Alternativas socialistas, experiências solidárias: luta pela terra, reforma agrária e cooperativismo no Brasil e em Portugal

Abstract

This article debates the experiences of land reform in the South of Portugal and the South of Brazil as points of intersection of the socialist alternative and solidarity economy experiences. For this purpose, we will make a theoretical essay about agrarian reform in Brazil and Portugal. Then, we will present the points of dialogue between the socialist economy, the cooperative and solidarity economy, emphasizing that the experiences of solidarity economy can be found in many past experiences that came to be called socialist experiments. In this sense, the aim is to treat the common experiences of the past from on the basis of which Santos (2002) defi nes as Sociology of Absences and Emergence. In the Brazilian case, we will stick to a theoretical essay on cooperatives in the Movement of the Landless Rural Workers (known in Brazil as MST), through a literature review. In the Portuguese case, we approach the UCP Terra de Catarina in Baleizão, through a literature review and documentary research in the Archives of Agrarian Reform in Montemor-o-Novo. We also used interviews based on the methodology of oral history. The aim of the paper is to refl ect on common experiences established in the struggle for land in Brazil and Portugal, particularly the emergence of agricultural cooperatives as a productive paradigm in the areas of land reform. We do not mean, however, that cooperatives are the only possible model of alternative production for land reform areas, but rather to affi rm them as a possible model within various possibilities of solidarity experiences.Keywords: agrarian reform, solidarity economy, cooperatives.