Struggle stories, women's stories

Struggle stories, women's stories: reports of leaders for land regularization in the Vale Verde neighborhood, Juiz de Fora - MG.

Abstract

The official history of the conformation of territories is consolidated from documents, records, books, as well as seen portrayed in public spaces, buildings and monuments. But, as Walter Benjamin said, this is a story of the winners over the losers, therefore these are the elements that promote the maintenance of social structures based on the domination of one people over another. Although this history has determined an invisibility of women, and a theft of their active construction of spaces, it is noted through a feminist reading of land regularization processes, the massive presence of women at the head of these social movements. Considering this reality, this study seeks to promote a research-record, using as a fieldwork the struggle for housing in the Vale Verde neighborhood, in Juiz de Fora (MG). Through documentary research on the subject, in addition to two interviews with community leaders - Dona Izaura and Balbina - we discuss the issue of social gender relations in the historical processes of housing claims and land regularization, and the dynamics of erasure of women present in this fight. The presentation of these narratives, with a focus on their life stories during and after the movement, highlights the even more dramatic conditions of difficulties in accessing land and housing as a woman, as well as the barriers imposed by their female condition on the construction of a continuity in public and political life. This research seeks to record the memory and life stories of these women and use the academic sphere for dissemination.