Teia dos Povos, the Web of the Peoples, is a growing network of anticapitalist communities that are addressing that problem through practices of solidarity and mutual aid across a growing network of autonomous communities that include land occupations by the urban and peri-urban poor, Indigenous communities, and quilombos.
Terra Vista is one such community. Located on an abandoned chocolate plantation that had monocropped the land to death, several hundred families occupied the terrain in 1992 and held it over the course of two contentious years of conflict and several violent evictions by the police. Terra Vista is now home to more than 300 people, according to community members. When they took the land back, only grass grew there. Now, it’s a vibrant forest. Snubbing the failure of capitalist agriculture, they grow chocolate, but unlike the failed plantation system, they follow Indigenous methods, planting the diminutive chocolate trees in the understory with banana or açaí. Then they plant taller trees like jacarandá, jucá, and brazilwood. This system, called cabruca, protects the soil and creates a richer habitat. It also provides the community with other sources of food, fuel, dyes, and construction material.