O impacto político, económico e social da reforma agraria nos campos do Sul de Portugal, 1975-1977

Realizado o 25 de Abril de 1974, e num contexto em que a estrutura fundiária dos campos do Sul é vista, quase de forma consensual, como um bloqueio ao incremento agrícola da região, desenvolve-se um poderoso movimento reivindicativo, protagonizado pelos assalariados rurais, em torno de aumentos salariais e garantia de emprego, o qual desemboca num processo de ocupação de terras, realidade que dá expressão a uma reforma agrária de natureza antilatifundista e anticapitalista, posteriormente delineada no plano jurídico pelo IV Governo Provisório. A legitimidade eleitoral triunfante nas eleições constituintes de 1975 e consolidada a 25 de Novembro do mesmo ano, em linha com a contestação à reforma agrária desenvolvida pelos grandes proprietários agrícolas e seus aliados políticos, cria um edifício legislativo que paulatinamente conduz à liquidação do processo revolucionário nos campos do Sul.

The coup d'état of 25 April 1974 was victorious, in a context in which the penetration of capitalism in the rural areas of the South in the 1960s had left intact the latifundium, a land structure that is viewed by consensus among the different political forces that constitute the provisional governments of the post 25 April as a barrier to the increase of agriculture in the region. A powerful
vindictive movement is developing, led by rural wage earners for wage increases and guaranteed employment, which leads to a vast process of land occupations. It is this fact that gives expression and makes an agrarian reform of an antilatifundist and anti-capitalist nature a reality in the rural areas of
the South. Therefore, its legal architecture, outlined by the IV Provisional Government, is essentially the consecration in the institutional plan of this new reality created on the ground by the struggle of rural workers. The political legitimacy resulting from the 1975 and 1976 elections, whose national results are in contradiction with those of the agrarian reform area, where the left to the left of the PS has significant weight, creates a new legislative edifice whose implementation, imposed with the help of the Republican National Guard in the face of workers' resistance, gradually leads to the liquidation of the revolutionary process in the southern camps.