A construção identitária da juventude nos movimentos sociais da via campesina Brasil.

Abstract

The Via Campesina is an international network of Movements and peasant organisations represented in 65 countries. In Brazil, it was founded in 2001 with the partieipation of seven organisations: IV1ST, MMC, MAB, PJR, CPT and FEAB. It is an organisation that struggles to improve the quality of life of peasant families under its coordination, and - at an international levei opposes the progress of the neoliberal model of agriculture. The focus of this study is the emergence of the young people as activists within the social movements members of Via Campesina in Brazil, based on studies around peasants and rural youth and the identity theorie of E.P. Thompson. This dissertation is structured into four chapters. The first examines the politicohistorical context of social movements in Brazii, the importance of interaction between peasant movement networks, and the appearance of specific groups of activists within the Via Campesina: young people, women, afro-deseendents (quilombolas) and indigenous people. In the second chapter, the process of emergence and consolidation of young activists within the Via Campesina is analysed. In the third, the Via Campesina's seminars and plenary sessions and the II PJR (Rural youth pastoral) National Congress are examined, as specific spaces of youth identity construction within the organisation. And finally, in the last chapter, the life-stories Df young social leaders is analysed, with the objective of understanding the background to their initiation and forms of partieipation in the movements. Oral history and ethnography are used as baseline methodology. This study concludes that young activists of the Via Campesina are Consolidated as politicai subjeets through the struggle itself, as much in action as in discourse. The determination of the youth of Via Campesina's movements shows their commitment to the transformation of society and the organisation and strengthening of peasants and the working class.