José Paulo Pietrafesa

The Social Division of Labor in Rural Spaces in Brazil

This study presents an analysis of the course of the agrarian conflicts that existed in Brazil, from 1940 to 2015, which placed the political-ideological centrality of the forces existing in the Brazilian rural sphere. The study is divided into two issues. a) The first, Social division of labor (Mészáros 2004) in the rural area due to the expansion of big rural properties, transforming the land for work into a land for business, opening a sequence of conflicts with peasants. b) The second refers to the analysis of data collected and organized by the Pastoral Land Commission (CPT in Portuguese), identifying agrarian conflicts in Brazil since 1985. The data offered until the year 2015 served as a meeting point to the history of Brazil, marked by its contradictions and memories, which at the same time, remaining alive, as if it is willing to continue to be an eternal present (Jameson 2002), through its structures of spoliation and conflict. Brazil entered the 21 century with large debts to be paid related to the 19 century. One of the biggest debits is the land issue. A question derived from these struggles, and not very simple to answer, is: does the number of families and areas involved in the conflicts change the national land structure in its productive and political aspects? Nowadays, these actions are organized by historical subjects, transforming individual demands into collective proposals in which social subjects perceive themselves as a political force and consolidate knowledge in a permanent educational process. Conflict data registered by the CPT (1985-2016) indicate that there was no change in popular demands for land property and use, and this may also indicate that there was no change in the Brazilian land structure

Nova ruralidade e o modelo de desenvolvimento no bioma Cerrado: as várias “marchas” para o Oeste do Brasil

The paper aims to analyze how the rural activities engaged in the Brazilian Midwest contributed to regional development. The study assumed that the agro industrial sector collaborated not only to the occupation of Brazilian up-country, but also to the urbanization of the states: Goias, Mato Grosso and Mato Grosso do Sul. Furthermore, the regional development policy was inserted during the decades of 1960 to 1980, in a national context of imports substitution. Currently, the Midwest states experienced the expansion of sugar and ethanol industrial complex with new tax breaks and budget resources to the settlement of the sector. JEL-Code | O13; Q13; R58.