Permanências e recriação da agricultura camponesa no polo Assu/Mossoró (RN)

Abstract

Moved by what is conventionally called the Green Revolution, Brazil, mainly from the 1970s and 1980s, under the action of the State, began to suffer the influence of the process of modernization of the countryside. In the Northeast region, the impact of this process also occurred with the action of the State, through public policies that made possible both the realization of public projects and agricultural projects of the private sector. From this perspective, in the agrarian space of Rio Grande do Norte, what was constituted in the Assu-Mossoró Pole, spatial area of this study, starts to reflect these characteristics, being synonymous with the contradictions arising from the development of capitalism in the countryside, expressing, on the one hand , modernization processes, mainly with the agribusiness of irrigated fruit growing and, on the other hand, presenting itself as a space of subjugation, social inequalities, violence, land concentration and expropriation of peasant farmers, causing them to proletarianize or seek alternatives to recreate themselves. From this, we seek to analyze the permanence and recreation of peasant agriculture in the face of capital expansion in the Assu-Mossoró (RN) Integrated Development Pole. We start from the assumption that peasant agriculture in the Pole cohabits with dynamics of permanence and recreation in face of capital, understanding that this has not generated the disappearance of peasant farmers as announced by Kautsky (1980) and Lenin (1982), but processes of resistance and recreation. With the support of dialectics and seeking to understand the dynamics of the processes that occur there, without neglecting the historical aspects that permeate the construction of this territory and the movement of reality, we outline the methodological path based on the use of bibliographical, documental and empirical research, in the search for the apprehension of the concrete reality and the essence of the object of study. From a theoretical-conceptual point of view, the doctoral thesis presented here was based on the concepts of space, territory, Territorialization of Capital, Monopolization of Territory by Capital, peasant, permanence, peasant recreation and land income. The results achieved indicate that in the said Pole, the process of modernizing the countryside has not had a positive impact on social aspects, since a good part of the population depends on social programs such as Bolsa Família and, although peasant farmers are the majority in this space, small-scale establishments predominate in their hands, while larger areas have been appropriated by non-family farmers, in addition to violence in the countryside. On the other hand, we empirically recorded several examples that portray peasant recreation, such as the struggle for land, adherence to agroecology, agroecological fairs, creole seeds and peasant organizations through the formation of women's groups, associativism and cooperativism. These forms of organization, combined with practices of partnership and leasing on the part of landless farmers, also point to forms of resistance to the subjugation of the agribusiness of irrigated fruit growing that surround peasant territories.