Popular social movements faced with the third sector: A comparative study about peasant organizations of Brazil, Argentina and Mexico

Abstract

This research approaches the issue of the international collective action, from the rise of the third sector organizations to the resurgence of counter-hegemonic peasant movements that internationalize and “environmentalize” their struggle from the discussions of agroecology, food sovereignty and environmental justice. These discussions will be exemplified by three peasant organizations in Brazil, México and Argentina. The organizations above mentioned express the processes of peasant territorialization and their dynamics in the three countries, in addition to a complex approach to the environmental issues that proposes a normative break related to the actions of the traditional environmental NGO´s, foundations and organizations. The organizations that we characterize in comparative terms are innovatory in relation to the classic peasant movement, because they move further into contemporary issues such as environmental questions, internal democracy and food sovereignty; resignifying and “environmentalizing” the contemporary agrarian question. Also, these organizations confront capitalism and rescue, from a critical perspective, the experiences of the social and trade union movements that preceded them. Then, the peasant organizations studied in this work affirm in their existence and social base some characteristics that the School of New Social Movements tends to deny in its analytical interpretation of the international collective action in globalization and social subjects (third sector) that this School privileges in their analyzes.