Enclosures: Images of peasants in contemporary Brazil

Abstract

In this text we aim to analyze the effects of the expansion of agrarian capitalism in some regions of Brazil, dominated by the planting of sugar cane, soya, eucalyptus and livestock. We propose a reflection that goes beyond the economic and political aspects, whereas this process as occurred and is occurring in primitive accumulation is founded through the expropriation of land - including the Commons goods - and also of the subjectivities of the peasants, such as small farmers, squatters, indigenous, quilombolas. The process of primitive accumulation imposed is characterized by violence, enslavement and enclosure of the land and of the bodies. The discussion will be focused on the conflictive dialectic produced by the enclosure. In relation to indigenous peoples, in many cases, there have been massacres and genocide. The loss of objective conditions produces exchange in the social relations of gender, insofar as men are affected by mobility and women by immobility, both processes controlled by the logic of accumulation. The control over the peasants turned into workforce prints them the stamp of mechanized bodies, dominated by suffering. With regard to women, they remain surrounded by plantations of agribusiness in small portions of land – plots - relegated to the role of family reproduction. For these reflections we rely on several investigations that prioritize documents, life stories and oral reports. The insertion of the reproductive sphere in the analysis of primitive accumulation, which accompanies the development of these capitals, brings new elements to the understanding of the forms of exploration and also of resistance.