Afogados: o processo de luta pela terra dos desalojados pela barragem do Passo Real (1967-1988)

Abstract

This thesis analyzed the historical process of struggle for land by those displaced by the Passo Real dam, between 1967 and 1988. A process of struggle for land that is part of a set of rural conflicts generated by the contradictions of developmental policies, consolidated during the period of the Civil-Military Dictatorship. In 1963, the state of Rio Grande do Sul expropriated approximately 23,000 hectares of land to build the Passo Real Hydroelectric Power Plant (CHE Passo Real) accumulation dam, displacing more than 2,000 families of rural workers. Starting in 1967, these displaced people began to organize land struggles. After the first mobilizations of the displaced people, in 1969, the state and federal governments signed a cooperation agreement, in which the federal government committed to resettling the families. Meager compensation was paid and, initially, only a portion of the families were resettled, with the promise of resettling the others in a second phase. However, time passed and the resettlement of the remaining displaced families did not take place. Thus, the displaced people began to organize themselves politically to demand resettlement on the land in a context of increasing precariousness of their social space. Thus, in the context of the political reopening that developed from the end of the 1970s, the struggle of the displaced people of Passo Real began to be composed of a plurality of socio-political agents. Thus, through the power struggle generated by the plurality of agents involved, we identified a problem characterized by the emergence of external disputes over political articulation, as well as by the difficulties of organization and internal cohesion in the struggle for land by the displaced people of Passo Real, who were going through a traumatic experience, accumulating more than a decade without a definitive solution to their problem. Thus, the central objective of this thesis was to understand the meaning of the process of struggle for land by the displaced people of Passo Real. Methodologically, we sought to understand how the actions of struggle for land by the displaced people of Passo Real were produced, seeking to understand the social space of the displaced people themselves, in the discourses and practices developed in defense of their struggle. Thus, we found that the displaced people produced a memory that gave legitimacy to their struggle and established an identity symbolized by the nickname "Afogados do Passo Real". However, although this identity provided a meaning for their struggle, we found that the Afogados were unable to consolidate an internal coherence and became fragmented until their struggle came to an end, without everyone being able to gain access to land. In this sense, it was possible to conclude that the struggle for land by those displaced from Passo Real was a process of confronting the forces that were drowning them, inserted in a field marked by the tension between dialectical relations of subordination and emancipation.