The article discusses the conflicts between the Brazilian state and the different popular social movements of the countryside, especially the ones identified in the Peasant Movement’s provisional unit, which call for education to support a return to a rural way of life and work, looking for government policies that respond to this demand. It also aims to point out the potential, (as a Peasant Movement of conquest), that the rural education movement has, and the limits it faces, in Brazil, where it comes head to head with (in direct conflict with) agrarian and financial capital (or funding, e.g. of the state), associated with agro-business. At the same time, agri-business’s protagonists dispute the (peasant) movement’s ownership of, or right to, land and put pressure on the State to back their agenda. The importance of this paper is in providing a reflection on the challenges facing the Peasant Movement as it directs its actions in accordance with a socially-geared project, clearly in opposition to the neoliberal model of society while this model continues to exercise its influence on the Brazilian state.
Rural Education; Social Movements; Public or State Policies