The other side of high-tech agriculture:the hidden quilombola struggle of the Saco das Almas community against the spatial expansion of agribusiness in Brejo, Maranhão

Abstract

This article presents an analysis of the impacts of the territorialization and spatialization of soybean farming in the state of Maranhão, which, on the one hand, generate wealth and abundance for agribusiness representatives, on the other hand, negatively affect indigenous peoples and traditional peoples whose way of life is affected both by the expropriation of their territories through land grabbing, to which they react, giving rise to socio-territorial conflicts, and by ecosystem changes resulting from deforestation of the Cerrado biome, in the specific case under analysis, as well as by environmental contamination due to the excessive use of pesticides that affect local biodiversity, thus giving rise to socio-environmental conflicts. From this general picture of the immediate region of Chapadinha in Maranhão, we highlight the Saco das Almas quilombo, directly affected, where its residents, who suffer the hardships caused by the predatory expansion of the agricultural frontier, develop strategies of struggle and resistance against all types of violence coming from representatives of agribusiness, demand the regularization of their territory, call for public policies that can solve such issues or, at least, mitigate them, enabling the maintenance of their way of life and their social reproduction.