Our aim is to understand the relationships between the base of the Landless Rural Workers Movement (MST) and their leaders, taking the structural organization formally adopted in 2003 as an element for mediation. For this purpose, three analytical keys are used: Clastres, who explores the idea of structure separate from social body; Leach, who opposes (contrasts) an abstract model of organization with the practical situations observed and interpreted from the perspective of the materiality of behavior of the settlers and squatters; Neo-institutionalism, which studies how institutions regulate social life through rules and norms. These analyses were based on observations made at the Twelfth MST Meeting in the State of Paraíba and at the rural settlements called José Antonio Eufrosino and Osiel Pereira, located in the municipality of Campina Grande. Rejecting approaches that attempt to measure how much the formal organizational models have been adopted by the social groups, we have tried to reveal the productive incongruences of the dynamics of MST's organizational restructuring.
MST; Organizational Structure; Rural Settlements; Paraíba