Photography and public visual space: the globality of soy and protests against Delfim Neto’s confiscation in Santa Rosa/RS (1980)

Abstract

The article proposes a reflection on the impacts of the international context of soybean agriculture on the meaning attributed to the urban space of Santa Rosa, northwest of Rio Grande do Sul, in the early 1980s, when the confiscation of soybean was applied by Minister Delfim Neto. The period was marked by a financial crisis that affected many of the region’s farmers, who reacted in various ways, among
which we highlight the use of urban spaces for their public manifestation. To understand how this spatial appropriation occurred, were selected some photographs of demonstrations and protests in Santa Rosa, published by two periodicals in the city: the, newspaper Noroeste and the newspaper O Grande Santa Rosa. The notions of public photography and public visual space are central to the analysis. The methodology used is related to the studies of visual culture and part of what Ana Maria Mauad proposed for the study of events. We defend a spatialization of historical analysis, as the space is composed of
material production, meanings and practices that are formed – and at the same time form – through relations of social (re)production. It was observed that, when occupying the urban spaces of Santa Rosa, farmers demarcated not only the appropriation of their territoriality, but access to world policies through the publication of the right to sell their production. The event became the privileged locus of the analysis, not because it is opposed to the worldwide scale, but because it evidences its effects and its constitution based on what was experienced.