Forms of access to land: a reflection on the land transition process of a group of farmers affected by the São Francisco river project

Abstract

This article proposes a reflection upon the changes in lands, experienced by rural families affected by the works of the project to integrate the São Francisco River, with hydrographic basins in the northern part of Brazil’s northeast region. The empirical focus is on a group of rural families from the county of São José de Piranhas, in the northeastern state of Paraíba, who, after being expelled from their Sítios, were resettled in productive rural villages. This is an ethnographic study that belongs to the debate surrounding Brazilian peasantry, having as itscentral concern the issue of access to land for historically marginalized people in our country. We aimed to understand how the transition between the categories of morador, shared by most of the resettled families, to that of landlord, and how the group has been giving meaning to this process.