“From my family to your family”: Strategies of political resistance to the expansion of Brazil’s agri-food frontier

This seminar will explore changes in the forms of political resistance to the violent and environmentally degrading expansion of the agricultural frontier in Brazil, focusing on the expansion of soybean and cattle production in the Southern Amazon. Recent right-wing governments and the coronavirus pandemic have resulted in an increase in assassinations of political leaders, deforestation and impoverishment connected to this expansion. This seminar will explore two initiatives: the Ubuntu Project (2017-2019) and the Tocantins Peasant Women's Fair (2020-2024), demonstrating the emergence of new political strategies based on political activation of peasant and quilombola ways of life in regional urban scenarios. Through these strategies, indigenous and African ideas as (such as bem-viver and ubuntu) become political platforms, traditional technologies (such as agroecological production) are instituted as solutions for environmental degradation and forms of (communal) property are placed as a counterpoint to the commodification and financialization of life and nature.

 

Dr Dernival Venâncio Ramos Júnior is an Associate Professor of History at the Federal University of the North of Tocantins (UFNT), Brazil, and an IHSS Visiting Fellow (November 2024). His work explores socio-environmental conflict, political resistance in traditional communities in the Southern Amazon and the expansion of Brazil’s agri-food frontier. He co-directs the Centre of Research and External Engagement in Agroecological Knowledge and Practices (NEUZA) - an interdisciplinary research centre which works closely with Brazil’s Pastoral Land Commission and other social movements.