Trajetórias e interconexões camponesas: reflexões em contextos de expansão capitalista de produção de grãos em Santarém-Pa

Abstract

The aim assigned to this thesis text is the analysis of processes related to introducing of grain cultivation in the municipality’s territory of Santarém, through narratives constructed by peasant families who settled there prior to these strategies of agribusiness expansion. In the process of constructing the analysis, strategies mobilized by peasant families have been valued. After migrating to the region, when faced with the project of access to plots of land, they boasted of the successful reproduction of their way of life. The guarantee of land ownership, followed by the qualification of the own tenure, in accordance with the judgments established by the domestic groups, enabled the construction of other strategies, which provided their descending with favorable conditions for the reproduction of a life dissociated from productive activities developed in the countryside. For this purpose, peasant families, i.e., those embraced by this field research, have mobilized resources and efforts that enabled the introduction of their descendants in professional qualification programs, later, they themselves operated in the construction of access to the paid labor market. This labor market, normally reached and reproduced by the immigration of descending of peasant families to other municipalities, was consolidated, especially in the capitals of the Northern region, allowing relative redistribution of the success that remained in the previous management of the land plot. In constructing the analysis of this object of study, bibliographic references and information built in fieldwork have been mobilized, as well as interviews were conducted with several peasant families settled in the Santareno territory. In addition, data provided by the Santarém health and education secretariats have been incorporated, which are important to understanding the contexts of constitution and reproduction of rural communities on the Santareno plateau. Finally, it dissociated itself from external and defeatist evaluations, by which the movement out of the rural territory would have caused shanty towns processes of the city of Santarém. Through the possibility of alternative and complementary interpretations about the construction of strategies mediated by peasant families in Santarém, it was enabled to incorporate other family projects, which permitted the reproduction of their in the highlighted territory, even if this required redefining the future of their children. Among other reasons, the redefinition of peasant life trajectories enabled the incorporation of several plots of land into the process of introducing the grain production of the Santareno plateau. Thus, the insertion of grain cultivation in the region has stimulated, amid many other alternatives, the consolidation of autonomous reproduction strategies of these families, and even of their descendants who can reproduce their lives by entering the wage labor market, but also by developing autonomous productive activities, affiliated to positions in public services or even as self-employed professionals.