From peasant trajectory life space to agribusiness territory

the municipality of Vera, MT

Abstract

The study seeks to address the occupied territory in the municipality of Vera, MT, during the process of capitalist expansion. The initial occupation was due to the expansion of the capitalist agricultural frontier to the Midwest and Amazon and occurred in several phases, generating profound socioenvironmental implications. Many peasants went there, needing to open spaces to settle. Subsequently, logging boosted the arrival of new migrants when part of the camp's workforce was displaced to logging. The activity was intense in the 1980s and 1990s, moving rural spaces and the city with several processing industries. In a more recent period (2000 onwards), there was the territory appropriation by agribusiness linked to commodity corporations, bringing economic and social implications to the population of the small town and even to peasant agriculture. The suppression of the forest for the purpose of developing commercial grain agriculture caused enormous degradation to the biome and, at the same time, inserted the territory alienation to the corporate world. Therefore, the perspective of income and work is almost entirely linked to large-scale commercial agriculture.