Theoretical-methodological bases and horizons for peasant Health Promotion and resistance: an example in Lavras-MG, Brazil

Abstract

Agribusiness has historically promoted submission of production, economy and life of peasant families, causing serious health damage to this portion of the Brazilian population. However, the peasantry's resistance to this secular process shows that the organization of families and communities and the participatory rescue of local agroecological knowledge can support Health Promotion strategies that seek concrete changes in this vulnerable health context. The objective of this work is to analyze bases that founded the capitalist process of peasant submission in Brazil and also theoretical-practical-epistemological approaches that allow its overcoming. For this, references for research and actions that subsidize peasant families and communities in a social process of self-recognition, self-valorization and use of their knowledge and practices for an emancipatory agroecological transition are presented, as well as the Health Promotion experience developed through these references in Lavras-MG, Brazil. The participatory methodological structure presented allowed the development of the initial and fundamental steps of a social process of peasant organization around their way of life and economy, with Agroecology as a determining factor for health and for the construction of a fairer, more favorable and more promising context.