ASSENTAMENTO SERAFIM: MEMÓRIAS DE MIGRANTES E A LUTA PELA TERRA NO SUL DO MARANHÃO NO PERÍODO DE 1950 A 2015

Abstract

This work investigates the fights over land ownership in the state of Maranhão, specifically in the southern part of the state, in the city of Estreito. It was fought by migrant rural workers from many parts of the state who occupied the area of Fazenda Serafim, which resulted on the creation of the encampment/settlement Serafim in the decade of 1980, resulting from the paths of itinerancy, motivated by the goal to achieve better conditions of life. Our objective is to understand through memories and experiences of the workers, the extent of the fights they fought, how they assign meanings to their actions in this historical process of the rural fights and in which way their actions transformed the reality of the region. The south of Maranhão presents very defined aspects in terms of geography, with the predominance of plateaus, which has the vegetation of cerrado. There are also rivers which are used as limits for states and cities, with strong connection to the rural space. Understanding the practices that involve social groups that fight for land ownership in the south of the state is to go through a winding road with many footprints and obstacles. It is to tread a path of a past full of fragments. The conflicts which occurred in this space were a result of disputes for the appropriation of wastelands, permeated not only by physical violence, but also by symbolical violence. The individuals who constituted the encampment/settlement Serafim are strongly linked to the rural space, because they lived, worked or because they had as the base of the family the origins and the identity with the land. The generations there present are reelaborating their ways of life, their practices, perspectives, but above all constructing representations which are resulting from experience and the belonging to the place. These, live in the rural space, reelaborating significations through the way how they built the place, favouring ways of life and work.