The compositions reproduced here reflect one of the various pedagogies of the
MST - Movimento dos Trabalhadores Rurais Sem Terra (Movement of the Landless
Rural Workers): the pedagogy of history. How the children perceive and represent
not only the process of social exclusion throughout Brazilian history but also
that of reintegration through the MST are the reflective threads that weave their
texts.
The compositions also reflect the objectives of the Movement’s educational
project as spelled out by Roseli S. Caldart(1): the landless people’s recovery
of a sense of dignity, the development of a social identity for those who had
lost their roots as well as the construction of a project for life. Serious
gaps make up the rural reality of Brazil and the lack of access to basic education
for many children is yet another component of the overall picture of social
exclusion of the dispossessed. The development of a culture of the right to
education is what stands out in the presentation of the anthology Feliz Aniversário
MST/Happy Birthday MST, from which some of the texts here presented were selected:
We also register in our history, and with special pride, the fact that more
than 100 thousand children and adolescents study in the schools in the settlements
and encampments, the cirandas (children’s songs) that gradually produce
a culture of their right to education in the rural areas; also adult literacy
programmes that involve aound 20 thousand students, and the training of technicians
and pedagogues for secondary and university levels, as well as a number of other
initiatives related to the training of, and for, the households of the Landless(2).
The texts of the Little Landless included here were selected from three collections
of prize-winning essays in annual National Contests for Essays and Drawings
organized by the MST in the schools of the encampments and settlements all over
Brazil. The themes, shared with the drawing contexts also published in this
website, relate to three important debates(3):
The first of them, O Brasil que queremos ter/ The Brazil We Want, proposed
in a contest held in 1998, provides the children who grow up with destitution
the chance to express their denouncements and their expectations and aspirations
in life. As part of this sad mosaic there are, more specifically, the questioning
of exclusion, of the massacres, of racial prejudice; the denouncement of unchanged
patterns of slavery and of the government’s neglect, for example, to solve
the problem of lack of irrigation in the dry North East of Brazil; the affirmation
of the right to expression, to dreams, to a more egalitarian society, to housing,
to clothing, to medical care and to the dignity of work.
In 1999 a second contest was held on the occasion of the 15th anniversary of
the Movement, titled Feliz Aniversário MST/ Happy Birthday MST! The alternatives
to exclusion and the room for hope enabled by the Movement stand out in the
composition of a child from the North East who would otherwise have the destiny
of a retirante/ migrant as the only alternative, or else starve to death as
had already been the case with her little brother. An important contribution
made by the children is the production of poems within the tradition of the
cordel/ string poetry, or broadsheets, typical of the North East and which has
an important role in registering and disseminating historical events in rural
societies where illiteracy and an oral culture prevail. Registering the history
of the Movement also brings to the surface its emergence during the dictatorship
and its expression against authoritarianism through marches which further revitalized
a dormant political awarenesss. In more analytical contributions, the children
also assess their own experience of resistance while they were in the encampments
and the political conscience thence derived. Abundance, dignity and knowledge
are dimensions of life which the children associate with the MST.
The contest held in 2000 highlighted the questioning of official history, more
specifically the history of the discovery of Brazil, celebrated in April of
the same year. The theme proposed, Brasil, quantos anos você tem?/Brazil,
How Old Are You? introduces, at the outset, a problematizing discourse, including
of official chronology itself. Those excluded from history make up the cast
of social actors of the history that one wishes to be reconstructed: the blacks,
the natives, the prostitutes, the street children and the land dispossessed
themselves. The farce of democracy, the mere exchange of imperialistic powers
and the visible growth of poverty finally make up the agenda of these children
who reveal a profound sense of history and a marked political consciousness.
Many of the prize-winning drawings are found in the archive Children’s
Drawings in this website.
Notes
1. See Roseli S. Caldart’s essay in this website
2. “Apresentação”, Feliz aniversário MST! São
Paulo: Editora Lidador, 2000, Alípio Freire, Silvana Panzoldo and Emílio
Alonso (eds.).
3. Desenhando o Brasil/Drawing Brazil (1999), which also included compositions on
the theme O Brasil que queremos ter/ The Brazil We Want; Feliz aniversário
MST! Happy Birthday MST! (2000) and Brasil quantos anos você tem?/Brazil
How Old Are You? (2001), organized by Alípio Freire, Silvana Panzoldo and
Emílio Alonso (São Paulo: Editora Lidador). The data on the authors
were obtained from the same anthologies. All the compositions originally had the
same umbrella-titles above. The specific sub-titles added were derived from the
texts of each author. The texts have been reproduced here with the permission
of the MST of São Paulo.
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