Citizenship and Media

Activism in Brazil:
An analysis of the potential articulations between
indigenous activists and the Movement of the
Homeless Workers
Adilson Vaz Cabral Filho
Andrea Landulpho Meyer Medrado
Simone do Vale

EMERGE Research Group

Universidade Federal Fluminense
Niteroi, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
 Aim and research problem:

Analyzing the potential articulations between the Movement of the Homeless Workers
(Movimento dos Trabalhadores Sem Teto - MTST) and the indigenous movement, given the
mediation of the political party PSOL (Socialism and Liberty Party) in the presidential
campaign involving Guilherme Boulos (MTST) and Sonia Guajajara (APIB – Association of
Brazilian Indigenous People);


Since PSOL represents an institutionalized left which claims the legacy of the PT
(Workers' Party), how do both movements articulate together outside the campaign? And if
so, how do they connect their different struggles and claims?
 MTST
 The movement of the homeless workers stems
from the Landless Workers Movement (MST). It
was created in 1997 as an attempt to organise
the struggles of disenfranchised workers in
urban areas (Cartilha do Militante, 2005).
 The Brazilian Indigenous
Movement
 According to Claudia Pereira Gonçalves, the notion of
“indigenous people” was foreign to indigenous tribes
themselves – the idea ignored different cultures and
ethnicities and was imposed first by Portuguese settlers,
and later by the State. In the 1970’s, different tribes joined
together as “the indigenous nations” in order to voice
common claims such as the right to life and land. The use
of video technologies was part of the struggle (2012).
 Political
Narratives and
YouTube
 Narratives are sequences of events causally
connected in order to constitute a story;

 Political narratives are stories told by

governments, parties, institutions, corporations,
social movements, and citizens in order to
legitimate, confront or make sense of particular
distributions of power.
 Citizenship and Communication as a Human Right


For Luiz Fernando Santoro (1989, p. 113), since the 1970’s, Community Communication
has greatly contributed as a means through which the popular classes can express their own
views of the world, learn, and record their history, as described in the UNESCO publication
known as the MacBride Report (1980): "individuals and groups can (or will sooner can) use
their media and own resources, in the same time of those of the traditional media”;

Over the 1980’s and 1990’s, community communication initiatives enabled the social
appropriation of devices and production technologies through different outreach practices,
expanding and strengthening during the consolidation of the third sector.
 Media Activism and disenfranchised groups


In 1948, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) have
acknowledged the right to information, an aim pursued both by the groups
involved in community communication and social movements (Cabral, 2005);


Currently, digital platforms provide disenfranchised groups with more
visibility and autonomy for producing and sharing their own content, but they
also pose a threat for activists under surveillance in non-democratic regimes
(Medrado et al, 2017).
Comparing APIB and MTST’s
channels at YouTube:
The PSOL channel at YouTube
APIB’s video network
 Preliminary findings:
 From the perspective of the video networks, it remains unclear
whether both movements articulate together outside the
presidential campaign; both APIB and MTST seem to operate
independently from each other;
 Although the PSOL video channel is the most viewed, it does not
produce nor upload new material regularly;
 Again, from the perspective of the compared video networks, it
also remains unclear whether PSOL articulate together with the
two social movements as such outside their institutional agenda.