ABSTRACT
In the last 20 years we have seen the coming together of rural social movements and rural organizations from all over the world to form La Vía Campesina (LVC). LVC is a transnational social movement composed of national, regional and continental movements and organizations of peasant and family farmers, indigenous people, landless peasants, farm workers, rural women and rural youth, representing some 200 million families worldwide (Desmarais 2007, Martínez-Torres and Rosset 2008, 2010). Each component movement (i.e. the Latin American Coordination of Rural Organizations [CLOC], or Vía Campesina Thailand) and individual member organization comes to this global constellation with its own history, its own culture, and its own constellation of relationships with organizations inside and outside of LVC at the local, provincial, national and international level. LVC is not a single movement or organization, but rather is a constellation composed of many rural movements and organizations.
