Globalize the Struggle, Globalize Hope

Greg Chung

“Build Solidarity! Enough with the Genocide, Evictions, and Violence!” (La Via Campesina)

Nearly 200 years after Marx called for “workers of the world to unite,” internationalism is still a secondary priority for most of the left, rarely moving beyond handshakes between trade union leaders or statements by progressive parties. It’s ironic then that peasants, a class often denigrated as provincial and backward, have built the most successful international movement of the 21st century. La Via Campesina or “The Peasant Way'' started as a declaration by 31 peasant organizations and has now grown to 182 national affiliates and 200 million members. In her book, “La Via Campesina: Globalization and the Power of Peasants,” Annette Aurelie Desmarais reveals peasant activists used international solidarity to fortify—rather than detract from—local and national struggles. 

The Global War on Peasants

“There are different circumstances but we are facing the same global tendency driven by governments of the richest countries for the benefit of large transnationals.”

-Albert Gomez, executive coordinator of UNORCA

In the late 20th century, agriculture saw a historic shift from feeding people to accumulating capital on a global scale. Multinational institutions, such as the World Trade Organization (WTO) and the International Monetary Fund, forced debt-burdened countries to accept free trade agreements that created an existential crisis for the world peasantry. Common property, land, and traditional practices were erased to make way for corporate agriculture. By 2000, 75 percent of the 1.2 billion people living in poverty were from rural areas. 

Neoliberal globalization also heightened the neocolonial relationship between the Global North and the Global South. North America and Europe still subsidized their agriculture while developing countries had to scrap their protectionist measures. For example, the North American Free Trade Act drove 2 million Mexican peasants off the land after subsidized food from the US and Canada caused crop prices to plummet. However, the benefits of globalization did not reach family farmers in the Global North. In the United States, family farm bankruptcies skyrocketed as the agricultural market rapidly consolidated around factory farms. 

Globalization was able to rapidly transform agriculture by limiting national governments’ ability to influence food policy. National laws and policies now had to comply with international agreements made behind closed-door WTO sessions. For La Via Campesina, if agricultural policy was to be decided on the global stage, then peasants needed to become global actors.

La Via Campesina’s 2nd International Conference in Tlaxaca, Mexico 1996 (La Via Campesina)

Rooted Locally, Fighting Globally 

“To be effective the Via Campesina must ensure that its international work is firmly rooted in local realities. Otherwise, it has little or no relevance for the peasant and farm organizations on whose behalf it speaks in the international arena. Perhaps, just as importantly, the Via Campesina’s international efforts must also be brought back to the local level.”

From top to bottom, Via Campesina is democratic and led by peasant leaders active in local and national struggles. Via Campesina’s highest decision-making body is the international conference, where delegates from all national affiliates propose, discuss, and vote on Via Campesina’s strategic direction and elect the International Coordination Committee (ICC). The ICC is in charge of enacting the decisions of the international conference, coordinating worldwide actions, negotiating with other international organizations, and consulting and relaying information to national affiliates. 

To ensure Via Campesina does not lose touch with the daily lives of its members, international work is not limited to international secretaries or even national leaders. Canada's National Farmers Union (NFU), as the North American regional coordinator, paved the way by integrating local chapters into the NFU’s International Programs Committee. Within six months, the International Programs Committee set up leadership exchanges, regional workshops, and even alternative trade ties with the Mexican peasant organization UNORCA. 

Creating a global space for peasants also prevented national affiliates from moderating their politics in the face of deteriorating local conditions. Desmarais mentions how the NFU were originally reluctant to take up the fight against GMOs as they had just lost a fifteen-year battle around plant breeder rights and some NFU members even embraced genetically modified seeds. Nevertheless, Via Campesina’s consensus around the issue convinced the NFU to take a firm position against GMOs.

Food Sovereignty

“An important conclusion for me was that the model and conditions in which the family farmers of the United States find themselves is not a future that we want for ourselves. Then we turn around and see our own situation and we don’t want that either.”

-Pedro Magana, UNORCA

This long and deliberative process not only fosters solidarity, it also creates a space for peasants to re-articulate national issues as a global crisis with a common enemy. By connecting GMOs in India, price dumping in Mexico, and the rise of “Big-Ag” in Canada, peasant activists concluded that reform was impossible since globalization required the global dispossession of peasants. 

March for Food Sovereignty in Bilbao (Via Campesina TV)

Instead of calling for a return to the past, Via Campesina created their own alternative: food sovereignty, the right for peasants to feed people local, healthy, and culturally appropriate food. By orienting food production around the community’s needs instead of accumulating capital, food sovereignty provides an international framework for building non-market social relations. For example, the Landless Workers Movement (MST) uses food sovereignty to organize organic and democratically run food cooperatives, an explicitly communal alternative to Brazil’s export-oriented and monocrop-based agriculture.

More Than a Slogan

“The difficulty for us farming people is that we are rooted in the places where we live and grow food. The other side, the corporate world, is globally mobile. But our way of approaching it is not to become globally mobile ourselves, which is impossible. The way in which we approached this is to recognize that there are people like us everywhere in the world.”

Structure and organization is not enough to build an international movement, just as vital is a common culture and identity across national and cultural boundaries. Inspired by MST, Via Campesina places heavy emphasis on creating “mistica:” a visceral feeling of common struggle among peasants all over the world. Via Campesina demonstrations are instantly recognizable by peasants sporting the Via Campesina logos on green flags, pañuelos (handkerchiefs), and Asian conical hats. For peasants, cultural work should focus on integrating, instead of homogenizing, local communities into a global identity, which is why during international conferences, each region presents its history, cultural roots, and struggles through theatre, dance, and song. 

Korean farmers facing police repression during the 2005 WTO protests in Hong Kong (Felix Wong/South China Morning Post)

However, international solidarity is ultimately built through struggle, which Via Campesina accomplishes through worldwide mobilizations during WTO meetings, international gatherings, and most importantly, international days of action. Via Campesina creates special days historically significant to peasant struggles in different regions to emphasize global peasant identity, the most important of which is the International Day of Peasants Struggle, commemorating the Eldorado Massacre, when Brazilian police gunned down nineteen MST members.

During international days of action, national affiliates organize unique demonstrations and focus on issues that are most relevant to their local context as long as they are framed around food sovereignty, but in 2001, Via Campesina went one step further when they coordinated a global campaign against import dumping and GMOs. Via Campesina also flies peasant leaders to demonstrations in other countries. In the Netherlands, Indonesian peasant leaders joined Dutch farmers in “converting” a GMO testing ground into a biodiversity site. Promoting national diversity and coordinating worldwide actions allow peasants from different countries to feel, not just see, themselves as part of a global struggle.

Bringing the Global Home

“Even though a declaration is not legally binding to states, its content often reflects legally binding international human rights obligations. It underlines the international community’s commitment to protect, fulfill, and respect peasants’ human rights.”

-La Via Campesina on the UN General Assembly passing UNDROP

Through organization and international consciousness-building activities, La Via Campesina influences international institutions. Opposed to the WTO, Via Campesina has effectively lobbied in other international organizations, such as the UN Human Rights Council and the Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO). In 2018, the United Nations General Assembly passed the landmark United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Peasants (UNDROP), which defines peasants as political subjects with rights. After decades of attempted erasure by states, NGOs, and academia, UNDROP is a major victory for the peasant movement. 

From La Via Campesina’s five part training module educating members on how to implement UNDROP in their daily lives (La Via Campesina)

Far from simply a symbolic win, Via Campesina quickly relayed the tools offered by UNDROP to its national affiliates to aid local campaigns. In 2020, the Argentinian courts cited UNDROP in their decision to award indigenous communities the rights to their lands. When the Indonesian government arrested five peasants from Serikat Petani Indonesia (SPI) for protesting against a massive palm oil plantation, Via Campesina and SPI used the rights guaranteed by UNDROP to force the Indonesian government to release four of the detained peasants. Most importantly, UNDROP has once again opened the door for peasants to agitate for new legislation in their national governments, as peasants in Nepal have done. 

30 Years and Still Going

“We need to globalize this struggle in the poorest communities everywhere just as the large capitalists have globalized the economy.”

In 2023, La Via Campesina held its 8th international conference. Even as the global attack against peasants intensifies, the movement continues to grow. La Via Campesina now has several new regions and internal caucuses, including the youth assembly, the men against patriarchy space, and the international meeting of diversity and supporters. Another major update is Via Camepesina’s 70 agroecology schools that use popular pedagogy to educate members on organic farming practices in different countries. 

La Via Campesina’s 8th international conference (La Via Campesina via A Growing Culture)

But the highlight was the spontaneous chants for a free Palestine. Via Campesina joined its Palestinian affiliate, the Union of Agricultural Work Committees, in condemning Israel’s weaponization of food and decades-long theft of Palestinian land, which was followed with a global day of fasting in solidarity with the people of Gaza. For La Via Campesina, the peasants struggle has always been a struggle for humanity.