Agrofuel policies in Brazil: paradigmatic and territorial disputes

The expansion of agrofuel crops challenges us to rethink policies, territories, human agency, and the paradigms used to explain them. In Brazil, policies supporting the expansion of agrofuel crops and the intensification of agrofuel production are reorganising rural land use and undermining some forms of participation in the capitalist and family modes of production. To reflect on this new reality, we study peasant movement reactions, proposals, and territorial disputes with agribusiness. Using the Pontal do Paranapanema region of São Paulo state as a case in point, the paper analyses territorial disputes between expanding sugarcane plantations and agrarian reform settlements as well as biodiesel production projects developed by the Landless Workers Movement (MST) and the Western São Paulo Federation of Settlement and Family Farmer Associations (FAAFOP). It also analyses the agrofuel policies of other peasant organisations, including Via Campesina. The production of agrofuels has changed the processes of land acquisition and use by both agribusiness and the peasantry, provoking new insights into the nature of territorial conflicts and thereby stimulating the need to revise perspectives on the agrarian question in Brazil.

Uma escola para homem rural: a cultura popular, os camponeses e o movimento de educação de base (1960-1964)

Nos idos dos anos 1960, a intervenção sobre a cultura popular tornou-se um suposto da ação política de agentes modernizadores da sociedade brasileira. Por meio da Conferência Nacional dos Bispos do Brasil (CNBB), a Igreja Católica elaborou um projeto educacional de dimensão nacional, articulando suas emissoras de rádio no território brasileiro aos centros de educação radiofônica rural e criando, em 1961, o Movimento de Educação de Base (MEB). Os pressupostos teóricos e filosóficos do Movimento transcendiam as questões do aprendizado formal e pautavam-se por estratégias de ação da Igreja sobre os problemas de crescimento econômico e desenvolvimento social das regiões pobres brasileiras. O artigo em questãoversa sobre o camponês que participou do MEB e suas experiências escolares, avaliando os preceitos de educação rural, educação cívica e alfabetização de adultos propostos na ação dos agentes e das instituições modernizadoras do campo brasileiro. Analisamos os processos de assimilação e resistência do camponês aos princípios e projetos modernizantes externos à sua cultura. Novos ritmos de tempo, novas representações e novos significados foram introduzidos pela escola sobre práticas culturais seculares do campesinato brasileiro. No MEB, tal fenômeno resultou tanto na assimilação dos novos estímulos trazidos pela escola, quanto na insurreição de costumes e hábitos interligados às funções ritualísticas e costumeiras do indivíduo e/ou da comunidade rural.

A Via Campesina Brasil e a avaliação da primeira década de impactos da reforma agrária do Banco Mundial

During the past decade, influenced strongly by World Bank land policies, many governments instituted a new mode of recreating the peasantry, one supposedly led by market forces through credit programs secured by land. Supported by large landowner organizations, defended as a conquest by the rural labor movement and combated by member organizations of the Via Campesina, the new mode of peasant renovation has inspired a diversity of interpretations both positive and negative. To evaluate these events, this article seeks to demonstrate the World Bank's intentionality in urging the implementation of market-led agrarian reform in developing countries; discusses the construction of immaterial territories in the context of this policy; analyzes the development of a people's think tank in response to the agitation of the Via Campesina Brazil and the negative impact of the credit system on peasants.

Brésil: les territoires de la question agraire

Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo (FAPESP)

Entre o semear e a próxima colheita: uma análise dos escritos de Lenin sobre a questão agrário-camponesa

Pós-graduação em Ciências Sociais - FFC

A subalternização da classe operária na autocracia burguesa: a política de alianças eleitorais do PCdoB (1962-1987)

Pós-graduação em Ciências Sociais - FFC

Libertários e Bolcheviques: a repercussão da Revolução Russa na imprensa operária anarquista brasileira (1917-1922)

Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo (FAPESP)

Um estudo da diversidade e atualidade da reforma agrária: análise dos tipos de assentamentos do Território Cantuquiriguaçu - estado do Paraná

Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico (CNPq)

As geografias das escolas no campo do município de Goiás: instrumento na valorização do território do camponês?

Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior (CAPES)

Leituras dos territórios paradigmáticos da Geografia Agrária: análise dos grupos de pesquisa do estado de São Paulo

Pós-graduação em Geografia - FCT

A disputa territorial e o controle das políticas no território Cantuquiriguaçu – Estado do Paraná: a participação dos movimentos socioterritoriais e o papel do estado

Pós-graduação em Geografia - FCT

Mao Tse Tung, o Campesinato e o Exército na ação revolucionária

This paper aims to analyze some aspects of Mao Tse -Tung’s revolutionary ideas, specially those related to his Organizational Theory and Peasantry. We use some approaches to interact with his ways of thinking, like an interlocution with some of his texts, as also dialogues with some analysts; and how his political ideals progressed in the Chinese scenery, redeeming several categories of country laborers, peasants. Nevertheless, this work also aims to evaluate the role of the Chinese Army in the process; not only because its creation started with the peasants, but also because the Institution was a crucial instrument for achieving the victory of the Revolution. Through its context, this essay is also a suggestion, as a component to be considered in this line of thinking.

O caipira paulista no tempo de pós- modernização

This written report narrates the process of writing the report “A caminho da cidade” (in English: “Going to the city”), submitted as Final Papers by Naomi Oliveira Corcovia, Journalism Student at UNESP. The author tries to elucidate how much the urbanization, the industrialization and other postmodern process have influenced São Paulo´s countrymen´s life and behavior. But before, the author studied the stereotype of the countrymen diffused by Media and Brazilian literature

Reforma Agrária em questão: a propriedade privada como fator de desterritorialização camponesa no Assentamento Fazenda Primavera (Andradina-SP)

Pós-graduação em Geografia - FCT

Campesinato e agrohidronegócio canavieiro no Pontal do Paranapanema: os desafios para a transição agroecológica

This paper appears in order to promote a discussion on the use and ways of working with the land. For this, we present a scenario of conflict initiated in Pontal do Parananema, São Paulo, Brazil, between the peasantry and the agrohidronegócio. The Pontal is a territory marked by agrarian and land conflicts, originated by the illegal occupation of land by the squatters, the decimation / expropriation of indigenous, and deforestation and environmental devastation. This conflict is represented today by the sugarcane agro-industrial capital companies on one side, and the other peasants. The expansion occurs agrohidronegócio strongly from 2005, due mainly to the change in the energy matrix of the country and state incentives with strong momentum in the production of flex-fuel vehicles. Rural agrarian reform settlements, made possible by the state under pressure from social movements, are spatialized in 16 municipalities with a total of 112 settlements, occupying an area of 139. 682 hectares, seating 5. 892 families. These families have seen their possibilities of social reproduction increasingly suppressed by the advance of sugarcane agrohidronegócio in the region, which suffocates the living spaces and work of these peasants. Front of it, agroecology is an alternative for these workers to ensure their reproductive possibilities. Agroecology also arises as a means of confronting agribusiness model, adding elements to the environment, such as the eradication of the use of pesticides and considering the dynamics of nature to promote agriculture, and social order, contributing food sovereignty and the production of healthy food and diversity to the population...