Assentamento é mais que um projeto: a assistência técnica nos assentamentos rurais

Abstract

The present study analyzes the existing conflicts between the settled people and the public policy agents, specially the technicians, whose job is to supply technical assistance to the rural settlements. Looking back to the history of the policy of technical assistance and rural extension in Brazil, it was verified that it reflects disputes between different conceptions of agricultural reform, models of agricultural teaching, models of agricultural production, and also different models of the technical assistance policy itself, among other examples. These disputes make themselves more evident in specific historical contexts, especially when settlements are created and a determined model of what being settled means is projected. The Lumiar Project was particularly analyzed, which was created in an attempt to specifically assist settlements and also to implement the decentralization of the technical assistance policy, looking for a larger participation from the representative entities of workers in the processes of project management. Starting with the analysis of primary documents, reports developed by the technical team from Lumiar Project that was acting in two settlements in the state of Rio de Janeiro, and also with the study of secondary data, it was possible to perceive some dimensions of the conflict between the technicians and the settled people. On one side, the technician, who has a specific academic and political formation that will interfere in the understanding of the reality and on his/her intervention, needs to answer to the rules that were set by public policies. On the other side, the settled people, with their expectations and survival strategies (being an agriculturist or not), life stories and dreams.