Territories-camps and the construction of a hegemonic territory in southeast Pará

Abstract

Introduction: The encampment territories are products of the struggle of socio-territorial movements that build them in order to produce a counter-hegemonic territory that is related to the dispute over land, but also to the private apparatuses of hegemony with the aim of (re)defining values and conceptions about agrarian reform. To this end, the campers weave relationships that lead to their territorialization, starting from the encampments, building: schools, associations/cooperatives, homes, families and identities in these areas. Methods: With the general aim of understanding the dynamics of the struggle for land involving the encamped people of southeastern Paraná, with a focus on their networking to remain in the territory, research was carried out from 2014 to 2015 and 2021 to 2023, using systematic observation, participant research, questionnaires and semi-structured interviews in the territories-encampments organized by the MST in southeastern Paraná as methodological procedures. Results: These encampments are articulated in a geographic network of peasant solidarity in the struggle for land and materialize the policy of scale used by socio-territorial movements to remain in the territory, through the creation of Settlement Projects. Conclusion: Socio-territorial movements build camp-territories through the construction of a geographic network of peasant solidarity in the struggle for land and the politics of scale. They develop a set of economic-political and cultural-symbolic relationships that allow for the construction of a territory of permanent struggle and resistance on various geographic scales against agribusiness and mining; of communication that allows for the political formation of subjects; and of spatial interaction that creates conditions for close and collective sociability.