O AVANÇO DO CAPITAL NO CAMPO E AS MARCAS DA CAMPESINIDADE NO ASSENTAMENTO ARIZONA, ANDRADINA – SP

Abstract

Under the dominance of agribusiness and large land ownership, which form the foundation of the productive process in the Brazilian countryside, peasant reproduction in rural agrarian reform settlements is marked by constraints. Difficulties in obtaining credit, problems in the productive infrastructure, lack of technical assistance, in a context of maintaining a large land concentration, are evidence of the marginality of agrarian reform in Brazil. Despite the known adversities, in this article we problematize rural settlements as spaces for peasant reproduction that indicate, to some extent, a critical power based on a peasant moral order centered on the triad land-work-family. The investigation was based on semi-structured interviews with peasants from the Arizona settlement project, located west of the state of São Paulo, in a region currently dominated by sugarcane production. With an emphasis on the personal and collective history of the investigated subjects, it was possible to identify the meanings attributed to a struggle that spans both the past and the presente. At its core is the conquest of land as a pathway to achieving a new social position, characterized by overcoming transience, itinerancy, and insecurity.