Patrões, Garimpeiros e Lideranças – Mediação e Política em um Movimento de Atingidos por Barragens

• Main Author: André Dumans Guedes
• Format: Article
• Language: Portuguese
• Published: Universidade Federal Rural do Rio de Janeiro 2012-12-01
• Series: Revista IDEAS
• Subjects: social movements; patronage; dam affected people
• Online Access: http://r1.ufrrj.br/cpda/ideas/revistas/v06/n02/03-IDeAS-v06_n02-Artigo_GUEDES.pdf

In this paper we intend to discuss, through an ethnographic description, certain aspects related to those social ties which, in the studies devoted to the peasant societies, are usually known as “patron-client” relationships. In this description, we present the reader to Francisco, in the past a farmer and owner of mining machinery, and nowadays a leader of a social movement which was created in the north of the Brazilian state of Goiás, after three dams affected the people living in this area. We present here a series of issues related to this scenario: the asymmetrical exchange relationships associating Francisco and his former employees; the attributes of the “patron”; the meaning of “generosity”; the “mediation” question. Trying to criticize certain assumptions concerning the differences between “modern” and “traditional” practices and conceptions, we explore those issues in the context of a social movement; and given this approach, we introduce some broader questions about the patron-client bond; about the social movements; and about the circulation and transformation of social forms.