Do império da soja à reforma agrária: trabalhadores sem-terra e movimentos de resistência na fronteira Brasil-Paraguai (1970-2022)

Abstract

This thesis analyzes the experiences of landless workers in the struggle for agrarian reform, specifically in the conquest of the Itamarati I and Itamarati II settlements, located in Ponta Porã, Mato Grosso do Sul, on the border between Brazil and Paraguay. Since the 1970s, the former Itamarati farm, known as the “soybean empire”, gained notoriety for breaking world records in productivity and grain exports, as well as pioneering the development of industrial agriculture in Brazil. In the late 1990s, however, the farm was occupied by landless workers who demanded its expropriation for agrarian reform purposes on the grounds of its “unproductiveness”. The impact of the “success” story of the Itamarati farm produced a hegemonic memory that affected the struggles of landless workers, reinforcing the idea that industrial agriculture was the only possible model for agricultural production. The main objective of this research is to analyze the tensions and conflicts that emerged during the implementation of agrarian reform in this highly productive farm, focusing on the resistances, disputes, and strategies mobilized by rural workers to ensure access to and permanence on the land. The study was based on the historiographical contributions of marxist theory and the method of oral history, with the analysis of narratives, journalistic, iconographic, and documentary sources. The defended thesis highlights that the experiences of displacement, exploitation, and expropriation suffered in the countryside configured among workers a moral sense of the justice and historical legitimacy not only to demand their right to land, but also to organize their modes of life and dispute alternative projects in the conquered rural settlements.