Conflitos agrários e violência pró-capitalista: uma ANTi-história das narrativas sobre o Movimento dos Trabalhadores Rurais Sem-Terra (MST)

Abstract

Violence is present in all contexts involving attempts to privatize land, particularly in the Global South. This occurs due to the need to resort to violence in order to enable capitalist accumulation, which is based on the expropriation of land from Indigenous communities, peasant families, and other forms of collective land tenure that do not conform to patterns of private property oriented toward high levels of production. Such expropriation takes place through pro-capitalist violence. Pro-capitalist violence refers to the phenomenon in which Social Movements from Above act against Social Movements from Below through repression carried out by paramilitary groups allied with sectors of agribusiness, industry, and mining, among others, and which often also receives support from the state. The scenario of agrarian conflicts in Brazil reveals an intense dispute of interests regarding land ownership and use. In this context, the Landless Workers’ Movement (MST) emerges as a central actor, frequently portrayed negatively by Brazilian public opinion, which characterizes it as criminal, transgressive, and perverse. However, other narratives are at play that challenge this hegemonic consensus. Taking as its object of research the different narratives about the MST and the stories surrounding the Movement, the aim of this study is to tell an ANTi-history based on the narratives constructed about the MST. Thus, I sought to recover the forgotten, criminalized, and silenced narratives surrounding the agrarian question in Brazil and to present what they have to say. To this end, I employed controversy mapping to identify and map the actors involved, and ANTi-history as an approach to narrate the history from the perspective of subalternized groups. Based on the results of this study, I contribute to the use of the ANTihistory methodology in research within the field of the social sciences, particularly in the context of social movements. More than that, I critically engage with the methodology itself by discussing its limits and possibilities in these contexts. From a theoretical perspective, I contribute to alternative interpretive approaches to peasant movements and to the struggle for land in Brazil and in the international context.