Uma análise da implementação do projeto de colonização de Buriticupu (MA) a partir das trajetórias de agentes sociais

Abstract

This work aims to analyze the "Projeto Pioneer de Colonização de Buriticupu-MA" through the trajectories of social agents who participated directly or indirectly in the colonization policy integrated by the government in 1972. The project was coordinated by the Companhia Maranhense de Colonização do Maranhão (COMARCO) and promised the distribution of land and the settlement of 10,000 families over a period of 10 years. However, in practice, the distributed lands were unproductive for the families of the so-called "settlers", while the public lands were sold to business consortia. The social agents involved in this research experienced the struggle for land and resisted an unequal system of land distribution, which involves corruption, land grabbing and violence. The work seeks to bring the experiences of these social agents through their own voices and the places they occupied in the conflict. This ethnographic approach, viable even during the pandemic, is the core of the research. In this way, we reflect on the actions of the State and the scientific categories based on the trajectories of social agents. State acts generate ambivalences in relation to the right to recognition of territoriality and the living conditions of families whose lives were guaranteed by the institutional project. In view of this aspect, we highlight the organization capacity of these families through struggle strategies, which involve articulation with various sectors, such as the Catholic Church and civil society organizations. In addition, daily practices that underlie the permanence on the land are explored, such as the implementation of the so-called "roçados"