POPULAR EDUCATION AND FREIREAN PEDAGOGY IN THE POLITICAL TRAINING OF PEOPLE FROM THE COUNTRYSIDE, FOREST AND WATERS, AT CONTAG'S NATIONAL TRAINING SCHOOL (ENFOC)
Popular education; Freirean pedagogy; Political education; ENFOC; Social and trade union movements in the countryside.
The subject of this research is the training practices developed by the CONTAG National Training School (ENFOC). This school is organically linked to the National Confederation of Rural Family Farmers (CONTAG), a national rural trade union organization whose organizational base is made up of rural family farmers who form the Rural Workers' Trade Union Movement (MSTTR). The aim of this research project was to analyze the experience of ENFOC, its theoretical and epistemological foundations in the political education of people from the countryside, the forest and the waters, and its relationship with Paulo Freire's pedagogy. We used participant research as our methodology, as it enables a meeting between participant observation and Popular Education, characterized by the interaction between the researcher and the subjects of the investigation, and responds in particular to the needs of the most vulnerable populations in social structures. This is a qualitative study to understand the social contexts and the research subjects, popular educators who have creatively developed and multiplied training processes. It also involved a bibliographical and documentary survey of the bases that underpin the research object. The time frame for the research was the period from 2006 to 2022, which corresponds to a cycle of educational practices of political training carried out over the 16 years that ENFOC has been active.