"Conquista de Terras em Conjunto": Redes Sociais e Confiança - A experiência dos agricultores e agricultoras familiares de Araponga - MG

• Ano de defesa: 2006
• Autor(a) principal: Campos, Ana Paula Teixeira de
• Orientador(a): Mendes, Fábio Faria
• Banca de defesa: Botelho, Maria Izabel Vieira , Rothman, Franklin Daniel , Comerford, John Cunha , Muniz, José Norberto
• Tipo de documento: Dissertação
• Tipo de acesso: Acesso aberto
• Idioma: por
• Instituição de defesa: Universidade Federal de Viçosa
• Programa de Pós-Graduação: Mestrado em Extensão Rural
• Departamento: Instituições sociais e desenvolvimento; Cultura, processos sociais e conhecimento
• País: BR
• Palavras-chave em Português: Desenvolvimento local; Capital social; Microfinanças
• Palavras-chave em Inglês: Local development; Social stock; Microfinance
• Área do conhecimento CNPq: CNPQ::CIENCIAS HUMANAS::SOCIOLOGIA::SOCIOLOGIA DO DESENVOLVIMENTO
• Link de acesso: http://locus.ufv.br/handle/123456789/4141

This work analyses an experience of land buying by agricultural laborers and smallholders in Araponga, a municipality in southeast of Minas Gerais, which has got evidence as a singular case of common land buying in Brazil. The agricultural laborers and smallholders called the initiative Joint Land Conquest (Conquista de Terras em Conjunto). This action was started by themselves, and progressively becomes more strong helped by external agents. Through this informal organization of mutual help, the smallholders, sharecroppers and wage workers take a loan from a collective fund to buy jointly an area of land. The land area is variable, but in general, the families obtain from one to six hectares. Since 1989, when the experience has began, 110 families have already bought their own piece of land. Nowdays, the sum of all bought land is around 498 hectares. Our goal was to understand how the agricultural laborers have defined a set of rules and procedures to build the Joint Land Conquest. Moreover, this work also targets to understand how this experience was scaled up and institutionalized to include a growing number of families. By mobilizing trust networks embedded in kinship, neighborhood, and religious militancy, the farmers have invented new ways of coping with land scarcity. The scheme reinvented traditional forms of mutual help and reciprocity between kin and friends of the Brazilian traditional peasantry. We have collected and analyzed data to trace the history of Joint Land Conquest, to understand how new families have been incorporated and to identify the role of external actors to consolidate this experience. The methodology was based on in-depth semi-structured interviews, survey questionnaires, oral history and participated observation. The semi-structured questionnaire was applied to 79 families, and allows us to analyze family organization patterns, social mobility, social participation, and economic strategies, thus mapping of the embedded social relationship network. The collected data was used to build bi-dimensional sociograms, tables and figures, which allow us to represent the information and trust flow that structured the Joint Land Conquest. Our main concepts were social networks, trustiness, development to get freedom. The study shows that the relationship networks and trust context were crucial to create a huge basis to support the experience growing. Araponga s association is a very interesting experience of agrarian change, devised by the farmers and rural workers themselves, without overt conflict with landholders. The practice of common buying permits peasants with reduced savings to join efforts and buy larger pieces of land. Landowners would not sell minor parts of land and would not give credit to humble rural workers. Special care is given to water bodies and forest reserves in the area. Moreover, in this context, land means freedom to chose biologic cultivation, to give opportunity to theirs children to go the school, to get a active hole in social movements. The dream of buying theirs own land becomes real.