Integração Gaúcha Settlement

Integração Gaúcha was named accordingly because peasants from some 30 municipalities from all regions of Rio Grande do Sul (the state whose people are called gaúchos) were integrated in it. This was probably the most successful agrarian reform settlement I have seen so far, which I believe to be due to two major factors: its proximity to the large urban center of Porto Alegre (a mere 15km across the rivers) and the subsequent facility of marketing production; and its relatively small and politically conscious population (68 families), which facilitates strong civic ties and democratic organization. Still, the settlement is not without its challenges, among which remain the lack of resources for production, the difficulties of creating new forms of social organization (such as cooperatives), and, which is the other side of the “proximity to urban center” coin, the ease with which some settled families can obtain income from off farm labor limiting their agricultural production.

This land was previously owned by a government institution that researched alternative agricultural techniques for the production of rice in areas of high ecological risk and importance, but the institution had been mostly un-functional and underfunded for years, managed by a board of wealthy farmers, and the majority of the land had been “rented out” (under highly questionable legal terms) to a large farmer who operated it as a conventional plantation, with synthetic fertilizers and pesticides and the threat of violence against the peasantry encroaching nearby and all. As in other similar stories, the farmer eventually stacked up enough debt and the land came under enough pressure from the landless peasants (who began to carry out occupations and to blockade the entry to the farm in order to demand its expropriation) that the state finally caved in and expropriated the land some 16 years ago. (The farmer’s debt and the legal status of the land as public property are important considerations, since agrarian reform in Brazil is still carried out “with due compensation,” unlike agrarian reforms carried out under conditions of revolution or foreign occupation.)

The settlement is located in a mostly low wetland (várzea) like Filhos de Sepé, so rice is also the predominant crop of extended production. Like at the other settlement, ecological considerations restrict all production to organic techniques, but unlike at Filhos de Sepé, there seem to be fewer challenges managing and maintaining this practice collectively. However, the ease with which other goods can be marketed allows for a much more substantial production of vegetables, dairy products, chicken and pigs, and even baked goods (this last having been originally structured as all-women collectives that have since broken down into two private bakeries that employ female wage labor). The production of rice is sent to two other settlements near the metropolitan region for processing, storage and marketing (Assentamentos Capela and Tápes), since the cooperatives at those other two larger settlements have more of the necessary infrastructure for such tasks. The vegetables are marketed in farmers’ markets in Porto Alegre twice a week, where they obtain relatively higher prices as organic produce (but still at quite low prices, especially when compared to organic produce in the United States).

I was taken there by Mauro, who has been at Integração Gaúcha since the beginning of the occupations there, and hosted there by him and his partner Chris, a lovely couple that met and married within the Movement itself. While I was there, Chris was putting the final touches on her geography dissertation on the negative impact of agribusiness on women (an incredibly interesting piece of feminist-socialist-peasant research) and Mauro was straining to do most of the domestic work (including caring for their two young daughters) while keeping up the family’s income through work on their vegetable gardens, rice crops and farmers’ market. Luckily for him, Chris’s sister, Luciana, was also visiting and helped care for the young some of the time as well. Moreover, they have given part of their land to Mauro’s brother and his partner, who built their own residence and vegetable garden there as well, and who also help care for the young some of the time. This practice of hosting extended family in their land is not uncommon at Integração Gaúcha and speaks to the success of the settlement as a whole (since, instead of losing substantial portions of the originally settled population through abandoned plots and concentrated ownership, a mark of settlement failures, here the settlement community and production continues to expand and employ every nook and cranny of the land).

Chris and Mauro own 7 hectares of high ground, on which they have built their residence (and his brother’s), a fruit orchard and their vegetable gardens, and also 14 hectares of low land, on which they farm rice. The 7 hectares of high ground are not contiguous, in order for their vegetable gardens to be located alongside the land of two other families near an irrigation reservoir (açude), making up a little over 3 hectares of vegetable production. These three families cooperate informally on the seedlings, irrigation, care, harvest and marketing of their vegetables, grossing “easily” R$15 thousand per week. Mauro and Chris’s production is the least significant of these, then, rendering for them R$1.500 to R$3.000 per week. Mauro speaks mostly of popularizing his organic produce, rather than selling at higher prices to few elite buyers, which may also account for their lower income from their vegetable gardens. Moreover, the main share of their income seems to come from the production of rice, which is also carried out informally along with five other families (the vestiges of a previously failed cooperative arrangement). Mauro’s family had owned their own machinery for the production of rice in the past, but a sharp fall in the price of rice in recent years forced them to sell their machinery so now they cooperate with another family in the settlement that still has theirs. It was this drop in the price of rice, however, that motivated them to reinvest instead in organic produce and vegetables, providing them now with a more diverse and stable source of income. A last notable fact about Mauro’s production of rice is that he works with several organic varieties at the same time (red, brown, white, and he wants to experiment with black grains soon), priding himself of his organic production and quality whole grains.

Chris is a strong woman with visible leadership skills. She took part along with other peasant women of their settlement in occupations of the townhall nearby in order to demand the release of funds for the infrastructure and operation of a day care right there in the settlement itself, which was already an extension of their earlier struggle to set up a public school in the settlement for grades 1-5. The women’s successful struggles to set up education facilities in their settlement are among the positive qualities that highlights this settlement among others. But Chris’s struggles have extended far beyond her own local community, as she has taken part in several other mobilizations throughout her state and beyond, most notably the direct action during the International Women’s Day in 2006 when a group of peasant women of the Via Campesina uprooted thousands of eucalyptus seedlings in a direct action against the expansion of the “green deserts” of eucalyptus monocultures for industrial production in place of agrarian reform and food sovereignty of rural communities. This event has since been memorialized through the touching poem translated in the next entry.