Educação popular, resistência e memória: o caso de Pedra Lisa na Baixada Fluminense

Abstract

This research aims to reclaim the importance of the social and political agents who, in the 1950s to 1960s, before the 1964 Military Coup in Brazil, were part of peasant-resistance movements in Pedra Lisa – a set of semi-rural communities inside Baixada Fluminense, State of Rio de Janeiro – highlighting, through processes of active and participative research, the memory of their struggle, as well as making it available to the members of of Pedra Lisa's communities today. The Pedra Lisa's Peasant Association was one of the first civil organizations to resist and fight for land at Baixada Fluminense. Self-identified as posseiros, those peasants, who lived and worked in their properties for decades in Pedra Lisa – then belonging to the 8th district of the city of Nova Iguaçu – had to deal with batch-making companies, jagunços, grileiros and local political figures with their own agendas. Therefore, the late 1950s was a time of intense dispute for land at that area. In this setting, the foundation of the Popular Literacy School for Children and Adults, carried out by the Pedra Lisa's Peasant Association, stand out as one of the most substantial experiences of popular education emerging in the region. Notably, the popular school sought to go beyond its primary role of reading and writing: "the school also taught things about life". The materials collected during research, including information about leaders and other subjects of that historical context (1950-60), were cultivated, in 2016, with the participation of members of the Agrarian Center Miguel Couto, of the Pedra Lisa's Peasant Association, based on a participatory research/action research dynamic, as well as observing the parameters of popular education, thus seeking to strengthen the memories of popular movements at Baixada and, furthermore, longing for the writing of another story, now taking into account the perspectives of the people who dedicated their lives to those communities.