A agricultura científica e a quimera da racialização na modernidade: uma genealogia global e uma percepção subtropical

Abstract

Recently, the advance of scientific-industrial agriculture over forests and traditional territories has expanded the scope of a well-known drama experienced by poor rural populations for decades, and has also drawn attention to the problem of climate change. In the academia, the violence of this large-scale agro-hydro-business has been studied based on the relations between private groups and the acquiescence of governments. Based on this debate, I propose a historical genealogy that seeks the foundations of the violent agricultural practices on humans and non-humans, as a way to argue that, besides latifundia and slavery, other global historical events interfered in the production of a racialized, hierarchical, and violent agricultural paradigm. As a possible example, I observe that part of the national elites that dominate this production system descend from European immigrants who arrived in Brazil precisely with the intention of serving as free labor and whitening the country's population - a true "technical-racial" elite, molded from the allegedly better acclimatization of Europeans in the subtropics. Interpreted by the state as examples of modernity, the Neo-European farmers were privileged by a series of historical events that guaranteed them land ownership and established them, together with descendants of the large landowners of colonial times in the Southeast, as some of the key players in a global food chain after the civil-military dictatorship.