First Landing

After our fairly epic journey (I’m under no illusion that it couldn’t have been more epic, as we didn’t end up in the river, a giant pothole, or any other forlorn place), we arrived in 17 do Abril settlement. My first clue that it was more developed than I had expected were the giant stadium sized lights that marked the entrance to the settlement. Upon entering the villa (what the settlement is referred to as), we drove around and found Manoela who had been giving a workshop for teachers during the day. We then went to do culturally/politically appropriate thing: have dinner and introduce me to the leader of the settlement. So we went to the house of Goveio, and had a very nice dinner. The most interesting part was the pre-dinner, where Dan, Goveio, and I sat on the couch, with Goveio literally staring at me and sizing me up, while Dan explained in Portuguese a little bit about me, my research interests, and also the history of social movements and political struggle within the United States, and how I could have insights to share with the youth and the community at large about political struggle and civil rights. It was very interesting, and a little nerve racking, as Dan basically vouched for me, and Goveio stared at me as if I were a strange bird that the cat had drug in, which I guess I am. Everything went well though, I passed whatever screening, we had dinner, and we were off to our next location…..

So a landmark for many of our stories will be the casa de cultura (house of culture) , and house of the Evolucao do Juventud Camponesa (EJC), which is the youth (juventud) group that I have become embedded in (to take a horrible metaphor from the years of he who shall not be named). The EJC was formally organized three years ago as part of the work that Dan and Manoela are doing within the settlement. The idea was to give the youth (of which the number is rapidly growing) a space to make their own, and give them some responsibilities to maintain etc. Approximately 3 months ago the EJC petitioned the “Political Association” (more on this later) of the acampamento, and was given a vacant house to utilize.

Anyways, so we arrived at the Casa de cultura/EJC and kids (between the ages of 10-23) were kind of rushing around between inside and outside. We got out of the car and I was introduced to various youth; the funniest introduction was the little girl who exclaimed “this is the david!?!” (in portuguese). Anyway, I wasn’t allowed into the building quite yet, but Dan and Mano were as they helped the kids get ready whatever sneaky thing they had in store.

After a little while of hanging out they blindfolded me and then led me in along a line of people, and my guide had me stop at each one and they whispered something in my ear, and then led me to the next one, at the end of the line they sat me down in a chair and took off the blindfold, the room was filled with candles, and nice music was playing, and on their LCD projector they had a presentation prepared of photos documenting the last few years in the settlement. ok comuter kyboar dying.....