Silvio Cunha

The Chess of the Earth Silvio Cunha

The present study was born from the author's misunderstandings of his own reality, so that it is an attempt to better understand the directed colonization that was the object of the State of Rondônia in the 1970s. The text seeks to show that the specific type of structuring of Brazilian society also gave rise to a particular type of capitalism in which the State assumes a prominent role in the formation of production relations that are delimited by greater profitability and the maintenance of social harmony, in an arrangement where the demands of the layers of lower purchasing power are only taken into account when they represent points of tension. Thus, directed colonization in Rondônia can be understood based on the fact that there was a need to regulate tensions over land and to increase capital accumulation, in such a way that, despite being directed, colonization in no way changes the essentials of land appropriation, which continues to be carried out with low levels of technology and intensive use of labor.