pBrazil is a country of extreme inequalities, one of the most important of which is the acute concentration of rural land ownership. In recent decades, however, poor landless workers have mounted a major challenge to this state of affairs. A broad grassroots social movement led by the Movement of Landless Rural Workers MST has mobilized hundreds of thousands of families to pressure authorities for land reform through mass protest. This book explores the evolution of the landless movement from its birth during the twilight years of Brazil's military dictatorship through the first government of Luiz Incio Lula da Silva. It uses this case to test a number of major theoretical perspectives on social movements and engages in a critical dialogue with both contemporary political opportunity theory and Mancur Olson's classic economic theory of collective action.ppppOndetti seeks to explain the major moments of change in the landless movement's growth trajectory its initial emergence in the lat