Organizing In Brazil: The Landless Rural Workers’ Movement and the Aids Movement

This paper examines the relationship between social movements and the state in Brazil. Comparing the experiences of the AIDS Movement with the Landless Rural Workers’ Movement, I explain how the political opportunity structures available to a movement vary by issue. Political opportunity structures are products of politi-coeconomic conditions, and also of dominant ideologies. Such structures interact with movement claims in determining the space for civil society to effect change.