The Guarani from Santa Catarina’s north shore: tensions between land use and capitalist private property

Abstract

This article presents a geographical understanding of Santa Catarina’s north coast occupation. It focuses on the conflict between the two logics that coexist and compete for the control of this space: the indigenous logic of the Guarani (use and appropriation) and the capitalist logic (commodity, profit and wealth accumulation based on private property). The article highlights two important processes. On the one hand the dispossession of the traditional lands and the resistance that the Guarani people presents against it. On the other hand the establishment of capitalist private ownership of land that is marked by the absenteeism, the private appropriation of public lands and the rentier economy that characterize the Brazilian social formation.