MST wants an exclusive Medicine class for UFPel settlers

Summary of this report:

• At the request of MST leaders, the Federal University of Pelotas is studying the creation of a special Medicine class for Agrarian Reform settlers. The Rectory is in favor and announced that the proposal will go ahead “as soon as possible”.
• The Medicine course is the most competitive at UFPel, but the admission model for the new class would dispense with the entrance exam and would prioritize ideological filtering. The main means of evaluation is a letter written by the candidate that narrates his “experiences of struggle for land”.
• The Medical Union of Rio Grande do Sul (Simers) is against the measure and claims that the easing of essential criteria for entering and following a medical course would impact on reducing the quality of medical training.
• The so-called “MST courses” are possible thanks to a federal government program instituted in 2010. According to the terms of the program, leaders of social movements must compose the Collegiate for the Coordination of the courses.

As a result of pressure from activists from the Landless Rural Workers Movement (MST), a special Medicine class for Agrarian Reform settlers may be opened in the coming months at the Federal University of Pelotas (UFPel), located in Rio Grande do Sul.

The selection process for the course demanded by the MST, which is the most competitive at the university, would be different from the institution’s regular Medicine courses, that is, without the need for an entrance exam and with ideological criteria for filtering candidates. In addition, MST leaders would compose the Coordination Committees and monitor course activities.

If the measure materializes, a likely result would be the allocation of vacancies on a large scale to social movement militants. The allocation of free places in higher education courses for residents of agrarian reform areas – most of them controlled with an iron fist by the MST and other social movements with similar activities – is possible thanks to the National Program for Education in Agrarian Reform (Pronera), a federal program created in the Lula government (PT), in 2009, after strong pressure from social movements.

Since then, 3,500 Agrarian Reform settlers – most of them, but not all, are militants of social movements – have already enrolled in Law, Agronomy, Geography, History, Veterinary, Literature and Pedagogy courses. A medical course, however, is an old demand from activists.

The negotiations between UFPel, MST and Incra, however, are questioned by the Medical Union of Rio Grande do Sul (Simers), one of the main entities representing medical professionals in Latin America.

The flexibility of the selection processes is one of the questioned points: the main component of the selection is a letter in which the candidates must tell their story, as well as “the experiences related to the fight for the land, the experiences in camps, settlements or rural communities” . In other words, being part of a social movement like the MST can be decisive for joining a higher education course financed with public resources.

“There is a serious risk of reducing the quality of technical training”, says medical entity

On June 27, four days after the first meeting between the MST and the Rectory of UFPel, Simers released an official note in which it positioned itself against any type of flexibility “to serve segments of society, which will inevitably also unfold in the reduction of quality in medical education”. In a new note issued this Wednesday (5), the entity details three points of objection to the opening of the Medicine course along the lines of Pronera and reinforces the opposition to the easing of criteria for admission to Medicine courses, “regardless of the group or sector benefited from these changes.

“There is a serious risk of reducing the quality of students’ technical training, due to the lowering of the requirement for these criteria, with a public manifestation that the entrance exam would be given exclusively through a writing test, which does not occur today for any other candidate” , says Simers.

Criticisms of the Pronera operating model at UFPel also come from professors. Last month, 30 professors at the institution released a note opposing the renewal of the so-called “Special Group of Veterinary Medicine (TEMV)”. In the text, the professors ask for a democratic discussion about the model so that there are real opportunities for low-income students linked to the rural environment, “whether they are members of social movements or not”.

A People’s Gazette, the Rectory of UFPel stated that the initiative to create a special class in the Medicine course “is a response to a social concern regarding health and access to adequate medical care in rural areas and among agrarian communities. From a legitimate demand presented by social movements, we decided to assume it and work to materialize it”.

The Rectory also classified Simers’ note, contrary to the terms of the opening of the course, as “unfortunate and devoid of knowledge”.

Edicts establish ideological filters; one of the evaluations is to spend 19 days in an MST settlement

The so-called “Operations Manual”, which guides the operation of Pronera, was published in 2016 when Dilma Rousseff (PT) was still President of the Republic and details the broad influence of MST leaders and other social movements in conducting the program.

The document emphasizes that Pronera is an “instrument of resistance” that “was born from the struggle of social and union movements in the countryside” and mentions that social movements are the main partners of the program. And it goes further, determining that the Coordination Board of all courses includes representatives of social movements alongside the general coordinator and the pedagogical coordinators.

But it is the selection process that presents even more serious points. The Operation Manual is vague in relation to the selection methods, but determines that it should contain “instruments that address topics related to the Brazilian agrarian, land and agricultural issue”.

In practice, universities create different mechanisms for admission to courses. In different notices analyzed by the report, there are instruments with a high degree of subjectivity that make room for a clear filtering of MST-aligned entrants.

In a notice opened in March of this year by the Federal University of Western Pará (Ufopa) for the Sanitary and Environmental Engineering course, the only evaluation mechanism is the letter called “descriptive memoir”, in which the candidate must send, through the institution, an account of his life story and, among other points, mention his “experiences related to the struggle for land” – a direct link to participation in social movements.

The item “report of experiences” has a weight of 30% of the writing evaluation, while written communication and argumentative capacity have 20% each. One detail: the announcement highlights that the cultural norm will not be evaluated in the writing of the letter.

On the other hand, the public notice for the Veterinary Medicine course at UFPel, launched at the end of last year and with the class already in progress, establishes two phases of evaluation: the first is the “descriptive memorial” in the same terms. In the second stage, candidates must spend 19 uninterrupted days in an experience at the Josué de Castro Institute of Education, which is commanded by the MST and operates within a settlement.

The theme of one of the lessons of the experience, which is an evaluation for a Veterinary course, is: “The Agrarian Question in Brazil – the formation of large estates in Brazil and its historical development; the capitalist relations of production in the Brazilian countryside and the actuality of the agrarian question in the context of agribusiness”.

Different ticket format is not foreseen by law or normative act

The simplified entry system for settlers is not regulated by any federal government law or decree. Questioned by the report about which normative act details the format, Incra informed that “it is up to the offering institution to define the criteria of its selection process, which will be destined for the public listed in the aforementioned decree”. In practice, the so-called “university autonomy” is what allows such flexibility according to the understanding of the university management.

As the coordinator of Pronera at Ufopa, Rose Caldas de Souza Meira, explains, the demand for courses comes from social movements, which request the opening of classes to universities. These must create a course project to be approved by Incra. “Social movements end up giving voice to the community and can mediate on course demands. Specifically during the course, they support activities,” she says.

The coordinator states that the curriculum for special courses, aimed at settlers, is the same as for conventional courses. “Only the content of the classes is different, because we are more focused on the student’s reality”.

As for the “descriptive memorial”, she denies that there is an ideological filter in relation to the content informed by the candidate in the topic of “experiences related to the struggle for land”. “Our intention is to observe his life experience within this environmental and rural theme. These students don’t have as much access to Enem, so they need a device that gives them access to higher education,” she says.