Aprender na prática: narrativas e histórias de lideranças camponesas, no sertão, norte de Minas, nas últimas três décadas

Abstract

The goal of this paper is to comprehend and analyze the social practice of peasant leaderships as locus for experiences of learning, knowledge and values that guide the collective action and constitute political identities, manifested in their way into social engagement, in Sertão, Norte of Minas Gerais, in the last three decades (XX and XXI centuries). Social practice is, therefore, assumed as of instructive and complex dimension inherent to social life, and the social movements and organizations, as place and locus of human formation, in practice, as defined by Jean Lave e Etienne Wenger (1991) In order to make this research, 13 leaderships were interviewed, men and women, between 33 and 68 years old, involved since the 1980s in social movements in favor of land reform and fundamental rights. Their narratives approach their life itineraries, work and training training on the fight. They recognize in the social movements a pedagogical dimension and an educational principle that develops itself in the process of experiences lived on daily practice. They are peasant leaderships little educated or non-educated at all that produce a practical knowledge, valid and useful to life. Their political trajectory, that begins in communitarian or school activities and based on the ideas of the Liberation Theology, gained visibility through the new unionism in the 80s and, more recently, have been expressing itself through the new ways of fighting for land and the defense of ecological principals. When self-called farmers, geraizeiros, Sem Terra, inhabitants of areas of agrarian reform, family farmers, guardians of cerrado, peasants, popular connoisseurs, union men and environmentalists, they indicate the entanglement of identities, social roles and politic practices, that highly influence the personal trajectories and the collective changes economic, politic and cultural producing a heritage of experiences, values and eco-social knowledge, that keep appearing, transforming themselves and are incorporated into the personal and social histories of each generation of leaderships and in the body of social fights. Its about an unbreakable entanglement related to the experience of the lived time and sense of belonging to the place: of political and territorial identity. They present a view of knowledge that fits with the place and common sense, besides being oriented towards the practice. Based on the anthropology of learning, social-cultural theories - situated activity or learning through practice as defined by Jean Lave and on the view of criticism of the post-colonialists, as Boaventura de Souza Santos and Arturo Escobar we have as a goal to contribute to legitimate these practices and social knowledge, questioning therefore the monoculture of knowledge of western science and of the colonialism of power.