The Araguaia guerrilla: peasant resistance, defense of autonomy and continuity of land conflicts in Pará, Maranhão and Tocantins

Abstract

Southeast of Pará, West of Maranhão and Bico do Papagaio Tocantinense are spaces of a real war, which finds its origins in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Encouraged by the military, thousands of squatters migrated from the northeastern interior to land that, according to the federal sphere, would be "without men". However, there was only the tension transference, resulting from an unequal distribution of land and wealth, from the Northeast to the region, which worsened even more with the Third Campaign, in 1974, of the Army against the ombatatants. The repression of the Guerrilla, however, did not mean the end of the ideals (of the guerrillas): the peasants, who for years lived with the members and militants of the PCdoB, also organized themselves. The legacy of the Araguaia Guerrilla, therefore, is an obstacle for the rural oligarchy in the region. The landowners are faced with unions, cooperatives, associations, and other peasant associations, which insist on defending agrarian reform, their ways of life, and the maintenance of their farms, places of daily work, aimed at food self-sufficiency.(AU)