O conflito agrário entre a madeireira Araupel e o MST no Sudoeste do Paraná e o exercício de distintas masculinidades

Abstract

This thesis aims to understand how the land conflict between the Araupel Lumber and the Landless Rural Workers’ Movement (MST) in the Southwest of Paraná was constituted by the exercise of distinct masculinities. We investigated elements and the dynamics of the agrarian conflict in the rural land structure in the state of Parana and the distinct masculinities constituting them. The dispute configures a common dynamics already observed in several land disputes in Brazil. They include undue appropriation of public lands by powerful groups, eviction of small farmers, squatters, and traditional populations with extreme violence, as well as the illegal work of land registry offices, associated with the State appropriation by political and economic elites, who hamper the fair and legal distribution of the land. The thesis was developed from a spatial cut of the Dom Tomás Balduíno settlement, area still disputed by Araupel and the MST and where an important slaughter occurred in 2016, whose perpetrators remain unpunished. Two relevant sources of investigation were used: documents, which include civil processes made available by the Instituto Nacional de Colonização e Reforma Agrária (Incra) (National Institute for Colonization and Land Reform); and oral sources, resulting from 25 interviews (with 21 male and 4 female interviewees). The discursive content was systematized using the methodology developed by Silva and Silva (2016). The data analyzed revealed that the Dom Tomás Balduíno settlement is a part of the whole in movement, resulting from processes where the elites from Paraná e the state landowners concentration were reproduced by means of violence and the political control of parties, thus establishing a significant influence on public policies, mainly those related to the land reform and use, as in the Araupel case. Although local elites have appropriated privileged places in the Paraná political scenery, the Federal administration offered certain resistance, modifying the correlation of forces in the conflict. In the federal sphere, the involvement of the Federal Prosecutors (MPF) and the position taken by Incra provided some fresh air to the persistence of the occupation and settlement in the region under dispute. At the local level, the everyday practice of resistance and occupation of the Dom Tomás Balduíno area is supported by the routine of work, political relations, and the fight against violence. The public and private spheres’ actions are developed by different identities, one of the most important is the exercise of masculinities. Conquering the land, working it and negotiating war and peace are male realities, exercised without reflecting upon their correspondence with current social norms. The persistence of the Dom Tomás Balduíno settlement is enabled by the everyday exercise of material and symbolic networks, performed by masculinity codes such as the use of force, loyalty to the MST movement and the friendship networks with exchange of favors, respect to ancestralism, and political negotiation skills, along with the ability to raise and support their families. Therefore, this thesis presents, in addition to the macrostructural relationships that involve the occupation and permanence in the Dom Tomás Balduíno settlement, a contribution to the understanding of the local and everyday scale of resistance and powers