Conjuring Property by Jeremy M Campbell

Author:Jeremy M Campbell
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: University of Washington Press
Published: 2015-03-13T16:00:00+00:00

HEDGING

Like most property conjurers in and around Castelo de Sonhos, Zé Geraldo is limiting the risk inherent in betting that his claim will be recognized (and purchased) as a ranch by keeping open the possibility of making an altogether different kind of claim. He is hedging, as we have seen before with Adriana and Rodolfo, pequeno settlers who are simultaneously pursuing a homestead claim while also enrolling in the PDS-Brasília agrarian reform project located on the outskirts of the village. Pequenos and grandes hedge their property plays in Pará, and settlers in the region learn and interpret for themselves novel ways to keep multiple kinds of property claims viable. This is the essence of speculative accumulation: colonists accumulate methods for making property, strategies for doing so change hands, and seeming adversaries collude with one another.

I gained insight into the subtle ways that pequeno migrants hedge their positions through months of talking to the leaders of the PDS-Brasília. With a retinue of lawyers and far-flung contacts in Brazil’s south, aspiring grande speculators seemed to have plentiful resources with which to play the property game. Pequenos, on the other hand, at first seemed to me to be unable to nimbly transform one type of claim into another. The more I learned of the history of the PDS-Brasília, however, the more I realized that the agrarian reform clients with claims to this settlement viewed the project as something of a hedge. “In this region, no version of land [versão da terra] is assured,” one PDS farmer told me; like Zé said, it was best to have options.

The third anniversary of the PDS-Brasília was celebrated in December 2008 at the small school that colonists had recently built within the agrarian reform settlement. Residents caravanned to the school bearing soda, rice, farinha, and a few chickens to roast (see fig. 3.3), and leaders gave speeches recounting the difficulties and triumphs that marked the settlement’s history. About thirty people showed up for the event, which, despite the bonfire, broke up at nightfall. Around the fire, I conversed with the settlement’s three most prominent leaders (all women) about the early days, when Brasília began organizing pequenos in Castelo. Graciele explained how she had worked with Brasília to found the Sindicato dos Trabalhadores Rurais (STR, or Rural Workers’ Union), over which Mariona currently presides. Mariona recalled how she had responded to the 2002 arrests of the nineteen squatters in the woods and on the ranchland that would become the PDS-Brasília, and how the pequeno community had been galvanized by the arrests and the subsequent assassination of Brasília. Claudia—the current president of the association of farmers and thus the leader of the PDS-Brasília16—remembered that it was the women, these three and others, who worked to keep the movement going after Brasília’s death in July 2002.

“We were shattered,” Claudia said. “None of these peões thought organizing was wise. What they did to Brasília was brutal, and it could happen to any of us.” Mariona added, “The mafia who killed him was all around us,” and she made a circle in the air with her hand.

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