The struggle for land permanence in the Cassatinga settlement (Itiúba - Bahia)

Abstract

This article analyzes the implantation process of the Cassatinga Settlement, in the municipality of Itiúba, in the state of Bahia, Brazil. It takes as a starting point, the understanding of the ownership situation in the origin of the Cassatinga Settlement’s land property, constituted of unclaimed area. In this regard, it expresses an intervention of the State and at the same time it means a product of social struggles engendered in the countryside. For being implanted in an area whose domain refers to unclaimed lands, it was first created by the State of Bahia through the Coordination of Agricultural Development and later recognized by the National Institute of Colonization and Agrarian Reform. Therefore, an analysis of this process is carried out through an investigation of the Cassatinga Farm before its occupation, followed by the occupation movement itself and the peasants’ struggle to resist in the land, in the face of the encountered obstacles, and, finally, the creation of the Cassatinga Settlement Project and its current situation. Within this perspective, it is worth highlighting the participant observation as a methodological orientation under which the work was carried out, in view of the way in which the researcher was inserted into the cut-out and the research subjects. The results revealed a path marked by conflicts in the struggle for the creation of the settlement and continuity in the struggle of the families settled for the permanence in the land in the face of the institutional impasses that are based on the question of the dominance of the property.