José Gomes da Silva has made an ambitious attempt to provide a comprehensive analysis of agrarian reform in Brazil. Unfortunately, while pulling together an impressive array of information that would not otherwise be available to the general public, it falls far short of providing the clear, insightful, and integrated analysis that the Brazilian situation merits at this time.
The author is at his best discussing technical and developmental aspects (social and economic) of the problem (Ch. II)—precisely those issues on which he, as an agronomist-engineer, no doubt possesses greatest expertise. The historical and political analysis is far less satisfying. The introductory conceptual chapter is obscurantist rather than edifying in its pursuit of scientism. In the effort to provide a comparative perspective based on other countries and on U.S. social science writings, da Silva introduces both errors and irrelevancies. The chapter on the history of agrarian reform is understandably brief but lamentably uninformative. More serious, however, is the inadequacy of the lengthy chapter devoted to political and social structural analysis. Not surprisingly, we learn that the latifundistas are responsible for sabotaging agrarian reform. More startling is da Silva’s allegation that their primary instrument is the Brazilian Institute for Agrarian Reform, IBRA, which operated in apparent opposition to the essentially well-meaning, if somehow ineffective military governments. In fact, the governments since 1967 weakened IBRA through constant reorganization, understaffing, and drastic budget cuts. Anyone familiar with IBRA is well aware that the agency had its problems and weaknesses. Scapegoating IBRA, however, is equivalent to blaming the taxes on the tax collector. The final irony is that these military regimes, from which the author still expects redistributive miracles, abolished IBRA altogether in 1970, replacing it with an agency devoted primarily to colonization. Da Silva alludes to this fact, but nowhere expores the obvious implications. If, in fact, the latifundio remains a powerful monolith, then it must have allies not so much in a phased out agrarian agency, as among those who abolished IBRA.
Whatever the reason for this abortive analysis, be it ignorance, lack of insight, or political necessity, the treatment of political and conceptual problems seriously weakens a work which is a useful source-book in other respects.
