Popular Power in Brazil: What Can We Learn from Indigenous, African, and Peasant Histories of Collective Resistance?

Roberta Traspadini

And I say: the oppressed never ask who the oppressed are because they know. State ministers, mine or factory owners never say they are oppressed. Do you think they are part of the concept of the oppressed that I use in Pedagogy of the Oppressed? Who belongs to the concept of the oppressed that I use? They are the oppressed classes. –Paulo Freire

This article analyses land struggles as a constituent element of Latin American and Caribbean popular history, with a particular focus on Brazil. It examines Indigenous, peasant, and Quilombola (maroon) resistance, and attempts to address a central question: What lessons do these groups’ histories of resistance offer us for current struggles, and how do they inform the construction of popular power in the twenty-first century?

For a full read of this brief, click here or on the picture to download the pdf file.