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There are new movements emerging in the worldin defence of agricultural policies favourable totraditional agroecological methods. The agroeco-logical antagonism to neo-liberal globalizationis described here mainly with reference to net-works in Latin America (because of our owndirect knowledge and participation in them),but it is a worldwide phenomenon,as shown bymovements in India also described here. Thesemovements have been born out of local resis-tance to seed multinationals,the degradation of ecosystems and the threats to livelihoods becauseof agricultural modernization. They also opposesubsidized exports of agricultural surpluses.These movements are based on ancient knowl-edge of farming systems and also on the innova-tions of low input agriculture. The main actorsare not neo-rural postmodern organic farmers (asthey might exist in the United States and Europe)but spokesmen for large rural populations,some-times peasants,sometimes landless labourers (asthe MST in Brazil). Such movements are inter-preted in this chapter in the wider context of aworld movement of dissidence formed by a net-work of networks. By ‘agroecology’we referhere to a collective practice of agriculture whichexplicitly considers not only economic andsocial aspects (income,employment) but alsoenvironmental and ecological aspects (pollution,soil conservation,cycles of nutrients,energyflow). Therefore there is a link between agroecol-ogy as a practice and the science of agroecology(Altieri,1987; Gliessman,1998). Agroecology inour view promotes the endogenous potential of agriculture,relying on traditional peasant knowl-edge,though being also open to innovationsthat help sustainability (Sevilla Guzmán andWoodgate,1997).
THE RISE IN LATIN AMERICA OFTHE RURAL ARTICULATION OFDISSIDENCE AGAINSTNEO-LIBERAL GLOBALIZATION
The usual explanation for the disappearance of the active agricultural population in the processof economic development is that,as agricul-tural productivity increases,production cannotincrease
 pari passu
because of a low demand foragricultural produce as a whole. Therefore,theactive agricultural population decreases not onlyin relative but also in absolute terms,and indeedthis has been the path of development – inBritain even before the First World War,in Spainsince the 1960s,not yet in India. Now,however,agricultural productivity is not well calculated:nothing is deducted from the value of productionon account of chemical pollution and geneticerosion,and the inputs are valued too cheaplybecause fossil energy is too cheap,and becauseunsustainable use is made of soils and somefertilizers. What the ecologically correct pricesshould be is unknown; the important point isthat the ecological critique of the economics of agriculture opens up a large space for neo-Narodnik argument,a space that is beingincreasingly taken up around the world. Issuessuch as biodiversity conservation,threats frompesticides and energy saving are transformedinto local arguments for improvements in theconditions of life and for cultural survival of peasants. Such arguments have become wide-spread in new networks such as the ViaCampesina (the Peasant Way),which has insti-tuted an international Peasant’s Day,the17th April,the anniversary of the massacre of 
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New Rural Social Movements and Agroecology
Eduardo Sevilla Guzmán and Joan Martinez-Alier 
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19 members of the Movement of the Landless(MST) in 1996 in El Dorado,Parà,Brazil.The convergence of those that,at the begin-ning of the 1980s,were called ‘revolutionary peas-ant unions’,took place in Managua in December1981 during the ‘Continental Conference of Agrarian Reform and Peasant Movements’. Therean interaction was initiated which would lead tothe birth of the Continental Peasants Movementin Latin America. The different Latin Americanorganizations (with a small European representa-tion) thus became aware of the similarities inboth their means of struggle and their ideologicalevolution. Such is the case of the AndalucianSOC – Sindicato de Obreros del Campo
1
(landlabourers union) – and the Brazilian MST,legal-ized in 1984,but at work in an embryonic state inRio Grande do Sul since 1978 (cf. Navarro,1996; De Medeiros,1999; Mançano Fernández,2000; Wizniewsky,2001). This process of con-vergence between indigenous and peasant orga-nizations became more consolidated on theSouth American continent through the formalorganization of the Latin American Congress of Peasant Organizations (CLOC) in 1994 in Peru.We would point out here that there was an inter-action between the MST (as a proto-organiza-tion) and other groups in the first half of the1980s,which became more intense in the 1990s.These first interactions involved productiveexperiments of an agroecological nature (SevillaGuzmán,1999) and the creation of the firstEuropean committees in support of the MexicanNeo-Zapatism and the MST and then those thatdeveloped around the SOC.Probably the next step in this process of con-fluence of independent peasant organizationstook place on 14/15 November 1984,with theLatin American Conference of IndependentPeasant Organizations,organized in Mexico bythe Coordinadora Nacional Plan de Ayala. Herethe Peasant Confederation of Peru,the NationalFederation of Peasant Organizations of Ecuador,the Independent Peasant Movement of theDominican Republic,the National Confederationof Peasant Workers Union of France,the Union of Rural Workers and the recently founded MST of Brazil exchanged experiences.The MST started in the south of Brazil and hasspread to the whole country. It has withstoodviolent armed repression in Paranà,Parà and otherstates. Its tactics consist in occupation,settle-ment and immediate cultivation of large proper-ties. Some of the MST leaders also belong to theWorkers’party,though the MST is more to theleft. Other spaces of confluence in the dissidenceprocess include the international exchange eventsconvoked by the MST of Brazil in 1985 and bythe FENOCI of Ecuador in 1986. In Ecuador in1987 the First Andean Exchange Workshop of Peasant Indigenous Organizations was held. InCentral America,in 1987,the COCENTRA wascreated and,in 1989,ASOCODE. In October of that same year indigenous and peasant organiza-tions of the Andean region and the MST of Brazilnamed their continental campaign ‘500 years of indigenous,black and popular resistance’inBogota,Colombia. Three continental conferenceswere held,as well as several meetings coordi-nated by different Latin American countries,withthe assistance of European rural (or so-calledpeasant) organizations.
THE ZAPATISTA MOVEMENTAS ONE CREATOR OF THEANTAGONISTIC RURAL DISCOURSE
The key social actor,along with the MST,in theconfiguration of antagonistic rural praxis anddiscourse was the Neo-Zapatista Movement of Chiapas. Mexican peasant agriculture was and isunder increasing threat because of food importsfrom the United States,which increased underthe NAFTA free trade treaty between the US,Canada and Mexico. Eco-Zapatism was overduein Mexico. In the early 1990s,Guillermo Bonfilhad published his deeply moving account of vanishing indigenous Mexico (Bonfil Batalla,1998). It has now become general knowledge inMexico that indigenous cultures and biodiversitygo together (Toledo,1996,2000). Biodiversity isvaluable even when it has no market. The Chiapasrebellion came into the open against the NAFTAon the day it became operative (1 January 1994),helping to make indigenous peasantry a politicalsubject.Neo-Zapatism came to signify,in 1994,a reac-tion against the attacks on Mexican peasantagriculture and a real incentive towards the con-vergence and coordination of the movementsthat question economic globalization and neo-liberalism at world level,as well as the progressiveconsolidation of a new antagonistic discourse. Infact,the Zapatista movement made possible theintroduction of socio-cultural diversity into theworldwide anti-neo-liberal movement’s discourse(when this was in its gestation period); that is tosay,the enormous diversity of subjects,territo-ries,resources,traditions and realities that theworld was made up of at the end of the twentiethcentury.
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In an attempt to come up with a synthesis,thecharacteristics of Neo-Zapatism,an age-old andat the same time new social movement,are thefollowing:1The acceptance of a historical continuancebetween its processes of collective socialaction and those developed by those ethnicgroups which through multiple processesthroughout 500 years have put up resistanceto colonization and oppression generated bythe expansion of the European socio-culturalidentity.2The attribution to economic globalization andneo-liberalism in present times,of the histori-cal oppression suffered by the indigenouscommunities. Specifically the foreseeableimpact of the NAFTA on the indigenous com-munities of Chiapas,which added to theirresistance to the eviction of their communitiesand to the subordination to the interests of thetimber companies and landowners.3This struggle against exclusion does not endwith their confrontation with the moderniz-ing socio-economic system. They are alsofighting for the recognition of the NativeIndians in the Mexican constitution. Thediversity of the ethnic groups which make uptheir movement has led them to defend therecognition of differences:‘We want a worldwhere all worlds fit in’.4They demand a democracy unadulterated byexternal or internal mismanagement,corrup-tion and distortion of the true participation of people. To this effect,they are Mexican patriotswho oppose the ‘foreign domination of NorthAmerican imperialism’. Moreover,they aim tomake a true democratic change to the politicalorganization so that ‘those that are in chargealso have to obey’.From the depths of the Lacandona forest,theEZLN and Subcomandante Marcos developed an‘informational strategy’to fulfil the establish-ment of an ‘autonomous communication’toreach public opinion and to generate a process of confluence with all the groups that are excludedfrom the modernizing socio-economic system.With this,they not only developed a way of defending themselves with the spoken word (‘Weonly take up arms to make a statement’),but theyhave also aimed to generate networks of dissi-dence to the socio-economic and cultural oppres-sion which they suffer.This was how the Zapatista movement,through its ‘autonomous communication’madecontact with the,then incipient,economicanti-globalization social movements,holdingdebates which took place in the context of thecampaign of ‘50 years are enough’,against thehalf-century of existence of global financial insti-tutions (the International Monetary Fund,theWorld Bank). Demonstrations took place in dif-ferent places throughout the world,culminatingin the alternative forum ‘The Other Voices of the Planet’which developed in Madrid in theautumn of 1994. Continuing with its dynamics of resistance and informational struggle,the EZLNcalled,in Spain in the summer of 1997,theSecond Intergalactic Conference against Neo-liberalism and for Humanity,by means of an itin-erant celebration throughout various towns andcities that had as its driving force local Zapatistacommittees. In Andalucia the militant membersof the SOC played a central role in the organiza-tional infrastructure of the congress,especially inthe closing acts which took place in El Indiano,alarge farm which was acquired after many yearsof struggle involving occupations and imprison-ments. This was one of the agroecological expe-riences that the cooperatives of the SOC carriedout as a ‘place for reflection and sociopoliticaland productive practice’(Sevilla Guzmán,1999;Guzmán Casado et al.,2000).
THE IMPACT OF THE FTAA
The biggest and most devastating impact that,inthe short term,the economic globalization processis having on peasant and family-run agriculture iscaused by the policies of the freeing of interna-tional agricultural trade (Rosset,1999) coupledwith the subsidies to exports in the United States(and the EU). In this sense,the NAFTA must becontemplated within a global strategy that intendsto configurate a ‘Free Trade Area in America’(FTAA). It intended to deregulate the market,services and investments throughout both Americancontinents in such a way that the multinationalshad the right to use natural resources indiscrimi-nately. Dorval Brunelle (2001) illustrated therepercussions of this deregulation with a Mexicanexample:‘The Mexican government had to pay16.7 million dollars to the Californian firmMetalclad Corp.,because a Mexican municipalitywould not authorize the installation of a hazardouswaste dump against which the local populationhad been mobilized.’The approval of the FTAAmeant the gradual elimination of any type of tariff.Therefore,products coming from the UnitedStates and Canada had free access and wereexempt from custom and non-custom restrictions.
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