This series tackles one of the central issues of our time: the rise of large-scale social movements and the transformation of society over the last thirty years. As global capitalism continues to affect broader segments of the world’s population—workers, peasants, the self- employed, the unemployed, the poor, indigenous peoples, women, and minority ethnic groups—there is a growing mass movement by the affected populations to address the inequities engendered by the globalization process. These popular mass movements across the globe (such as labor, civil rights, women’s, environmental, indigenous, and anti-corporate globalization movements) have come to form a viable and decisive force to address the consequences of the opera- tions of the transnational corporations and the global capitalist sys- tem. The study of these social movements—their nature, social base, ideology, and strategy and tactics of mass struggle—is of paramount importance if we are to understand the nature of the forces that are struggling to bring about change in the global economy, polity, and social structure. This series aims to explore emerging movements and develop viable explanations for the kind of social transformations that are yet to come. This book focuses on the macro-and microfactors that have shaped the processes of peasant mobilization, agrarian reform, and coopera- tive formation in contemporary Brazil. Specifically, this study exam- ines the role of the Movimento dos Trabalhadores Rurais Sem Terra , or Landless Rural Workers Movement (MST) in the process. This study turned out to be quite a challenge. At an earlier stage of this study, one of the authors, Wilder Robles, in the context of collecting data for his doctoral dissertation, was interested only in examining the interrelationships among peasant mobilization, agrarian reform, and cooperative formation through the macroanalysis of three closely related processes: democracy, globalization, and social movements. However, he soon found that this approach had serious limitations. During his stays in many MST and in other encampments and settle- ments, he discovered a multitude of problems the landless peasants faced. There were internal conflicts, ideological differences, limited material resources, and lack of access to technology and markets. Some of these problems were beyond the landless peasants’ control. Nevertheless, they were determined to advance agrarian reform. He soon realized that the struggle for agrarian reform and the struggle for cooperative formation were two interconnected struggles, requir- ing different albeit complementary analyses.