Government and Popular Participation in the Brazilian Eastern Amazon Region

Abstract

This article intends to reflect on the popular participation in the collective struggles for land access in the Brazilian Western Amazon region, specifically the South and Southwest regions of the state of Pará, Brazil. This research also aims to contribute on the analysis of the different roles the Brazilian Government takes in these struggles, both as controlling entity towards the social movements (using physical violence as well as symbolic violence), and as part of the struggle when it takes over the distribution of expropriated land for landless settlers. Our analysis is based on specific literature, documents and interviews of leaderships from different social movements, as well as agents representing the Comissão Pastoral da Terra (CPT) of the region. The term “popular participation” is used here through a critical purview that understands that collective actions are more than the restricted and traditional meaning of popular participation within institutionalized spaces designed to allow different levels of public oversight towards state policies and policy making. We propose an understanding of popular participation that encompasess collective actions not necessarily accepted by the Brazilian Government, but that generate results towards the territorialization of peasants, the increase of transitory and final rural settlements, rural workers resistance and the improvement of the ability of settlers to remains in land autonomously and with dignity.