Peasant memory and resistance in times of repression in Baixada Fluminense
Land conflicts, Peasantry, Brazilian military government, dictatorship
Much is said in Brazil - both in specialized literature and in memorialistic representations - about the repression that targeted the student movement and organizations of the revolutionary left during the military dictatorship, emphasizing the year 1968 as a landmark for the intensification of repression or even as the effective beginning of the dictatorship. However, the repression that struck the poorest sectors of the working class, especially the peasants, is little known. The present work aims to analyze the memorial representations of forms of resistance and peasant organization, as well as repressive events that befell the rural populations of the Baixada Fluminense a region with peri-urban areas near the city of Rio de Janeiro, where there was a great mobilization of rural workers' entities in the struggle for land in the period prior to the coup of 1964. Taking as a case for this study a locality known as Pedra Lisa, nowadays in the municipality of Japeri, which was connected with several other peasant mobilizations in the Baixada Fluminense, documentary and journalistic analyses were carried out, as well as interviews with local residents who had experienced these events. In order to analyze memorial dynamics over time, comparisons were made with interviews provided by other researchers, conducted in recent decades, with residents of this same locality. It is verified that for these populations, the repression does not begin or end with the dictatorship, but intensifies immediately after the coup of 1964, generating memorial dynamics that change over time, but always marked by fear and forced attitudes of forgetfulness.