Photo of Atlantic Fellows, Pedro Telles, Tracey Malawana, Carmeneza Dos Santos Monteiro and Ana Santos taken at the Landless Rural Workers Movement (Movimento dos Trabalhadores Rurais Sem Terra, MST) Florestan Fernandes School in São Paulo, Brazil. Photographer: Atlantic Fellows.

A red baseball cap was one of the things given to a group of Atlantic Fellows during a recent learning visit to the Landless Rural Workers Movement (Movimento dos Trabalhadores Rurais Sem Terra, MST) Florestan Fernandes School in São Paulo, Brazil. The visit to MST was part of field activities undertaken during the Global Leadership Summit convening hosted by the Atlantic Institute. 

The cap emblazoned with an image of a man, with a machete in his raised hand, standing next to a woman with a map of Brazil behind them is not only memorabilia, it is a statement of solidarity for MST as a social movement to access land for poor workers through land reform. 

People wearing the MST cap can be seen all over São Paulo. They wear them during protests, elections, and during their everyday activities to shield them from the sun. Apart from its signature red color, the MST cap has also come out in the rainbow colors of the LGBT+ movement. People on dating apps in search of romance also reportedly post photos of themselves wearing the cap as a sign to potential matches that “they are down with the cause”.

So, how did MST move so many people to openly wear their heartfelt support on their…well, head?

According to Brazilian newspaper, Folha de São Paulo, the popularity of the MST cap is a reflection of MST’s re-positioning of its messaging strategy from land reform through land occupation to agroecology or sustainable agriculture.

MST shifted its messaging strategy to position itself as the largest producer of healthy food for Brazil, moving from knocking on people’s hearts and minds to appealing to their stomachs. 

“The rich have always hated us and that won’t change. The middle class was once against us, but now, they are in favor. We got the middle class through agroecology, through rice,” MST director and co-founder João Pedro Stédile told Folha de São Paulo.

With over 160 cooperatives all over Brazil and more than 1.5 million members, MST is the largest producer of organic rice in Latin America. In 2021, MST sold an estimated BRL 400M (USD 81.3M) rice products to school feeding programs. 

But not everybody wears the MST hat. Pedro Telles (Atlantic Fellow for Social and Economic Equity, 2018) does not own an MST hat – only because “I’m not a hat guy at all”, he laughed – but does have friends and relatives who do and who wear the hat from anything to protests, elections and everyday activities.

As with most things that reach a level of popularity and ubiquity, the MST hat going mainstream was slammed by others as co-opting a struggle that belongs to the landless. 

“But MST themselves replied to this, saying ‘Please do wear our hats, it helps us’. The MST hat has become kind of common use for progressives in Brazil,” said Pedro.

What can we learn from MST?

As Atlantic Fellows who are part of a global community advocating for social justice, we work across many fields in just as many roles — as researchers, social workers, doctors, legislators, activists and storytellers. 

We all work as advocates who use communication and messaging to influence audiences, to get equitable policies passed, to galvanize support. 

Often, we do this from a standpoint of exposing injustice and underlining violations of human rights. We put issues under the uncomfortable scrutiny of a spotlight but in doing so, are we missing an opportunity to highlight possible solutions that hit us all where it matters the most – in our guts?

MST established itself as a leftist movement. Under a provision in the 1988 Constitution that required the government to use land that is “not performing its social function” to agrarian reform, MST occupied land and turned them into farming settlements and cooperatives. 

MST’s political position ignited opposition from the rich and the middle class and to be clear, MST is not deviating from the push for land reform that their social movement was born on. 

However, by expanding their message to position themselves as the biggest food producers in Brazil and focus on sustainable agriculture, they also tapped into wider issues such as the environment and mitigating the climate crisis. MST gave an estranged or indifferent middle class a reason why they should care about landlessness in Brazil.

In an interview with Folha de São Paulo, psychologist and branding expert Cecilia Russo Troiano attributed the success of the MST’s re-branding to the emotions that food sparks in people. 

“Food is a very symbolic exchange, with a lot of affection. There is a middle class that feels threatened, but at the same time, food is a sensitive cause for this same group,” said Troiano.

From us vs. them, MST and the middle class came together under a red baseball cap that spoke about “all of us, together”. By shifting their messaging approach, MST mobilized hope and solutions as against shaming and antagonizing. 

This of course does not mean everyone likes them or supports their cause. In fact, there have been reports of people being harassed for wearing the MST hat in certain places in Brazil. But what the successful use of this transformative messaging approach shows is that if change-makers and activists were to stop speaking in frames of fear and threats and advocate in frames of hope and opportunity, then the chances of realizing the change we seek will be much higher. 

The MST hat became a symbol of pride and progress mainly because it is a testament to what is possible and how, if we focus on the issues and emotions that speak and appeal to our stomachs, we realize that what binds us together is much bigger than what stretches us apart.