Para além do acesso á terra: representações sociais, condição camponesa e ação política dos colonos da Serra do Mel.

Abstract

The present work deals with the political behavior of the peasants of the Serra do Mel. In order to understand this, we take into account the multi-relationships established between: a) a real and concrete situation lived by them given by the form of ownership and exploitation of land, by the technological level, by the behavior of the market, etc. b) a set of representations about themselves and others and c) a specific imaginary (which does not mean forged by themselves), besides including in this field of relations d) the investments of mediators in order to conform actions of collision. Specifically, we work with three questions: 1) why are the settlers of the Serra do Mel the portion of the peasantry that is most mobilized in the region ?, 2) why the actions of mobilization are not shared by all? , 3) why the leaderships that represent them as producers (through village associations) are less likely to represent them as citizens (in the sphere of Party Politics)? From the peasant condition, which we understand as a representation of self made loan to another and, in this case, capable of structuring a whole social habitus, and the presence of some mediators, we seek to understand what is specific in the form of this group if to institute as a collective and to articulate coping actions. In order to investigate the mentioned issues, a field work was carried out, comprising a universe of 7 villages, out of the 22 that form the Serra do Mel Colonization Project. The villages were not chosen randomly, but due to some particularities concerning the history of the settlement of this space. The disjointed occupation allowed different groups of villages to form. To account for the issues, we use both open-ended interviews with typical and semi-closed settlers, with settlers in general, as well as reports of conversations, letters, minutes of meetings, newspapers, and speeches by leaders. In the end, we perceive that i) the mismatch between the expectation triggered by the coming to the Serra and its real poor peasant condition, 2) the representation of "owner" (with the property of time, without it being monetized, appearing in first piano for the establishment of this concept) and 3) its many impotences (productive and others) provide objective field for different semantizations. When we conclude that the colonist's orientation base is characterized as a double matrix (bimatricial habitus), where one side is provided by the imaginary established around the representation of owner and the other by the real and objective condition of poor peasantry, we highlight the role of mediators in the semantization of situations lived collectively. The rupture established in the life of each one, when one moves from the condition of landlessness to ownerhood, accompanying this rupture a whole set of expectations, produces the discontinuity necessary to denaturalize the social. This discontinuity, however, lacks voices that read it. In the case of the peasants of the Serra do Mel, depending on the power of the voices in the field, the semantizations can be either in the sense of highlighting the condition of owners or of highlighting that of poor peasants.