A redução das ocupações de terra e as mudanças no confronto em torno da reforma agrária no Brasil

Abstract

This work has as objective to contribute to understanding the relations between the reduction of the number of land occupations and the changes in confrontation over agrarian reform in Brazil. The occupations make up the repertoires of peasant and rural workers organizations since the beginning of 1960‟s. With the establishment of the military regime, after the 1964 coup, this repertoire was undermined, and reemployed at the end of 1970‟s, in the re-democratization period. In the following decades, 1980‟s and 1990‟s, there was a trend to increase the number of occupations, reaching the peak in 1999, when there were 856 occupations. However, from 2005 this trend has reversed, reaching the mark of 116 occupations in 2010. From statistics and comparatives analyzes based on data extracted from primary and secondary sources, it could be stablished that the phenomenon of reduction of occupation is related to at least four social conditions that express the changes in the confrontation over agrarian reform, namely: (1) the change in the political orientation of the organization that mostly employed this repertoire of action over the last three decades; (2) the emergence of repressive governments that do not recognize the occupation as a legitimate means to claim the expropriation and redistribution of land; (3) the reduction of a contingent of individuals willing to engage in land occupations; (4) the weakening of the support of relevant actors to the agrarian reform banner.