The struggle for land and the childhood experience in an agrarian reform camp

Abstract

This paper aims to comprehend the way through which the Landless Kids from the camp Elizabeth Teixeira in Limeira-SP, besides witness subjects, are seen by the researcher as protagonists of the struggle for land. The research had as space and time of observation the educative activities at Ciranda Infantil, between 2010 and 2014. The land was occupied in April 2017, they were violently evicted on November same year and returned to reoccupy the land on December. The children have experienced this entire process. They bring along such elements and memories that turn into games at Ciranda Infantil. With the process of internal reorganization of the area, Ciranda Infantil has become one of the few living spaces of the camp children’s collective. A place where most children could meet each other, play, discuss, learn, produce peer cultures participate in the construction of social reality. The questions of this article come from the educative and investigative work carried out by the one of the authors with the Landless Kids in an agrarian reform camp. The processes experienced by the children are the focus of this text that, from the observations and reports made from the researcher’s ethnographic exercise on the activities with the children, bespeaks the children’s points of view, allowing them to talk about themselves and their childhood experiences at the camp, as well as about the possibilities of transforming the reality in which they live, the fight for rights and their constitution as subjects and protagonists of the history and struggle for land.