Peasant movements on the Via Campesina: a comparative study to Brasil and Colombia

Abstract

Since the 1990s, various peasant movements from around the world built a global articulation of movements, in response to the hegemonic model of the capitalist Agriculture development. The articulation took place because of the need to build an emancipatory development model to face the predatory advance of capital in the countryside. This articulation came out with the creation of Via Campesina in 1993 which has played an important role in the construction of agrarian development proposals based on the principles of food sovereignty and peasant Agroecology, claiming the construction of resistance territories and territorialities. In Latin America the agrarian question in the XXI century presents new scenarios highlighting the main role of the movements. The research developed has indicated that the overcoming of classical reading in which the central element was limited only to the conflict between peasantry and capital. In this context, the emancipatory character of the Via Campesina and the movements that articulate in it, present two central elements. The analysis of the conflicts between the peasantry and the capital is maintained. And the new analysis on the construction of territories and territorialities of resistance, that indicates the capacity of collective praxis to transmute the reality. Via Campesina's political guidelines and actions of these movements in Latin American countries, including Brazil Colombia, emerge with a new path in which food sovereignty and peasant Agroecology constitute central elements of an emancipatory territorial development model. In this regard, we propose to work with the concept of socio-territorial movements as a theoretical and methodological approach. The analysis of movements through the territory and the timeliness of discussions on the agrarian question are essential to understand the diversity of movements that are articulated inside the Via Campesina, acting on various scales, demonstrating the profound complexity of the reality in which they operate. For this, we start from the comparative analysis of the territorial-historical-material conditions in which the peasant movement reproduces itself in Brazil and Colombia, articulating itself in a fighting of multiple dimensions and scales. Addressing these realities leads to the identification of the essence fighting, that in the collective dimension sets up assorted territories where they produce the actions that determine their development models. Hence, we need to go deeper into some questions such as: what is the role of Via Campesina in the construction of territories and forms of resistance of movements in the fighting against the predatory advance of capital in both countries, taking into account its wide diversity and complexity? What are the characteristics of the organizational structure of the movements that integrate it; what guidelines have historically defined the construction of political socialization spaces and the production of territories?; what is your schedule and how it is related to the territorial development model based on food sovereignty and peasant Agroecology, that in the countryside and in the city daily life reaffirm the essence of a collective and diverse identity? (AU)