From Captivity to Agrarian Reform: The Trajectory of Women in the Struggle for Land in the Coffee Mountain Region of Rio De Janeiro, 1871–1987

This paper reflects on the invisibility of women that marks the memory built during the trajectory of conflicts over the lands of the former Santo Inácio coffee farm, located in the municipality of Trajano de Morais in the mountainous regions of the state of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. The farm was part of a coffee production complex that, in the 19th century, grouped up to 21 properties and more than 1000 slaves. In the 20th century—more precisely during Brazil’s transition to democracy in 1987—the Santo Inácio farm became the site of a major struggle for agrarian reform that prompted expropriation and the redistribution of lands. The clashes between the descendants of the owner family and the descendants of the workers – former slaves and immigrants of European origin – were most commonly recorded as struggles fundamentally carried out by men. A silence prevailed regarding the role and participation of women. This fact was documented in the narratives of the leaders involved in the agrarian reform process, and the emphasis on male actors dominates in the academic production that took the farm as an object of study at the end of the 20th century. The goal of this paper is to identify the role of women in the agrarian reform process, identifying the many contributions they made to the struggles. These contributions can be identified by tracing the structure of peasant families and the development of relationships with the land, based on the construction of notions of rights. The sources used include oral testimonies, official documents such as police records, and administrative and legal proceedings that address conflicts between owners and workers.