Abstract
The article analyzes the experience of rural work named "colonato" in the highlands of the state of Rio de Janeiro by examining conflicts not clearly visible, of little public expression, between landlords and coffee workers. From the late XIXth century until the mid-XXth, it accompanies the construction of the notions of rights and the everyday resistances, from the genesis to the breakdown of the system of "colonato", marked by rural exodus and struggles for access to land. The research allows us to understand processes of the rural world, as the passage of slave labor to free labor, the circulation of workers between farms and the situations of political mobilization and demobilization.
Keywords:
"colonato"; coffee; rural conflicts; daily resistance; slavery; rural world.