Contested landscapes: territorial conflicts and the production of different ruralities in Brazil

ABSTRACT

From the perspective of Brazilian agrarian geography, the conflicts generated by land tenure disputes have as protagonists the families of the Landless Workers’ Movement (Movimento dos Trabalhadores Rurais Sem Terra), traditional landowners, and agribusiness corporations. In this article, we present a reflection on land conflicts and the spatial and territorial production of latifundia, peasant smallholders, and large-scale agribusiness through studies of the landscapes of two municipalities in the state of São Paulo. Among the various tools for analysing territorial disputes, Google Earth can be used for local, regional, and international comparative studies of how landscapes have been transformed. Informed by traditional research, the article analyses a diversity of photographs, from satellite to field shots, as evidence of landscapes that express conflicting social relations in disputes over different models of social and territorial development.

KEYWORDS:

• Agrarian reform
• agrarian capitalism
• Brazilian peasantry
• landless workers movement (MST)

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. In Brazil, states are subdivided into municipal administrative districts. These municipalities include one closely populated headquarters city and numerous sub-districts, which are often sparsely populated and rural.

2. The term agrarian reform is used in Brazil to distinguish the country’s project from land reform. Land reform is a policy of land distribution, whereas agrarian reform adds to that low-cost credit, technical assistance, and other services to ensure the success of the new smallholders.

3. Our thanks to geographer Messias Modesto Passos (2004), whose study of tropical deforestation inspired our use of satellite images to describe the region’s landscapes.

4. Our references to the agrarian question are informed by Kautsky’s 1899 study The Agrarian Question (1988). He argued that agrarian capitalism is not a totality, destined to eliminate the peasantry. To the contrary, small-scale agriculture has grown with capitalist agriculture, playing roles in the production of foodstuffs and the reproduction of seasonal labour and surplus land.

5. Since 1975, the Pastoral Land Commission (CPT) has collected data and produced reports on official and non-official violence against peasants, indigenous people, and runaway slave descendants (quilombolas).

6. Rugosity may mean ‘full of wrinkles’ in English, but it is used here as the concept developed by Brazilian geographer Milton Santos (1996) to describe the physical or visual geographic features that reveal the uneven accumulation of time in space. Not unlike wrinkles, one finds the furrows of the past in landscape. In the Pontal do Paranapanema, these signs include tree trunks burned more than half a century ago, structural ruins that were once railroad thruways and stations, latifundia rented for agribusiness or appropriated to make settlements, while the original names live on like spectres.

7. Until the 21st century, most sugarcane in São Paulo state was set afire before being harvested by large teams of cane cutters. The fire burnt off the foliage, with its razor-like edges, facilitating manual harvesting. These fires produced abundant quantities of ash that breezes carried into towns, where it fell like rain on homes, staining painted surfaces and dirtying freshly washed clothes hung out to dry.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico: [Senior Researcher (PQ) Grant].