Territórios em conflito: a luta camponesa no Vale do Pindaré durante a Ditadura Civil-Militar sob os olhares do DOPS e da CPT (1975-1985)

Abstract

The 1964 civil-military coup initiated the implementation of a nationwide economic liberalization project. Therefore, unclaimed lands became a target for Brazilian businesses and large multinational corporations. In the state of Maranhão, this process intensified with the enactment of Law No. 2,979 of June 17, 1960, known as the Sarney Land Law, which normalized land grabbing and integrated Maranhão into the project already underway throughout the country, using ideas such as "development" and "industrialization" to justify these criminal practices. This work analyzes the land conflicts that occurred in the Pindaré Valley, Maranhão, between 1975 and 1985, highlighting the relationships between the authoritarian state, large landowners, repressive organs, and forms of peasant resistance during the Brazilian Civil-Military Dictatorship. To this end, two central and contrasting sets of documents are analyzed: the archives of the Department of Political and Social Order of Maranhão (DOPS/MA), which express the actions of the repressive apparatus and the criminalization of rural workers, and the documentation of the Pastoral Land Commission of Maranhão (CPT/MA), which records complaints, monitoring, and forms of resistance by peasant communities. Through dialogue with authors such as E. P. Thompson, James C. Scott, Martins, and Medeiros, the study shows that violence in the countryside was structured by both state and private actions, involving gunmen, police agencies, and agribusiness companies. Furthermore, it demonstrates that, even in the face of repression, peasants produced diverse forms of resistance—both explicit and subterranean— that reaffirm their historical agency. By articulating state and ecclesiastical sources, the work reveals the contradictions, silences, and disputes over narratives present in the documentation, contributing to an understanding of the dictatorship in rural Maranhão and the role of memory in reconstructing the struggles for land.