killers were never convicted.

“I was threatened, too,” says Soledade. “Penha [a fellow union leader at the time] was also threatened. I was threatened in my own home, but thank God I’m here telling my story – something they no longer have the privilege of doing,” she concludes.

In Alves’ memory, the Marcha das Margaridas was born. And so, her fight became the seed for a movement that has grown into the largest led by rural women workers in Latin America.

Coordinated by the National Confederation of Rural Workers (CONTAG), which brings together all of Brazil’s rural unions, the march has been held in Brasília every four years since 2000. It gathered over 100,000 women in its latest edition in 2023.

Marcha das Margaridas: More than just a march

“They forgot that Margarida was a seed and spread throughout Brazil and the world,” says Maria José “Mazé” Morais Costa, CONTAG’s secretary of women rural workers, who coordinates the Marcha das Margaridas.

The Marcha das Margaridas isn’t just an occasional street protest. Instead, the march itself is a culmination of years of organizing, mobilizing and drafting demands.

“We often say that we are always marching,” Morais explains. “It’s a crowning moment when we march in Brasília because we spend four years building a joint agenda.”

Aside from preparing for each event, which involves 27 state federations – one in each Brazilian state – and 16 partner organizations, there is plenty of follow-up work, including continuing to lobby ministries and agencies to implement policies.

On the day of the march, the government responds to the demands sent to them beforehand.

“In 2023, what the government announced at the march was not enough for us,” Morais acknowledges.

“We envision building a society based on buen vivir [an Indigenous philosophy that promotes harmony between humans and nature], so our agenda is not for an immediate response, because it involves structural issues. What I’m asking for isn’t trivial.”

“The government hasn’t closed its doors on us, but we haven’t spared any effort in critiquing them,” she adds.

Morais says land access and ownership are two of the most critical issues for the march and were added to the agenda in 2000 and 2003 respectively. 

Responding to pressure from the movement, the government authorized joint land titling in 2007 and made it a prerequisite to access public funding for family farming – a victory that ensures stability and security for women, especially in case of separation. Another achievement is the granting of rural credit, with specific financing programs for women.

“We will continue fighting so that there are no women or men without their piece of land,” Morais vows.

“The march changes women’s lives – not only with the public policies we conquer but because they free themselves from violence at home, learn their rights and raise their voices. They say that the march makes them see themselves as feminists.”

“Daisies sprout from the hot asphalt”

Taking part in the Marcha das Margaridas is a colossal effort that involves unions from all over Brazil. Some begin organizing up to a year before the event to ensure they can bring daisies to Brasília.

“We mobilize financially through the base with bingo, raffles and auctions, and even with individual sponsorships,” says Maria da Cruz, secretary for women at the José de Freitas Union, located in the northern state of Piauí.

In 2023, they brought 13 daisies to the march. Da Cruz says the environment can take some getting used to – because women who take part have to bring their own mattresses and sleep on the floor in makeshift accommodations in the federal capital.

“It’s a fight we love – when we think about progress in women’s policies, we know it’s important, but there’s no comfort,” she explains.

In 2023, the union raised nearly BRL 5,000 (USD 870) to cover transport expenses. They rented a van from José de Freitas to Teresina, a trip of about an hour, followed by a bus shared with members of other unions in the state. It took the group over a day and a half to cover the 1,730-kilometer journey to reach Brasília.

“It feels like daisies are sprouting from the hot asphalt of Brasília – I get goosebumps all over my body” Morais reflects.

“On the day of the march, Brasília trembles,” adds Soledade. “It’s beautiful to see.”

The Marcha das Margaridas doesn’t just fight for rural women’s rights. It also preserves the memory of those who led the struggle in years gone by.

That includes celebrating figures like Soledade, who is a repentista – a poet who sings improvised verses with a guitar. At the last event in 2023, she opened the event that carries her friend’s name.

“Our struggle has borne many fruits,” she reflects. “We feel happy, honored and proud, because Margarida’s fight was not in vain, neither was Penha’s, and neither was mine.”