The "good farmer" and his "encostados": strategies and struggle for land in the city of Valença (1850-1888)

• Grant number: 17/18127-8
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Master
• Effective date (Start): December 01, 2017
• Effective date (End): May 31, 2019
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - History - History of Brazil
• Principal Investigator: Ricardo Figueiredo Pirola
• Grantee: Felipe de Melo Alvarenga
• Host Institution: Instituto de Filosofia e Ciências Humanas (IFCH). Universidade Estadual de Campinas (UNICAMP). Campinas , SP, Brazil
• Associated research grant: 13/21979-5 - Between slavery and the burden of freedom: workers and forms of labor exploitation in historical perspective, AP.TEM

Abstract

The objective of this research project is to understand the effects of the Land Act of 1850 in the city of Valença, focusing on the strategies adopted by different social actors in that moment of regularization of land ownership. This research seeks to identify how the creation of a normative system of land regularization allowed the opening of interstitial spaces where individuals acted to legitimize their portions of land, especially for the case of those farmers who were neither masters nor slaves. In this sense, this research project is part of a broader thematic project of the Centro de Pesquisa de História Social da Cultura (CECULT) of Unicamp, entitled "Between Slavery and the Burden of Freedom: the workers and the forms of exploitation of labor in a historical perspective", contributing to the understanding of the forms of work and dependence that marked the relations between owners and rural workers. The most recent historiography on the so-called "homens livres e pobres" advanced in an attempt to understand how that category "squeezed" between the two poles of the slave society was able to impose limitations on the power of the masters and fight for the right to land in nineteenth-century Brazil. However, we believe that we can contribute to the debates proposed by the most recent bibliography starting from a reduction of the scale of observation. Understanding the interpersonal relations built between the valencian farmers themselves and the uniqueness of their strategies in this diffuse context of disciplining the appropriation of land can offer us a field for research. It is proposed a method of "nominative linkage" in sources of different types. In the search for names of farmers who have declared their lands after the law, we will seek to compare parochial and land records and civil and criminal proceedings. It is based on the hypothesis that "land conflicts" could have been marked by customary strategies of access to land, based on personal and / or family relations, which were eventually mobilized by farmers interested in legitimizing their land. (AU)

Academic Publications

(References retrieved automatically from State of São Paulo Research Institutions)

ALVARENGA, Felipe de Melo. From Indigeneous Lands to Princesa da Serra Fluminense: the process of coffee property realization in Valença (Rio de Janeiro Province, 19th Century). 2019. Master's Dissertation - Universidade Estadual de Campinas (UNICAMP). Instituto de Filosofia e Ciências Humanas Campinas, SP.