O pensamento social brasileiro e o latifúndio: um debate sobre a propriedade da terra e a questão agrária nos anos de 1960

Abstract

The present research focuses on analysis the debate about the agrarian reform undertaken in the years of 1960, from the perspective of some Brazilian intellectuals, like Alberto Passos Guimarães and Josué de Castro, who interpret the “latifúndio” as the causal element of the inequalities social and poverty situation in the countryside, identifying the urgency and imminence of agrarian reform in the country at the time. In this period a context of political polarization, effervescence of the social movements and strong popular clamor for the Reformas de Base (Basic Reforms), in particular, the agrarian reform. In view of this scenario, attempts are underway in the government of João Goulart to make it feasible, such as the creation of institutions for the defense of the rural worker, as well as the sending to the National Congress of a request for modification of the Federal Constitution regarding permission of the payment of land expropriations through public debt securities, aiming at the democratization of land. However, the president will face strong resistance to such a move. In view of the above, the research endeavors to understand why agrarian reform has not advanced even in the face of a whole scenario conducive to its realization. This is part of the examination of the concept of private property in order to raise theoretical and methodological resources to proceed to the understanding of such narrative in the case in point. Subsequently, important parliamentary discourses of the period are invoked for analysis, along with some works of the aforementioned intellectuals, aiming to apprehend their respective positions and influences in the unfolding of the debate that was formed, anchoring itself in an analytical approach that allows to conceive the desacralization and the socio-historical characterization of the property. In other words, it seeks to discuss, question and understand it as a human creation, therefore fruit of a complex social dynamic. It is concluded that agrarian reform was halted in the 1960s as a result of the ingrained notion of private land ownership present in the national ideology, in its turn conceiving it as an untouchable point by certain dominant groups with strong political influence.