A estância metamorfoseou-se: (re)configurações territoriais e expressões da reterritorialização camponesa na campanha gaúcha (1990- 2007)

Abstract

This thesis has as its main objective to understand the process of sociospacial (re) configuration occurring in the Geographic agrarian Mesoregion of the Southwest Rio- Grandense/Campanha Gaúcha (RS), especially from the opposition between the latifundiarian space and the rural settlements, producing significant expressions of rural reterritorialization in the regional space. In order to accomplish this analysis, the time focus is limited to after 1990, which highlights the struggle for the possession of land in Rio Grande do Sul, and consequently, the installation process of the projects of rural settlements in the region. Thus, a new territorial dynamics becomes evident in some boroughs of Campanha Gaúcha after the process of rural reterritorialization. Our methodology is guided in a qualitative approach. From that premise, we intend to meet the proposed objectives. In the theoretical framework we discuss the importance of incorporating the concept of Territorializationdeterritorialization- reterritorialization (TDR) in the studies on the different territorialities promoted by social movements in the countryside. We also use the concept of territorial identity, as in the referred analysis these are concepts which are complementary. This is justified because we clearly identified two territorial identities present in expressions of rural reterritorialization in the region. We have detected that the territorial configuration of Campanha Gaúcha in this beginning of the XXI century is quite complex due to the heterogeneity of the actors involved in the territorial plot, presenting itself as a regional space where roughness is evident, but with significant changes underway. Therefore, we are before a new rural territoriality which expresses its sociocultural manifestations through material and non-material elements, promoting a metamorphosis in the regional latifundiarian space. From these new relationships, the reterritorialized peasants express in this new territory their territorial identity. In this context, the agrarian space of Campanha Gaúcha does not present itself as homogeneous as demonstrated in the discourse of regional identity of the last century. Although it remains the essence of the Gaúcho latifundiarian space, of the traditional border peasant, of the capitalist tenant of the earth, it is also the scene of new experiences nurtured by the territorialization of the struggle for the land, and the sociocultural expressions of the rural reterritorialization.