Central to the La Via Campesina movement to achieve structural change goals, such as food sovereignty, is the broad empowerment of a variety of groups that have been traditionally subjugated by the economic and political system, particularly women and peasant farmers. Women’s role within society is bolstered by La Via Campesina through significant direct affirmative action policies.4 There is a female and male appointed to each position that exists at the international, regional and member organisation levels of the movement.5 This ensures that women’s voices are directly heard across the movement, thereby empowering them to take direct action. Further, La Via Campesina being a peasant farming movement brings the voices of these peasants to the forefront of their international negotiations and actions,6 getting inside and shifting the debate to their advantage. By having such a variety of people and voices involved they have the collective power of people through which to combat the system that causes the multiple environmental, social and economic sustainability crises that the world is facing. The broad empowerment provides the political space through which previously subjugated groups can take the direct action to assert their control over land, production and distribution, which directly removes and prevents the further continuation of the unsustainable capitalist framework. It seems that I am not the only one connecting the need for food sovereignty within ‘developed’ places such
as Australia.7 We need to broaden the movement and ideas in a proactive manner. Such action may be inspired by La Via Campesina who, instead of waiting for change to happen, take direct action to change the crisis situations that cause their members grief. For example in Brazil a member of La Via Campesina, the Movimento dos Trabalhadores Rurais Sem Terra (MST), have been directly taking land from the absent landlords and appropriating it for food production by peasant farmers.8 This allows people access to land and the ability to grow the food that they and the rest of the local people need. After this is done, the local councils and political structures need to adapt to the changed political landscape acknowledging and including the variety of voices, or face being entirely superfluous or overthrown.9 This change helps to solidify the La Via Campesina model, preventing food access crises from developing. The international connections that have formed through La Via Campesina help to show members that the crises they are experiencing are not unique to their local area.10 The crises are global and caused by neoliberal economic policies. La Via Campesina member organisations come from Africa, South America, Europe, Asia and North America. The members have collective political positions but their methods have been adapted to the particular situations that they face in the area in which they each operate. Their sense of collective identity helps them to maintain
resistance in the face of counter attack by those interested in maintaining neoliberal capitalism. La Via Campesina’s collective purpose created through the formation of their identity as international helps them to spread the social structures that they propose through direct implementation of them around the world. This spreads their ideas and the places in the world using localised production and biodiverse farming thus preventing the interrelated capitalist crises of access to food and destruction of the environment. By drawing on the experiences of La Via Campesina, we may see an entirely different system developed on the global level and applied to the local areas which solidly connects people to their food and to fellow people across the world.
References
the State, and Electoral 181. Politics” Latin Ameri5 Maria Elena Martincan Perspectives 39(5), ez-Torres and Peter M 178-191; Leandro VerRosset (2010) “La Via gara-Camus (no date) Campesina: the birth and “The Experience Of evolution of a transnaThe Landless Workers tional social movement” Movement And The Lula The Journal of Peasant Government”, InterStudies 37(1) 149-175, Thesis http://sumarios. 165. org/sites/default /f iles/ 6 Desmarais, La Via pdfs/33461_4270.PDF Campesina, 197. Accessed 8 October 7 Nettie Wiebe (2010) 2012. “Nettie Wiebe speaks out: Why Australi- 9 Vergara-Camus, “The Politics of the MST”, an farmers and La Via 179. Campesina?” <onl ine>ht t p://foodsover- 10 This idea is expressed by a North American peaseignt ygloba l.blogspot. ant leader interviewed com.au/ Accessed 18 Ocand quoted in Martintober 2012. ez-Torres and Rosset “La 8 Leandro Vergara-Camus Via Campesina: the birth (2009) “The Politics of and evolution”, 170. the MST: Autonomous Rural Communities,
research. 1 William Mudford (2012) ‘The Australian Govern- 3 Jan Douwe Van Der Ploeg (2010) ‘The Food ment Negotiating ProCrisis, Industrialized posal at Rio+20’ <online> Farming and the Impehttp://anurio20.blogspot. rial Regime’ Journal of com.au/2012/06/australAgrarian Change, 10(1), ian-government-negoti98–106. ating.html Published 13 4 La Via Campesina “The June 2012. Via Campesina Gender 2 Federico Davila, a fellow Position Paper” in Anmember of the ANU nette Desmarais, La Via Rio+20 delegation, outCampesina: Globalizalined the organisation to tion and the Power of me while we were in Rio Peasants (London: Pluto which inspired my InterPress, 2007), 203-206; national Political EconDesmarais herself thoromy essay that I handed oughly outlines the role in for assessment this of women within the semester. The direction movement Desmarais, and arguments in this La Via Campesina, 161piece is largely based off what I found during that
volume 1 11/12 [global to local]