Perspectiva e experiências dos trabalhadores rurais da cooperativa mista de Novo Horizonte do norte-MT

Abstract

The general objective of the study was to analyze the limits and potentialities of cooperativism and to understand the historical construction of the production of material life of COOPERNONTE members to constitute themselves as a cooperative. The specific objectives were (i) to reconstruct the history of the cooperative from the existing documentation and memory of the members; (ii) demographically describe the members and family; (iii) describe the dynamics of the cooperative; (iv) analyze the limits and potentialities of the members‟ material production in the reproduction of their social existence as rural settlers; and (v) understand the intrinsic challenges in cooperative relationships and cooperative work with family farmers in these settlements. Our questions aimed to understand which representations about workers‟ cooperativism are present and dispute the organizational process of COOPERNONTE? The research uses as a strategy of searching information the interview with the members and their families and daily observations, recorded in a field notebook. Approaching the conception that elects the oral narratives, the images and the own memories of the members as a research source, we use the Oral History as a methodological tool. The research looks beyond the cooperative, paying attention to its members, because the cooperative institution does not necessarily represent a cooperative work. By listening to them and tracing their historical reality, both individual and collective, of the rural man, migrant, settler of agrarian reform, small producer and cooperative member of the Mato Grosso microregion, our research expectation was to understand their motivations and how they support themselves in maintaining in society, in an attempt to analyze work as an educational principle. Assuming that the cooperative is politicized is to define that it is based on the precepts of solidarity, cooperation and other assumptions defended by the solidarity economy. However, the solidarity economy is mistaken in the idea that a course, lectures or the engagement of people who defend it will make them solidary. It takes more than that. It is necessary to listen, interpret, dialogue and understand what the subjects have to say about the cooperative and not tell them how it has to be a cooperative; think about how the real cooperative works and not the idealized cooperative. The producers have a lot to say about the cooperative, they know it very well, because it is their creation. COOPERNONTE is not a cooperative whose main premise is self-management, solidarity or solidarity economy. This may be a problem for us as researchers, as academy, but not for this group of members. Not defending the banner of solidarity economy, for example, does not mean that these workers are not working together and thinking collectively. We realize in these producers that more than thinking about guiding concepts, their sense of belonging to a group motivates them as a cooperative. Recognition, especially through work, as a settler, a small dairy producer, cooperative member and active in society, is what encourages their daily struggles and motivates them as a cooperative.