Territorialidades nos acampamentos do Movimento dos Trabalhadores Rurais Sem Terra na região Sudeste do Paraná (2005-2025)

Abstract

This work is based on the premise of understanding how territorialities manifest themselves within the encampments of the Landless Rural Workers Movement (MST), adopting an integrative perspective that understands territoriality as a result of material and immaterial ties established between subjects and territory, articulating relations of power, control, and territorial domination with symbolic, identity-related, and everyday dimensions. The encampments, in turn, are understood as multidimensional territories that, through occupations, the delimitation of boundaries, and the settlement of encamped families, initiate the process of peasant territorialization in capitalist territory. For analytical purposes, two encampments in the southeastern region of Paraná were studied: the Reduto de Caraguatá Encampment, in the municipality of Paula Freitas, and the Vitória do Contestado Encampment, in the municipality of General Carneiro. To this end, we employed a qualitative approach grounded in theoretical and empirical studies, with particular emphasis on fieldwork conducted through participatory observation within the encampments, semi-structured interviews with encamped peasants, and a literature review. The results show that territorialities manifest themselves in a diversified manner, which we term (im)material, expressed in disputes over territorial control, the delimitation of borders, internal and external conflicts, as well as contradictions related to agriculture, religiosity, the historical heritage of the caboclo people, and social identities—elements that play a fundamental role in the construction of the encampments and manifest themselves heterogeneously, revealing the complexity of the social relations that constitute these territories. Thus, the MST encampments in the southeastern region of Paraná constitute complex multidimensional territories, marked by different territorialities and in constant construction and transformation.