Corpos assentados, territórios em movimento: vivências e trajetórias de mulheres do MST

Abstract

This research explores the lives of women in the Denis Gonçalves Settlement, militants of the Landless Rural Workers' Movement (MST), weaving together their life trajectories with threads of resistance, the construction of subjectivities, and collectivity. In the fields of struggle and land, their bodies rise as spaces of autonomy and (re)existence in the face of multiple forms of oppression – colonial, patriarchal, and capitalist – that traverse their journeys.This work invites us to delve into the intimate details of their stories, creating a dialogue between personal paths and collective struggles for social justice, dignity, and food sovereignty. On the skin of theseDe women, marked by processes of territorial and bodily dispossession, the protagonism of their own narratives and political agency emerge, subverting the forms of erasure and invisibility that have been traditionally imposed upon them.Through encounters and in-depth interviews, the research reveals how the fight for land transcends the mere access to geographical territory, unfolding into a fight for life, the creation of new territorialities, and the reconfiguration of social relations in the countryside. By shedding light on the networks of solidarity and the community projects led by these women, the work offers a critical reflection on the intersections of gender, class, and territory, pointing to the importance of rethinking the dynamics of power and production in rural Brazil. It broadens the understanding of agrarian struggles in the country, highlighting the centrality of feminized bodies and their knowledge as seeds of social transformation, capable of cultivating new possibilities of existence in spaces marked by inequality and exclusion.