Viver a velhice na Colônia Conceição no município de Nioaque, em Mato Grosso do Sul

Abstract

Investigating old age is the theme of this paper, seeking to understand how old age is processed in the lives of people living in rural settlement areas, more specifically in the Colônia Conceição settlement, located in the municipality of Nioaque, in Mato Grosso do Sul (MS). In that place, most of the settlers are in this group of people, living the phase of old age, and, even in this stage of life, are still active in making productive lots. It is in this context that the problem of this research resides, asking how the settlers live old age, in a place where the daily work demands physical effort, although their strengths diminish. For the understanding of living old age in Colônia Conceição, some categories were fundamental, among them, understanding the dimension of the settlement based on the studies of Heredia (1979), in the sense of the address of life, a link that keeps the old people in the lots of the settlement and which comprises a set of elements that intertwine, between belonging to the land, the relationships of interaction between people, the involvement with the making of the planting process and cultural treatments and, above all, in the dimensions of life in the place. Another category of the study was that of old age, understood as a phase, which people will at some point experience, being a natural biological phenomenon that has the central point in the loss of physical capacities. Bosi's study (1994) with the memory of the elderly was another theoretical contribution to the research, recommending oral sources for understanding the experience of the elderly. Thus, based on oral sources, according to the studies of Albert (2005), we entered the data collection path, conducting interviews with 17 old men and women, between the age group of 60 and 85 years, and also with five mediators / health agents who attend the settlement's health post. The results show that among the 373 lots that make up the Colônia settlement, 128 of these are occupied by people aged 60 or over, who manage the production units, maintaining and transforming the space. This shows resistance, since the struggle for land, which led them to the settlement, is being maintained by them, by insisting on living old age in the settlement. Finally, analyzing the experience of old age in the Colônia Conceição settlement was an instrument that presents, at the same time, the many results resulting from the installation of settlements in the municipality of Nioaque (and even in Brazil), which cannot be seen only by bias of success and / or economic failure in terms of production, leading to consider other elements, among them living with dignity. In this wake, they constitute places of rights, such as food production, with a view to the environment; the maintenance of cultural references nurtured by certain social groups; production according to the communities' own needs, even though they have a certain market bias; and, especially, the right to life and to live old age with deserved rest, as a reward for the toil undertaken in the trajectory of the many wanderings, until the arrival at the abode of life, in the Colônia Conceição settlement.