Where are they and who are the peasant women of the South? The double invisibilisation of women working on the land
Martina Di Paula López
Universidad Complutense de Madrid, España.
https://orcid.org/0009-0006-2877-2741
martinadipaula@gmail.com
ABSTRACT
Through socio-environmental and eco-territorial conflicts, we seek to investigate the conception of peasantry as a contextualized identity, with an unequivocal feminist approach. The peasant subject faces the degradation of the territory in new forms of extractivism, where local women play a key role as defenders of the homeland. In order to address this issue, a literature review was necessary, in which the new forms of resistance of peasant and popular feminisms have been key in their contributions to the interrelated violence between bodies and territories, where the body is presented as a space of territorial resistance. For this reason, we will address the concept of the peasantry as an organised political subject, in order to raise a discussion between the new/old forms of extractivism, and the new/old forms of resistance to it. This discussion is framed within ecofeminist theories in defense of the sustainability of life, debating between eco-dependencies and interdependencies, in order to understand new proposals for alternative futures.
Keywords: Feminism, Ecofeminisms, Peasant Class, Social Movement, Territory, Violence, Food Sovereignty.
¿Dónde están y quiénes son las campesinas del sur? La doble invisibilización de las mujeres trabajadoras de la tierra
RESUMEN
A través de los conflictos socioambientales y ecoterritoriales, se busca indagar en la concepción de campesinado como una identidad contextualizada a través de una mirada feminista. El sujeto campesino se enfrenta a la degradación del espacio en nuevas formas de extractivismo, donde las campesinas tienen un rol clave como defensoras del entorno autóctono. Para abordar esta cuestión, se ha realizado una revisión bibliográfica, donde las nuevas formas de resistencia de los feminismos campesinos y populares han sido claves en sus aportes sobre la violencia interrelacionada entre cuerpos y territorios, donde el cuerpo se presenta como espacio de resistencia espacial. Por ello, se abordará el concepto del campesinado como sujeto político organizado para plantear una discusión entre las nuevas/viejas formas de extractivismo y las nuevas/viejas formas de resistencia al mismo. Esta discusión se enmarca en las teorías ecofeministas en defensa de la sostenibilidad de la vida, dialogando entre las ecodependencias e interdependencias, para entender las nuevas propuestas de futuros alternativos.
Palabras clave: Feminismo, Ecofeminismos, Clase Campesina, Movimiento Social, Territorio, Violencia, Soberanía Alimentaria.
Onde estão e quem são as mulheres camponesas do Sul? A dupla invisibilização das mulheres que trabalham na terra
RESUMO
Através dos conflitos socioambientais e eco-territoriais, buscamos investigar a conceção do campesinato como identidade territorializada através de uma perspetiva feminista. O sujeito camponês enfrenta a degradação do território em novas formas de extrativismo, onde as mulheres camponesas desempenham um papel fundamental como defensoras do território. Para abordar esta questão, foi realizada uma revisão da literatura em que as novas formas de resistência dos feminismos camponeses e populares têm sido fundamentais em suas contribuições para a violência inter-relacionada entre corpos e territórios, onde o corpo é apresentado como um espaço de resistência territorial. Por essa razão, abordaremos o conceito de campesinato como sujeito político organizado, a fim de levantar uma discussão entre as novas/velhas formas de extrativismo, e as novas/velhas formas de resistência a ele. Esta discussão é enquadrada nas teorias ecofeministas em defesa da sustentabilidade da vida, dialogando entre eco-dependências e interdependências para compreender novas propostas de futuros alternativos.
Palavras-chave: Feminismo, Ecofeminismo, Classe Camponesa, Movimento Social, Território, Violência, Soberania Alimentar.
Introduction: an identity in dispute
In a context of global capitalism from the perspective of world-ecology as a project based on the appropriation of nature to sustain the accumulation process, it is essential to analyse agriculture as a socio-ecological unit (Gerbeau and Avallone, 2016) and the agricultural workforce. It is about taking into account its role in the maintenance of global commodity chains, international migrations and centre-periphery dynamics, as well as the relationships between environmental conflicts, collective action and agrarian production. This forces us to define the people who work the land, as well as the dynamics of power that permeate them, and to understand the place from which knowledge is produced (Haraway, 1995).
This paper starts from an understanding of peasants as subaltern subjects, who have been excluded from decision-making that affects their way of life and production. Furthermore, when we talk about peasantry and subalternity in Latin America, it is necessary to start from studies of indigenous traditional knowledge, as well as its role in the construction of consciousness and, above all, in the concept of the common (Tzul, 2019). Indigenous women's experience of domination shows an oppressive and interconnected world-system (Cumes, 2012). The vampirisation of women's stories, as shown in studies such as Leire Milikua's (2023) on women farmers in the Basque Country, makes visible the importance of bringing the rural world, the agricultural sector, and women in it, closer together, understanding political peasantry as a struggle against capitalism (Moore, 2020).
From the perspective of political ecology, an ecofeminist vision is necessary to address the consolidation of ecological and ecosystemic crises as dimensions that are part of the social question of XXI century (Merlinsky, 2021). Ecofeminisms are a theory and practice that, from intersectionality, question and relate the oppressive capitalist and patriarchal dynamics that reinforce the binary dualism that reinforces culture -understood as masculine- over nature -understood as feminine- (Puleo, 2008). It is a social movement and a theory that dispute the Western economic and cultural model (Ludec, 2019), which in Latin America is expressed through a decolonial view from Abya Yala, the pre-colonial name of the continent given by the Kuna people of Panama and Colombia (Ludec, 2019). The body-territory metaphor of Abya Yala's original feminist community women reconstructs their history in order to experience the body as a field of resistance (Bidaseca & Sierra, 2022).
Method
For this paper, it is necessary to address the concept of peasantry, as well as to study the evolution of its political organization, where main roles and leaderships evolved. To do so, is of great relevance a literature review of postcolonial authors who analyse the role of agriculture in the new forms of extractivism, as well as alternative proposals from agroecology (Fernández-Prieto, 2013). Analyses of the subalternity of the peasantry are essential to comprehend the role of peasant women, and there is a growing body of literature and references related to the role of land workers, and in their resistance. Socio-political contexts are rooted in the territories in which we work, so the research has focused on Latin American literature.
In this review, I have also resorted to primary sources of information, through the reports of peasant entities themselves, such as the Movimiento Sin Tierra -MST from now on- or La Vía Campesina (LVC). With the 30th anniversary of La Vía Campesina, understood as the largest international peasant organization, with a strong presence in Latin America, I have also turned to its publications in order to address the role of women peasants, workers and land defenders, in the struggle against neoliberal extractivist dynamics (Barrero, 2021). It is interesting to see how the three axes of action faced by the LVC (2024) are "Transnationals and agribusiness", "International capitalism and free trade," and "Patriarchy", which can be seen in their latest annual reports, as well as the publications they produce and present in their monthly bulletins. Something similar happens with the MST, through its "Revista Sem Terrinha" and its "Jornal Sem Terra". The academic literature cannot be approached without the knowledge born out of the struggles, which is why the research starts from the foundations laid by the organisations (González, 2003).
Through this research, I seek to answer a series of questions: Who is the peasantry? What is the role of peasant women? What issues do peasants and peasant women face? What examples of peasant resistance do we know? How does this relate to the practices of non-violence and the ecofeminist theories that are on the rise?
The meaning of peasantry
Our natural environment suffers significant degradation, and the problem has transcended into the political sphere, with strong organized movements. We start from the premise that structures renew themselves, since ecology is cyclical and dynamic. It is essential to emphasize which beings are in danger, both human and non-human, showing the social differences between the global population and deep ecology in capitalist civilization (Balibar & Wallerstein, 1998). The commodification of all things is the turning point in human history that leads us to the difficult situation we find ourselves in. The population demands their right to participate in this expansion, while also wanting to halt the degradation of nature. Therefore, we face a great contradiction in this historical system. We are faced with a challenge of science, of material rationality in defense of what is best for the majority, in a system that seeks a solution through the same pathways that cause the perpetual ecological chaos.
Throughout history, most of the peasant conflict has ignored environmental terms. The languages of protest, often linked to the defense of peasant moral economy, were not related, in a global sense, to ecological claims. However, peasant conflict often has an environmental dimension, necessary to understand the conflict. The consolidation of La Vía Campesina, as an international organization with institutional influence, three decades ago, represented the strengthening and re-signification of the concept of peasantry as a political subject. There is no single definition, since it is tied to the characteristics of the territory in which it is settled, in addition to the fact that the positioning of the peasantry has varied after the increase in internationalized environmental conflicts crossed by patriarchal, colonial, and extractivist dynamics, as well as the positioning of ecological defenders. La Vía Campesina is a transnational movement of peasants and agricultural workers, with a critical presence in political spaces, affecting the agri-food system. It arises from the union of peasant movements from all continents against the industrialization of agriculture and the globalization of the food market, questioning aid based on farm size and land extent, with a rural working class against a global neoliberal capitalism that did not take into account their ways of production.
The Landless Workers' Movement, or Movimento dos Trabalhadores Rurais Sem Terra (MST), defines itself as a mass social movement, autonomous, which articulates and organizes rural workers in Brazil (MST, 2024). The goal is to transform Agrarian Reform and achieve a Popular Project for Brazil. This movement has represented the Brazilian agrarian struggle, where agroecology has played a fundamental role, being known as one of the largest peasant movements in the world since its foundation in 1984 (Borsatto & Carmo, 2013), resignifying the concept of family farming and distancing it from the backward vision. Borsatto and Carmo (2013) consider their theoretical basis as an agrarian Marxism of the peasant question. Land becomes a common aspiration to ensure sovereignty, where labor relations are gendered, with women playing a fundamental role in the MST (de Farias, 2011).
Gender analysis is also essential to understand the role of peasant women and to answer what place women occupy within peasant identity. There is a production that resembles farm exploitation with family economy, for which they mobilize all available personnel for agricultural work for generational survival, requiring a network of mutual support relationships between male and female growers, leading to the generation of a common culture, ethics, and identity (Daly, 1975). Multiple use of the territory is a strategy for diversifying risks due to climatic or social variability (Beck, 2002). In contrast, the characteristics of commercial or industrial use mode are well known and current, as well as their impact on the degradation of the peasant condition, which correlates with a change in the forms of protest expression and their environmental impact. Peasant traditional knowledge has been studied as a mobilizer of agroecological transition processes (López & Guzmán, 2012), being not only the basis of research for the management of natural resources, but also articulating the material and symbolic components of social change processes. Therefore, theoretical ecofeminisms from which to view these practices of extractivism and resistance must be decolonial.
The so-called socio-environmental and eco-territorial conflicts make it necessary to structure the peasantry as a subaltern political subject that confronts extractivist productive dynamics. Regarding subalternity, peasant women have suffered a double invisibilization, both in their recognition and capacity for action and in their productive value. The ways of producing knowledge have marginalized them through patriarchal, colonial, and extractivist dynamics of the agrarian production system (Ellis, 2018).
Bodies and territory: new extractivisms?
Extractivism is conceptualized as the massive exploitation of nature's resources, contributing to the socio-ecological, climatic and ecosystem crisis. Gudynas (Borguinean, 2022) nuances that it includes mining activities, but also oil exploitation, monoculture agriculture, and intensive fishing and, in short, an industrial exploitation of nature linked to globalization. It is a North-South exploitation (Ortega, 2023). The aforementioned forms of extractivism are present in Latin America: open-pit mining, intensive agriculture (soybean, corn, oil palm), intensive cattle raising, oil fronts, the gas front in Ecuador and Bolivia, construction of mega dams to produce electricity. It is, therefore, a particular case of extraction of natural goods, intense, destined for export, with limited processing (Fernández-Prieto, 2015). Therefore, in this section, I will address some of the conflicts and problems faced by the peasantry and, in particular, peasant women.
The agricultural labor market is not a democratic and apolitical space, but a stratified one, defined by power relations, based on racial, national and gender hierarchies, which tend to increase the processes of marginalization (Mezzadra & Neilson, 2017). Peasant women are traversed by a double invisibilization: as peasants and as women. Power is understood as a social relation of violence, as well as a characteristic of the State form where the subject, in this case, the peasantry, has historically resisted reification and annihilation, experiencing the oppression of the hegemonic narratives in which it has developed its subjectivity (Girón, 2017).
Moreover, we could go so far as to say that peasant women live a triple subalternity -rural, peasant and women-, to which Latin American women could add a fourth, within even white urban Western feminism that leaves rural women aside (Milikua, 2023). The conflicts of agrarian, agricultural, food, energy, environmental and identity centrality, generate new forms of exclusion and selective inclusion, that directly affect women's lives (Bidaseca & Sierra, 2022). Local agricultural areas are inserted into global chains, and Pedreño (2014) calls them agricultural enclaves, inserting a subaltern workforce from an economic, symbolic, legal and political point of view (Avallone, 2018). Thus, terricide as a concept is aggravated in contexts of economic and institutional crisis, as well as in the increase of the climate emergency.
On the other hand, cis-trans, rural, peasant, indigenous and Afro-descendant women are the most affected by ecocide, climate change and the destruction of nature; as well as the increase in diseases related to environmental degradation, the indiscriminate use of chemicals, the lack of drinking water and the impossibility of access to uncontaminated food (Bidaseca & Sierra, 2022).
We have to be aware of the fact: the organizers of protests have been denouncing extractivism, which contaminates the soil, water and their bodies, the deforestation, soyization and evictions they suffer in their homeland, based on the judgment of Moira Ivana Millán, Mapuche indigenous activist and feminist, founder and coordinator of the Indigenous Women's Movement for Good Living (Ludec, 2019). The specific problems of indigenous women are claimed, such as spontaneous abortions and malformations due to pollution, covert surgery -tubal ligations, without consent- in hospitals, and the invisibilization they suffer (Bidaseca & Sierra, 2022).
Women understood as new commons, and substitutes for lost lands, is how Federici (2004, p. 147) explains how the privatization of land leads to the loss of land as communal goods. This primitive appropriation has a gendered reading, as women themselves became commons. The plantation system itself fueled the industrial revolution (Federici, 2004, p. 157), favoring large-scale colonization and slavery processes. The colonial is thus understood as a material and symbolic space, where women are not thinking subjects, but bodies that act (Cumes, 2012). The hoarding of life is typical of the hyper-capitalist system (Ludec, 2019) that governs the dynamics of production and consumption, evidencing the consequences of the globalized agri-food system.
Bearing in mind that we are in a global moment, conditioned by the increase in deforestation, and the destruction of ecosystems, the proliferation of intensive monoculture only worsens the problem, generating the displacement of peasants, the growth of rural poverty, food insecurity, and the lack of sovereignty. The research on protests has focused on class protest: working-class, urban and industrial, understood from the perspective of modern rationality (Fernández et al., 2007).
Environmental conflicts and the struggle for natural resources are now historiographical objects to be studied. The emergence of peasant, feminist, indigenous, Afro-descendant, environmental, anti-racist, LGTBIQ+, and human rights movements, as a counter-power, implies reflection on the oppression and exclusion that Eurocentric critical thinking has devalued. It is in the sociology of absences and emergencies where the analysis of the redistribution of wealth, land and thought is consolidated (Gomes, 2012).
Bodies and territory: new resistance?
Let us be aware of the intersection between environmental conflict, knowledge policy and collective action, from an approach that includes the social, political and environmental from a sociological and Latin American perspective (Bordón, 2022). The territorialization and judicialization of the environmental issue, as well as the connection between science and politics in the construction of environmental problems, shows how environmental conflict enriches the landscape of socio-political debate in democratic terms. In addition, collective action with environmental content in territories revokes the forms of governance of the so-called common goods under the orientation of the market, and its tendency towards the commodification of local living conditions. In the resistance to the prevailing socioeconomic system, there is a struggle between ideologies, and between differentiated analytical dimensions, from a complex reality articulated under colonial domination (Cumes, 2012).
Systems of oppression are interrelated under an umbrella that attempts to isolate them where the decolonization of ecology is an ethical imperative. Ecology began to become politicized with the advent of political ecology, which sought a new model of development by radically transforming the relationship between human activity and the environment. Bad development, in Shiva's (1996) terms, is a critique of the capitalist form of growth.
In the words of Borguinean (2022): Decolonizing referred to colonization, that is, to the past, not to coloniality; Coloniality refers to our present, and allows us to think about historical continuities. For many years, the theoretical tools we had at our disposal to think about colonization were the concepts of imperialism (Hobson, Lenin, Luxemburg or Arendt), dependency (Gunder Frank, Mauro Marini), or internal colonialism (González Casanova, Silvia Rivera Cusicanqui), and this toolbox made it possible to think about colonization, imbalance, unequal exchange, the exploitation of the periphery... When ecology was born, this association had existed for a long time.
Ecological constitutionalism in Latin America, with its maximum expressions with the experiences of Ecuador and Bolivia in 2008 and 2009, has set a precedent in environmental legislation when it comes to understanding the links with the land. In Bolivia, the Plurinational Legislative Assembly (2010 and 2012) established the Framework Law of Mother Earth and Integral Development for Living Well (FAO Law 300, Law 071 Bolivia), which impacted the constitutions of Brazil, Colombia and Venezuela.
The formation and consolidation of the environmental field has fostered the expansion of a common sense about the environmental dimension of the social order. It is a politicization of the communities affected by projects framed in neo-extractivism. This phenomenon has been called the ecoterritorial turn (Svampa, 2011). Latin American political ecology includes, as a central aspect, an epistemological critique of the social sciences, for the confluence of unproblematized colonialism and modernity (Bordón, 2022). The resistance of peoples in defense of life, land, culture and, on some occasions, the survival of the human species, can arise within this capitalist system that dominates social, economic and political relations, that appropriates the natural and economic wealth of entire populations (Toledo, 2015).
The transformations of the local reality through new dynamics and alternatives, formal and informal collaborative processes, are an example of the diversity of forms of resistance. Rural, peasant and indigenous women's movements, have claimed that control over natural resources, the impact of climate change on territories, the unequal sexual division of labor, racism, violence, and femicides, are main issues on the agendas within their organizations and communities, as a condition for overcoming a life of oppression and inequalities; bodies have the power to act, to transform themselves and the world (Bidaseca & Sierra, 2022), being the "natural limit" (Federici, 2004) that structures needs and desires, blurring the separation of land and nature typical of the colonial extractivist model.
The modernizing myth (Bidaseca & Sierra, 2022), has made other possible realities invisible and discredited, qualifying them as non-existent. In the face of this, the Latin American philosophy of life, the "sumak kawsay" or Buen Vivir, present in indigenous cultures, recognizes specific rights to the Mother Earth, as an alternative to capitalism, colonialism and patriarchy (Cumes, 2012).
Women's marches in Latin America (Ludec, 2019) are an example of the body as resistance through mere existence, in the form of nonviolent direct actions. Nathalie Ludec is based on well-known experiences such as the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo in Argentina, the mothers of Mexico for the murdered women of Ciudad Juárez, or the peaceful route of the Women of Colombia. The peaceful march is, therefore, understood as a political weapon to denounce extractivist institutional violence (Ludec, 2019) as part of biocidal neoliberal economic structures (Mies & Shiva, 2013).
The role of women in resistance should be a research topic. Despite a biological and essentializing tendency that simplifies the explanation of the presence of women in pacifist movements, by understanding them as peacemakers, increasing investigation and experiences show that we should have into account both the sexual division of labor and the burden of care on women. Non-violence -towards nature, towards people- is consolidated in the concept of "territory-body-land", in search of self-determination and self-management of bodies, territories, communities, and struggles (Cumes, 2012). There are numerous examples of these struggles that researchers can find to contrast this research.
Protests against extractive economic megaprojects were multiplying throughout the Latin American continent (Colombia, Ecuador, Peru), where women had a main role. In 2011, in Bogotá (October 10, 11 and 12), at the "Latin American Meeting on Women and Mining", women, and in particular, Afro-descendants, rose up against mining-energy policies, fighting against extractivist patriarchy, a struggle valid for the entire continent through this public pronouncement of peasant, indigenous, and Afro-Colombian women of Latin America (Ludec, 2019)... Also, noteworthy is the action of the Black Women Walk, in 2014, against the mining of gold, in La Toma (Suárez), in Cauca (former conflict zone): They document the entire process of this Mobilization of Black Women for the Care of Life and Ancestral Territories in 10 communiqués between 2014 and 2015.
Emotional distance to food systems (Milikua, 2023) grows in large cities, whose civilization conditions ecoterritorial, socio-environmental, feminist and indigenous collapse (Cumes, 2012). The voices of peasant women are important because it is not the same to question power from the center as from the margins. Voices from the margins give us fundamental contributions to understanding and improving the reading of power (Cumes, 2012). For this reason, agroecology itself is presented as a form of resistance, understood as science, political movement and social practice. In other words, it brings together scientific, theoretical, practical and methodological approaches to articulate transdisciplinary knowledge (Delfino, 2022). The Movimento das Mulheres Camponesas materializes in Brazil the role of women in Agroecology, understanding it from the centrality of life and as part of feminist struggles, claiming that "Sem Feminismo não há Agroecologia" (MMC, 2018). It is a way of life that respects the traditions of cultivation, care for the commons, nature and that is in the process of depatriarchalization. And "Se tem racismo não tem agroecologia" (if you have racism, you do not have agroecology), "e tem LGBTQ fobia não tem Agroecologia" (if you have LGTBIQ+phobia, you do not have agroecology) (MMC, 2018), because everything is based on a broad, and complex, mutual understanding, that seeks to overcome the socioeconomic inequalities, and oppressions, imposed by the capitalist system (Delfino, 2022).
To study and understand peasant women is to research new forms of collective organization and methodologies of action, based on a Latin American ecofeminist pacifism. It is important to start from investigation such as that of Cumes (2012, p. 5):
I reiterate the idea of analyzing how the experience of indigenous women not only challenges the composition of the spaces in which they participate, but also modifies the way in which relations of power and domination are thought, and provides new ways of constructing society. For some time I have been insisting that the fragmentation of knowledge production in political and academic spaces in Latin America, and in Guatemala in particular, has high costs. (…). It is very common to find an elitist academy not interested in questioning the inherited structures of colonialism and patriarchy as entities that acquire particular characteristics in our environment.
Fights using the body as resistance have always existed. Prior to the Spanish Civil War, but particularly after the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War in 1936, various women's groups emerged in the workplace, highlighting the example of Andalusia, where women were engaged in agricultural work. In this sense, Ojeda and García (2022) analyzed the Mujeres Libres (Free Women) journal as an advertising body for these resistances that configured an image of peasant women in the search for an "integral humanism", or "full equality". It is an analysis of the content and image of peasant women, especially in an Andalusian context of day laborers and rural workers, who do not own the land.
That is why it is useful to collect part of the anarchist feminist movement, like the one located in the Andalusian countryside. Within the framework of promoting the role that Spanish women should play in society, the letter published by Emma Goldman in the first issue of the aforementioned journal stands out, where she narrates the submission of Spanish women in the public sphere, significantly influenced by the dominant presence and rigorous control of the church and Catholic morals; and, on the other hand, in the private sphere (Ojeda & García, 2022). The goal was to exalt the role of rural women, motivating them to occupy the vacant positions left by the men who left for the battlefield, in order to avoid crop losses, given the crucial importance of food for success in the war, among other aspects, appealing to the countryside, since it also sought to organize the peasants in areas with less anarcho-syndicalist tradition.
Conclusions and final thoughts
Research carried out so far shows us the important value of understanding the new forms of resistance to the new forms of extractivism. After more than 30 years of consolidation of international peasant movements, where the role of the New Social Movements, specifically environmentalists, feminists and ecofeminists, should be studied more deeply, the axes of action have shifted slightly, but the demand for recognition is still valid.
The increase in deforestation to generate new forms of industrial cultivation has had and continues to have a strong impact on the biodiversity of the territories. The consequences of several centuries of ecological rearrangement after European colonization and the deliberate or unconscious introduction of plants, animals, and pests or diseases are evident (Funes, 2009). The sociological view of the environmental issue allows us to think of conflicts as part of the dynamics of the social order, which allows us to appreciate the environmental conflict as an area of democratic expansion (Merlinsky, 2021) as a space for political deliberation. In this context, collective action is a pillar of democracy, as it promotes democratizing and instituting processes. For socio-technical controversies, it must be considered that environmental conflicts involve disputes for the control of territories with the ultimate goal of controlling the use of goods and resources. It is, therefore, a material dimension and a symbolic dimension of power relations (Merlinsky, 2021). The relationship between environmental conflicts, collective action and LVC shows that environmental conflicts are expressed in the processes of territorialization. Collective action in environmental frameworks, in the face of the advance of the extractive frontier, makes the binding participation of citizens as well as organized producers in decision-making essential.
The socio-economic aspects of women's contribution to production and reproduction, as well as their role in the recreation of culture, including religion and healing practices, are part of the silenced protagonism of women in social organization, beyond extended family and kinship. Women's key contributions to food security, biodiversity conservation and land grabbing are evidenced by women's participation, or lack thereof, in political processes. Behavior is traversed by gender, which is relational, which opens the conception of domination to interpretive practices and frameworks (Escobar, 2018). The communal lands -where the MST plays a key role- have been objects to be extinguished in the expansion of private property. As spaces managed and maintained by women, their role in decision-making has also been displaced through the accumulation of power and land. The communal reproduction of life brings to the fore the notion of the commons, such as water. This displacement of peasant women or women workers from the land as subordinate subjects is part of the concealment that life is reproduced communally. The MST, like other peasant movements, seeks to resist the global agrarian market, taking on a new role in the financial market.
Montreymond's quote in Ludec (2019), “Bread to live and roses to have a reason to live”, is exemplifying the importance of recognition for existence, especially when existence is a form of resistance. The role of the body-territory endows the material with a new symbolic meaning. Capitalism, coloniality and patriarchy traverse agrarian production, from land tenure to access to labor (Piña, 2021). Global agrarian chains show the fragile balance of Food Sovereignty when the territory is not articulated from the collective and common. In this way, already established experiences such as LVC, the MST, and the MMC, show us a form of land defense where the patriarchal structure of production could be defeated.
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