Latin America and the Caribbean, understood through the lens of world-systems theory (Wallerstein, 2007), has historically functioned around its primary export role. In recent decades, this has shifted in some respects due to the move from the Washington Consensus to the Beijing Consensus, characterized as a neocolonial primary export model (Giarracca, 2005 and Svampa, 2008). Within this framework, the territories of diverse peoples become "sacrifice zones" for extractive territorialization (Svampa and Viale, 2014), precisely because it is there that natural resources continue to exist and are reproduced through diverse practices such as the use of social technologies, agroecological practices, and so on (Sevilla Guzmán, 2006). In these territories, while life is constantly being recreated, what Harvey (2004) calls accumulation by dispossession also occurs. In this process, one of the key agents is the State at its various levels, which promotes and contributes to the intensification of violence, criminalization, and judicialization of those communities that do not conform to this imposed model. Global society has been experiencing the deepening of reforms to the modern state and the rise of ultra-neoliberal governments, both in the core and the periphery of the world system.

In the 1970s, changes in political power within nation-states became evident due to the crisis of Fordism-Taylorism-Keynesianism and the rise of the flexible accumulation pattern (Harvey, 1998), which, to be implemented, required the imposition of neoliberal reforms (first and second generation) and productive restructuring. By the late 1990s, these neoliberal reforms were unable to create pathways for capital to emerge from its crisis. The shift experienced in the region during the transition to and beginning of the 21st century involved the rise of progressive or left-wing governments with neo-developmentalist projects that failed to produce the essential ruptures with the metabolism of capital, much less generate the construction of alternative structures capable of responding to the needs of all. Mészáros (2013) confirms the uncontrollable destructive expansion of capital, arguing that this is a structural crisis, and therefore universal in nature, as it is present in all places, sectors, and branches of labor and productivity. which affects all countries of the world indiscriminately.

In general terms, Latin America in recent years has witnessed overlapping cycles. Following the evident failure of neoliberalism, neo-developmentalist proposals emerged in what was termed the "pink wave" of some progressive governments—each with its own specific characteristics in each country. Subsequently, there was a renewed intensification of ultra-neoliberal policies, implementing states of exception. These policies now appear to be challenged by a second wave of progressive governments, which exhibit elements of both continuity and rupture with the first progressive cycle. On the one hand, there is the establishment of neoliberal regimes that require the State for the functioning of markets and the optimization of profits, and which, for now, abandon the liberal framework that sharply separated the State and the market in the early years of neoliberalism (Sztuwark 2019). On the other hand, there is the urgent need for anti-neoliberal governments to address the demands of the individuals and movements that have gained strength, not only as an exercise in democratization, but also as part of building networks that defend life and confront neoliberal capitalist logic, both as an economic and a subjective form. Currently, the configuration of capitalism cannot be understood without patriarchy and coloniality, as systems of oppression and domination that operate in conjunction. In this sense, it is crucial to understand that the rise of the far right requires examining the systems of exploitation and oppression that occur on both the objective and subjective structural levels, in production and reproductive labor, and in public and private spaces simultaneously.

The commodification of all forms of life is becoming increasingly evident. The importance of speculative capital compared to productive capital is one example, as is the recent transformation of precarious work in the context of Industry 4.0. The mobilization of money and capital in land acquisition and hoarding is evident, whether for future speculation, by converting this common good into a marketable and profitable commodity, or by transforming it into factors of capitalist production of food, energy, or minerals. Therefore, amidst the general trend of ultra-neoliberal advances, which, with their national particularities, have fragmented and weakened the most traditional forms of organization, the political action of these actors and their capacity for mobilization have placed them at the center of theoretical and political attention. Within this same process, a shift has emerged that has highlighted the potential of territory as a reference point for the political strategy of social movements and public policies, generating a territorial trap whose social and political consequences for political actors who embody common interests and transcend militant particularism are still to be analyzed.

Faced with such a problem, this Working Group's new proposal for the period 2023-2025 proposes to articulate three dimensions to analyze regarding the contemporary Latin American agrarian question: 1) the process of dismantling rights, public policies and agreements with which the primary export-oriented extractivist approach, materialized in the (progressive and/or neoliberal) governments of the region, has been sustained; 2) the evidence of the destruction not only of nature, but also of society; and 3) the processes of re-existence that continue to place life at the center, especially in relation to the rural social movements of Abya/Yala (movements of peasants, Afro-descendants, indigenous peoples, rural workers, artisanal fishermen, traditional peoples...).

The work focuses on: 1 - Understanding the transformations of the Latin American and Caribbean agrarian question and territorial conflicts in relation to capital and labor in the current context; 2 - Analyzing the processes of autonomy, resistance and re-existence that focus on life and are deployed by different subjects and communities in the territories; 3 - (cross-cutting) - Investigating gender relations and dissident sexualities in the countryside, violence against rural women and the political participation of rural youth and children based on an understanding of the set of capitalist/colonial/heteropatriarchal oppressions present in Latin American territories.

Methodologically, we have been constructing our research through grassroots activism and other diverse methodologies, especially participatory ones (Passos, E.; Kastrup, V.; Escóssia, 2009; Fals Borda, 2014; Touraine, 1986; Jara, 1994; Sevilla Guzmán, 2017). We propose a combination of analysis and accompaniment of the process of formation, politicization, territorial recovery, and re-existence. Therefore, we articulate horizontal and collective spaces for encounter, such as the peasant school, among others.

To cover these dimensions, we will maintain a permanent dialogue and rapprochement with other GTs, such as the Inter GTs Network, in which the working groups Anticapitalisms and emerging sociabilities; Political Ecology(ies) from the South/Abya-Yala; Borders, regionalization and globalization; Latin American critical geographical thought, Indigenous Peoples, autonomies and collective rights; Territorialities in dispute and r-existences participate.

We propose the theoretical relevance based on some fundamental issues: the neocolonial export-oriented extractive model, the decolonial perspective, decolonial feminisms, and the dialogues of knowledge and understanding of political struggle.

Neocolonial export-oriented extractive model

The imposition of ultra-neoliberalism in Latin America and the Caribbean has led to a deepening of exploitation, dispossession, and the commodification of various spheres of life. In this new phase, concentrated capital and its socio-political representatives have furthered the denial of the forms of production that shape the lives and territories of the various dispossessed groups.

The countryside and rural ways of life are threatened not only by the expansion of cities and the change in consumption patterns, but mainly by the multiple expressions of capital: agro-exporting elites successfully promote greater integration with the market through Free Trade Agreements and Strategic Partnership Agreements, such as the one recently signed between Mercosur and the European Union; public and private capital deepens the grabbing and foreign ownership of land; growing public debt intensifies dependence on international credit (mostly with China, but also with the BNDES, the IDB and the IMF); state and private investments in infrastructure projects link the construction of mega-projects in rural areas with extractive projects, mainly for minerals, hydrocarbons, agro-exports and corporate tourism.

Faced with the re-primarization of the economy and the agrarian counter-reform, popular sectors offer resistance and re-existence born from the heat of constant confrontation with capital. These organizations take on a diversity of forms, with perspectives more or less linked to institutional structures, and with autonomous proposals that demonstrate their enormous versatility in adapting or reinventing themselves in their struggles, proposals, and societal pursuits. They create strategies such as the demand for plurinational states, a 21st-century socialism, the decolonization of the state, Buen Vivir (Good Living), the rights of nature, agroecology and food sovereignty, comprehensive and popular agrarian reform, people's markets, water redistribution, interculturalism, social and environmental justice, autonomous territories, community economies, participatory democracy, territorial planning, trade unionism, and other forms of organization, etc. They seek to prioritize all spheres of life, understood in their close interrelation and without the fragmentation imposed by Western binary logic on agrarian, environmental, social, economic, and agri-food issues. To further this analysis, we propose: 1. continuing critical reflection on the domination imposed by capitalism and on socio-territorial liberation movements and disputes over development models, which materializes in the relationship between the State and these movements; 2. linked to government policies, it is necessary to place at the center of the debate the complicity of certain theoretical proposals that support and justify the advance of capitalism in rural areas, in almost all cases driven by public policy; 3. deepening the territorial debate in its diversity.

Decolonial perspective

Various proposals are being practiced and theorized from this perspective among rural communities and militant academic activists, forming a new critical paradigm alternative to capitalism. Coloniality, with its geopolitics of knowledge, problematizes binary thinking (countryside-city, rural-urban, Indigenous-mestizo, among others), recognizing the knowledge and practices inherent in socio-territorial struggles. Therefore, we are interested in delving into the counter-hegemonic territorialization processes of rural social movements in diverse dimensions of social life.

Community and decolonial feminisms

In this scenario, those who inhabit the territories of Latin America and the Caribbean face new forms of violence, exploitation, and dispossession. Both territories and the bodies of men, women, and other sexual identities—Indigenous, Black, racialized, and marginalized individuals—constitute a kind of army of disposable externalities of the capitalist system, a system that continually reproduces itself and, in some contexts, is forced to migrate.

Following decolonial and indigenous feminists (Crenshaw, 2012; Hill Collins, 2012; Espinosa Miñoso, 2009; Segato, 2012; Cumes, 2011; Álvarez and Painemal, 2016) we postulate that in sociocultural, political and economic contexts such as those of the Latin America and Caribbean region, where coloniality and racism persist as an everyday social relationship, violence against women and other subjects considered subordinate takes the form of “violentogenic” processes (Segato, 2012).

Considering the preceding elements, we propose mainstreaming the analysis of gender relations in the Latin American and Caribbean countryside and violence against rural women, emphasizing the relationship between territory and body, given the emerging feminist territorial organization and struggle against gender repression, criminalization, control of and over reproduction, denial and lack of political participation, and non-recognition of their work. More women have strengthened themselves and fought for their territories from within community networks and structures, weaving them together with memory, affection, mutual support, and intimacy in the collective and embodied struggle.

Dialogue of knowledge and militant action

This context demands a commitment among the diverse individuals who inhabit and operate from different spaces. This means that academia must be engaged. The theoretical relevance of this research is inextricably linked to a political practice that fosters political connections with other experiences, the exchange of knowledge, information, and debates in such a way that the positions and proposals of popular sectors in Latin America and the Caribbean can be consolidated, disseminated, and united.

Even in the face of daily conflicts in these territories, voices of resistance and re-existence rise up, offering new ways of understanding and analyzing the social, economic, and political reality they experience. They seek alternative ways of understanding the world, generating new research processes—and new relationships with research teams—that prioritize local knowledge, memories, and resistance present in these territories. These approaches allow us to envision other ways of life, other forms of relating to territories and bodies, beyond the multiple oppressions they face. Within this framework, we adopt perspectives of co-constructing knowledge with communities and territories, sharing knowledge and "situated knowledge" (Haraway, 1991, p. 326) that enable us to understand the advance of capital in their territories. In this sense, we propose to broaden and disseminate the debate, and to strengthen ties with organizations, movements, and academic institutions that have a social commitment.