O conflito da Fazenda Japuara em Canindé-CE: repressão política, resistência camponesa e luta pela terra (1971 – 1984)

Abstract

This research aims to analyze the conflict between peasants and landowner that occurred at the Japuara Farm in Canindé - CE in the year 1971, scrutinizing it’s quarrels and the consequences that inflicted the subjects involved and also discuss the treatment used by the State in the disputes in the countryside in an authoritarian context. In the research we will mainly make use of official sources and journalistic material focusing on the collection of the “Memórias Reveladas do Arquivo Nacional”, National Archive of Revealed Memories, and of the “Arquivo Público do Ceará - APEC”, Public Archive of Ceará, that contains many documents of the “Departamento de Ordem Política Social - DOPS” the Department of Political and Social Order of the “Serviço Estadual de Informação - SEI”, the State’s Information Service and of the Military Police. The conflict at the Japuara Farm resulted in the first case of expropriation of land in the State of Ceará as an outcome of social tension in the civil-military dictatorship. In a context of persecution of the rural unions and imprisonment of the main peasant leaderships in the State, Japuara marks the resumption of the country's mobilization by the victory in court by the rural workers in their claim to their land in a scenery of repression. However, even with the recognition of the landowning rights of the peasants of Japuara by the State it won’t be long until an inquiry to investigate their main union leaderships and conflict mediators was started. Thus, after many quarrels, a process of severe repression befell over them. Accused of being the responsibles for the inciting of “subversive behavior in the countryside” between the indicted was Lindolfo Cordeiro, a mediator in the Japuara conflict that utilized the Land Statute in the defense of the peasants.