Debaixo da lona preta: Movimento dos Trabalhadores Rurais Sem Terra e subcidadania em discursos judiciais

Abstract

According to critical criminology, the criminalization of social movements, specifically the Landless Workers Movement (Movimento dos Trabalhadores Rurais Sem Terra – (MST), is such that the processes of criminalization occur because the punitive power reaches individuals who are in a situation of social vulnerability. In case of MST, the vulnerability occurs by the opposition between claim rights and the values in Brazilian society widespread by late capitalism: individualism, the pursuit of personal happiness, appreciation based on the ability to participate in the logic of consumption. It was assumed that social conflicts originate in a struggle for recognition, which is a necessity of every human being, as proposed by Axel Honneth; and that the advent of liberal values of capitalism leads to denial of citizenship status to many individuals, when it does not follow a social consensus about the value of every human being, as argued by Jessé Souza. The discourse analysis methodology was applied on judicial decisions to test the hypothesis that the criminalization of MST members extrapolates assumptions of Criminal Law and also stems from a phenomenon of social invisibility. It was observed that, despite the efforts of the judges to stay within the proper limits of judicial discourse, while governed by the legality principle, they also manifest strongly ideological discourses that sometimes appropriate the legalism of legal language to apply the Criminal Law as a strategy of social control against the enemies: individuals who broke the pact of coexistence and thereby lost the citizenship rights. Thus, state agencies can reproduce existing inequalities in society and derail the enforcement of fundamental rights.