Cooperação e organização em assentamentos rurais: a proposta das Comunas da Terra e a virada do MST para os “urbanos”

Abstract

This research aims to study the processes of cooperation and organization in rural settlements achieved through political action and social mobilization led by the Landless Rural Workers Movement (MST). The empirical focus is on the experiences of settlements located in the Metropolitan Region of São Paulo, called by MST “Comunas da Terra” (Land Communes), “a new form of settlement” organized by the Movement with the members of its base camped and settled in the state of São Paulo. One of the distinctive features of these settlements is the fact that they are established in areas close to urban centers, being formed by people who usually come from urban peripheries, which do not necessarily have previous agricultural experience or some kind of socio-cultural peasant heritage and may include unemployed urban workers and even homeless people. The “Comunas da Terra” proposal plans settlements organization by trying to establish procedures for cooperation between the settlers. The history of the turn of the MST for the recruitment of a public of “urban” type is a central element in the thesis treated through empirical and bibliographic research.