Território e agronegócio: abordagem socioterritorial no contexto Potiguara, litoral norte da Paraíba

Abstract

This study, authored by indigenous people, aims to analyze the impacts of the expansion of agribusiness on the Potiguara indigenous land, located on the northern coast of Paraíba, and to investigate the various influences of this expansion on the current political and economic structure of the indigenous territory. To this end, we examined the gradual growth of sugarcane monoculture and its relationship with socio-territorial conflicts in the villages of Estiva Velha and Três Rios, highlighting the socio-territorial reorganization promoted by capitalist advance. Based on historical-dialectical materialism and carried out through bibliographic, documentary and field research, the study adopts a qualitative approach that allows us to understand the contradictions present in the Potiguara reality. We opted for triangulation of instruments as a research technique, combining observation, interviews and documentary analysis. Data processing was based on the principles of recognition of social being, activity, systematization and totality, elements that allowed us to penetrate and understand this complex field of reality expressed “as a whole” by political, social, economic, cultural and historical determinants. We found that, in recent decades, sugarcane monoculture has established itself as the most representative expression of the capitalist mode of production in the territory of the Potiguara of Paraíba, influencing not only the reconfiguration of landscapes, the restructuring of production and work, but also the ideological field. Thus, we understand that a new ideology is underway, based on the agribusiness model, which simultaneously favors the emergence of a new class of producers of sugarcane monoculture, now composed of indigenous people.