The land did not belong: the relation of movement with the land in the context of the struggle of people of Trombas and Formoso (GO)

Abstract

This ethnography is about the relationship and meanings of the land evoked by the people of Trombas and Formoso, in the northern region of the state of Goiás, during the process of struggle for land that took place there in the 1950s. On the land, these people arrived, worked, made their roças, and when the time came, they left and let it go. They walked looking for a better life in another destination – a journey that, although it took different paths, was always oriented toward land. The land did not belong to the people of Trombas and Formoso and, until the arrival of those who claimed to be the owners, the land was not owned. The notions of posse and property emerged along with the process of struggling for land, when, despite their supposed owners, posseiros decided to stay and settled. In this article, I will try to demonstrate the agency of the land over the life of the movement of these people, whose practice radically altered the path – but never the direction – of these people, for whom the land was the only way to escape the cativeiro imposed by the order of the owners.