“Muito ciosa do direito à propriedade”: vigilância e silenciamento em um caso de desapropriação para a reforma agrária na ditadura militar brasileira

Abstract

This text is the result of exploratory documentary research on the perspective and role of the Brazilian Military Dictatorship in the land conflict known as the “struggle of the Spring squatters”, which occurred between the 1960s and 1980s, in the far west of São Paulo, which culminated in the expropriation from Fazenda Primavera. Although this peasant conquest is the result of the struggle of squatters under the mediation of pastoral agents of Liberation Theology, a fact recognized in research on the subject, the SNI sources allow us to glimpse that the information and investigation bodies of the Dictatorship and INCRA considered other elements before proceeding with the expropriation. Regarding the case of the farm, in the SNI collection we found a special three-volume dossier that included a report produced after hearings from representatives of the State Agency, in loco, and many tangential processes, relating to the surveillance of the priests and especially the supposed owner of those lands, J.J. Abdalla, who revealed to us surprising elements orbiting the path of decisions. The critical analysis of the investigation and documentation organized by the SNI allowed us to glimpse that silencing, disputes of perspectives and errors in investigations were part of government practices that contributed to increasing political persecution and violence during the period. Furthermore, we find that the State's inability to contain the economic crimes of Abdalla, one of the richest men in the country today, also reveals disconcerting continuities of our time.