La Lucha Invisible de las Mujeres en Brazil

* Silvia Adoue (USP/Araraquara, teacher at Escuela Nacional Florestán Fernandes of the Movimento Sem Terra, Brasil)

Silvia Nació en Buenos Aires, y luego se mudó a Brasil. Fue docente en escuelas primarias y secundarias, tiene títulos en matemáticas, educación y cine, y es doctorada en Letras. Es educadora de la Escuela Nacional Florestán Fernandes del Movimiento de los Trabajadores Rurales Sin Tierra (MST) y profesora en la Universidad de Sao Paulo de Araraquara.

Silvia was born in Buenos Aires, and later she moved to Brasil. She has been a teacher in primary and secondary schools, she has degrees in maths, education and film, and she holds a doctorate in Literature. She is an educator in the national school of Florestan Fernandes of the MST (Movimento Sem Terra) Movement and she is a lecturer at the University of Sao Paulo of Araraquara.

In her speech to Latin America is Moving Collective, Silvia Adoue tells how the now approximately five million Brazilians who live in settlements formed by the Land Reform have sustained their living during the pandemic.

The pandemic has seen 150 000 people dead and more than 5 million people infected. Brazil has also witnessed a collapse in production. Similar to the Critical Geography Collective’s approach, Silvia’s sees territory as mobile and affected by the new configuration of capitalism that extracts value from the territory, increasing the mobility and de-territorialisation of people. The integration of territories to the more exploitative extractive capital chains (e.g. lower salary) has been accelerated with Bolsonaro’s government. Seventy per cent of Brazilians are in flexible labour relationships.

Silvia shows numbers from the Brasilian Agrarian Reform:

Brazil: 850 million hectares, 210 million inhabitants.

8600 settlements from land reform with 77 million hectares involved, almost 5 million inhabitants living there.

There are also indigenous people (1 million people) and quilombolas (territories of former slaves).

The people who live in the settlements formed by the Agrarian Reform did not benefit from public policies of the 1990s until today. Instead, 80 per cent of the settlements are considered precarious; they were not defined as productive. The state did not apply public policies such as credits to integrate their products into the public accumulation chains. Instead, they get inserted into short circuits that produce local commerce. Nonetheless, the precarious settlements do not have sufficient merit so that they can benefit from the stimulation policies by the Agrarian Reform. They have not been able to reach productivity levels required by State policies, so that they can be integrated into global value chains, e.g. the production of milk for Nestle, sugar cane for the production of ethanol (agro fuel), etc.

In general, these settlements are family projects. The males within the families are the ones that control the projects. Instead, the women maintain vegetable gardens, huertas in their land-plots for their own use. The women work collectively together in maintaining their lots, producing their communities’ food. Their land plots can be anything from half a hectare to two hectares. In some cases, the areas are in collective ownership by associations. The surplus from the vegetable plots that are not used goes to “short capital circuits”, and the protagonists of this form of business-making are women.

In general, the women work in ferias, sell on the street-corners, or through their networks. They use the principle of “just price”, meaning that the price is determined by who buys and sells. These small chains are sometimes integrated into larger commercial chains. During Bolsonaro’s government, however, all public policies directed to small producers were frozen. Besides, the logistics have become more expensive during the pandemic.

Silvia also highlights the destruction of rural territory through the Amazon fires that started last year (2019). Fires have destroyed the forests, and those areas have become available for new capitalist enterprises. The fires were provoked by people who wanted to speculate on land. The newly available lands are being bought by investment funds to speculate. The destruction of the forests means there is nothing to protect anymore. Land can be used for anything. The companies that most benefitted from the fires were mining companies. Mining has also boomed during the pandemic. Silvia highlights how the drought has also played a role in the Amazon fires. As we know, the drought most likely is caused by climate change.

The settlements have turned to local commercialization and solidarity. Not just sales, but non-monetary exchange. Silvia details how in some regions, the smallholder women have a notebook where they note down every week what they produce, its variety and quantity, what they consume and what they donate to institutions such as elderly homes or orphanages. They also note down the “just price”. In Silvia’s view, the way the women make commerce is not strategic, but it is a prefigurative practice that germinates another type of sociability. It includes care and other forms of organising. “Life” has become to be at the centre of social struggles.

The above resonates with the Critical Geography Collective’s work on the micropolitics of care. During the pandemic, these forms of organizing have proved their importance.