Terra, poder e liberdade: a ocupação semterra na Flor do Bosque

Abstract

This work highlights the clash between landless families and sugarcane latifundio, occurred on the grounds of the farm Flor do Bosque (1998-2006), in Messias, a town located in the mesoregion east of Alagoas – Zona da Mata -, predominantly occupied with sugarcane production. The land is taken as much as power (status quo) as a qualifying for freedom (political struggle of the landless). The array of production, since the colonial origin, organizes a dependent economy, a violent political and exclusionary society, conditions created by the agrarian sector of Alagoas for its operation. The landless occupation, in an area controlled by the landlords, results in tensions, actions and reactions. Hindering forces start to act in the sugar lands of Flor do Bosque, in a contest of eight years, with constant confrontations. Landlesses’memories and their speeches are the key tools of this work: They represent the action of a political and collective subject who fights against a secularly established order. It is a localized conflict with the political capacity to refute the national agricultural system. It demonstrates how the landless people, a depleted political force and plundered by capital, become, in a process of affirmation of consciousness, a political subject that articulates support, that mobilizes, which gives the conflict a perspective of freedom. The Church, through the CPT pastoral action, is an integrated part of this conflict, clearly in favor of the landless and opposing the landlord command. The Church's support contributes to the resistance of the landless and the conquest of 350.8 hectares of land in Flor do Bosque. The key-terms of the conflict are highlighted; a conclusion, an ending is not being searched. It intends, in fact, to build a path to understand the national unfinished, from the experience and memory of the landless people of Flor do Bosque.