As práticas de saúde no MST do Vale Do Rio Doce, MG: normas e valores na atividade

Abstract

The Landless Rural Workers Movement (MST) of Brazil is one of the most significant social movements that struggle for land and worldwide agrarian reform. Understanding the struggle for agrarian reform in a broader perspective than land distribution, the MST demands to develop health practices consistent with its ideals of country life. In this way, this research aimed to investigate health practices developed in MST settlements and camps, situated in the region of the Rio Doce Valley, in Minas Gerais. This is a qualitative research, a case study, and the investigative techniques used were focus group, participant observation and semi-structured interview. It was adopted as a theoretical reference the Ergology, which analyzes the work as a process that enrolls dialogues about norms and values which, in turn, confer the same capacity to institute norms and values to the environment. For the development of this study we started from an ideal health conception of MST (antecedent norms), looking for identify the practices that were consistent with this ideal. About this, were investigated the activities: agroecological farming, teaching, actions involving health and environment, care, all of them developed by a women's collective. Such practices were investigated in order to identify the debate of values and norms and possible renormalizations that we found in activity theory esfere, for this we also used the theoretical support of Public Health. The results showed the movement of related values: health, as a result of better conditions of life and work in the field, the right to the health, the struggle for agrarian reform and the transformation of society, the appreciation of popular techniques and popular knowledge about the agroecology and the health; the promoting of individuals autonomy before the capitalist model of development for the field, of food industry and of the medical-industrial complex; the care about life and nature, and the solidarity. It was noted certain renormalization of biomedical norms in the activities that we studied and, in some extent, the incorporation of the project/inheritance of MST health. This ability of renormalization activity seems more powerful as they reach the collectives, showing that the introduction of new norms of health in MST goes through political organization of the camps and the settlements and on its own organizative way. As a social movement, the MST proposes norms for your own; shows that health can not be offered by market values, and shows the close relationship between health and land reform, mutually. We stress the importance that the MST continues to systematizing experiences and elaborating references that can serve as guiding health practices, in the normative sense of the activity.