(Des)politização, agrotóxicos e saúde : disputas hegemônicas entre o governo Bolsonaro e as Bruxas Sem Terra

Abstract

This dissertation analyzes the dynamics of depoliticization and politicization of health, focusing on discussions around pesticides and the Brazilian countryside, during the first year of the Bolsonaro government. The aim is to identify the depoliticizing flows that mark the government's policies and speeches regarding pesticides and carefully explore the tactics of resistance to these movements undertaken, particularly, by the Health Sector of the Landless Rural Workers Movement (MST) to denaturalize the agribusiness model and the indiscriminate use of pesticides as the only viable production path. In particular, our focus is on the practices of the “Landless Witches”, the way women from the MST Health Sector refer to themselves in direct relation with the women healers from the Middle Ages, and seek to propose agroecology and healthy eating as politicized forms of thinking about the Brazilian countryside and agricultural production. In this sense, our analysis is crossed by discussions of various natures, such as the democratic crises and the relationship with the neoliberal project and the issues of gender and care as inputs, then, to think about the political dimension of health proposed by the politicizing actions of the MST. In methodological terms, the work makes two moves: 1) analysis of the Bolsonaro government's policies and speeches regarding the record release of pesticides in its first year; 2) investigation of the discourses and practices of the MST, in the same period, through the analysis of the Movement's website and interviews with activists in the health sector in Sul de Minas and Vale do Rio Doce. The work also undertakes a methodological effort to propose strategies for analyzing the processes of depoliticization and politicization from a communicational perspective.