La violencia de los otros: historias, agresión y alteridad en la sociabilidad de un latifundio del Nordeste de Brasil

This article is based on field work carried out in the lands that in the past belonged to an old cattle and cotton producing plantation located in the south of Rio Grande do Norte, Brazil. I will consider aggressions as constitutive of social relationships and I will explore the mechanisms through which they are defined as external to the sociability of the plantation. To do that, I will focus on the narratives of one of the former owners and his family and I will observe two ways in which aggressions are marginalized from the social dynamic. In both cases they are assigned to an alterity. The attempt to expel aggressions constitutes the other as a carrier of violence. This is identified with the “outsider”, who “invades” the property, and with the one who occupies less hierarchical positions than the owner. In this way, I observe a close relationship between aggression and otherness, which is constructed together with the delimitation of violence.