“E aí vumbora, vamo na luta”: territorialização contra hegemônica e resistências sociais das comunidades de Jambuca e Batista, Maranhão, Brasil

Abstract

This research aims to identify the strategies of resistance and political articulation used by the traditional communities Jambuca and Batista in Campo de Perizes, Bacabeira, in the defense of their territoriality in the face of the dynamics of Capital advance in Maranhão. The location of the municipality of Bacabeira, with its logistic infrastructure network (BR-135 highway, Carajás and Transnordestina Railways, power transmission lines, Italuís System) and proximity to the Itaqui Port Complex, have for many years attracted national and international investments linked to mineral exploration and production, activities related to agribusiness and the construction of large infrastructure works that boost the circulation and reproduction of Capital. The period demarcated as a reference for the research is from 2016 to 2020, where the first collective actions of resistance and political articulations were triggered and continued to reproduce in the face of constant threats of removal of traditional communities. The development model in Brazil, based on attracting national and international investments that “modernize” and bring “progress” to the country, full of contradictions and disrespect for social and ethnic rights, has been directly impacting several traditional peoples and communities, depleting natural resources, flexibilizing laws, and interfering in modes of social reproduction. In this context, Jambuca and Batista are part of a range of traditional communities in rural areas of Maranhão that experience impacts from large development projects and create, antagonistically, resistance movements in defense of their territories and find, in the act of (r)existing, a way to be visible beyond the ideology of demographic gaps. The method adopted for the analysis of such processes is based on dialectical historical materialism (MARX, 2008), since it assumes that the concrete reality does not present itself truly as it is, but in an abstract way, being the concrete a synthesis of several determinations. The theoretical-methodological conception of the research combines propositions by Smith (1988a, 1988b), Harvey (2005, 2014) regarding the capitalist production of space, relying on decolonial studies by Escobar (2014), Porto-Gonçalves (2012) and Quijano (2002), rural identities and territorialities by Little (2004), Candido (2017), Haesbaert (2007), and Woortmann (1981), as well as social resistance processes of dispossessed groups discussed in Scott (2013), Castells (2018), and Laclau and Mouffe (2015). The dissertation contemplates bibliographic research, complemented with case studies in scientific publications and specified with official documentary research and electronic media, and the direct research, effected through visits and field study, sought the socio-spatial characterization of the communities, with the identification of the territory by the residents themselves in the production of collective maps, photographic surveys and interviews with residents, social agents and public managers involved directly or indirectly in the conflict for land. The results of the research indicate that, even under unfavorable conditions in the correlation of forces in the struggle for territory, the actions of resistance and political articulations occur from the internal organizational movement of the communities of Jambuca and Batista, which use and seek multiple ways of doing this. The repertoire of confrontation is evident in an internal militancy, resulting from daily actions, which seek to involve and commit residents in the defense of their territoriality. Keywords: capitalist development; territoriality; resistance