The municipality of Rio Bonito do Iguaçu is located in the midst of a group of small municipalities with a strong rural tradition in the center-west of the state of Paraná, in the South of Brazil. Originally having about 5,000 inhabitants distributed among a small urban nucleus and an extensive rural area, Rio Bonito is part of a number of towns that border the river Iguaçu in this region and whose histories were completely changed due to the construction of several dams in the 70s and 80s - Segredo, Salto Osório and Salto Santiago, among others. The Salto Santiago dam is located in the territory of the municipality of Rio Bonito do Iguaçu, and the history of its construction followed the course set by the developmentalistpolicy of the period. Promoted by Eletrosul, Centrais Elétricas do Sul do Brasil S.A. (Electric Central Stations of the South of Brazil, Corp.), the Power Plant of Salto Santiago also resulted in the creation of a large artificial lake that drove away a great number of small landowners and submerged extensive areas of land. This also led to profound structural changes in the towns of the region, especially those that were closer to the flood limits.These changes were induced by the growing demand for labor and services, as well as by the exodus from the flooded areas and the consequent transfer of significant numbers of the population to neighbouring municipalities which had not been affected by the creation of the lake. It is also in the municipality of Rio Bonito that a part of the Giacometi Estate is located. This is a very large landed estate of approximately 84,000 ha, most of which is considered non-productive, as can be seen by the extensive tracts that are not used for agriculture or cattle raising.

On April 17, 1996, a group of about 5,000 people, encamped along the state road that crosses a part of this estate and organized by MST (The Landless Workers' Movement), occupied one of its sides - precisely the one that borders the lake created by the Salto Santiago dam. This occupation, which took place at dawn with all the detail of a military operation, managed to become conspicuous due to its dimension, its meaning, and its daring. The Instituto Nacional de Colonização e Reforma Agrária – INCRA (National Institute for Settlement and Agrarian Reform), responsible for the agrarian policy in the country, was compelled to promote the expropriation of 17,000 ha for the settlement of 900 families, and subsequently of an additional 10,000 ha in order to meet the solicitation of a total of 1,504 families which are settled at present in rural lots of 120 to 144 ha. Established as the Ireno Alves dos Santos Agrarian Reform Settlement Project, in honor of a leader of the local MST killed in an accident on the road that crosses the whole area, this rural nucleus is inhabited by a population of about 9, 000 people, almost twice the original population of the municipality of Rio Bonito.

Since the definition of the expropriation of part of the Giacomet Estate and the settlement of the 1,504 landless families, the regional MST has been discussing the need to construct a 'new centrality' for the group, which has been missing since the end of the encampment by the road and the settlement of the families in their respective lots. This 'new centrality' would provide a better articulation of the group itself, with the intent of establishing more organic systems for the management of the settlement. In this way, it would also be possible to implement production alternatives that entail a connection with an adequate infrastructure: agro-industrial stations for the improvement of the settlement's production, micro-industries (carpentry, for instance), alternative activities for job and income creation (consumer and building associations, leisure and recreational systems, cultural and training activities, etc.), or small spaces for services (machine shops, shoe stores, barbershops, etc). Furthermore, this 'centrality' would allow the agglutination of a number of services which are in practical terms unviable with the dispersion of the population in the 27,000 ha of the settlement: schools, hospitals, training centers, sports and cultural centers.

In the meantime, in the back of the area that borders the great lake created by the Salto Santiago dam were hidden the remains of a 'dam town', a camp-town built to lodge workers, technicians, and foremen working in the construction of the Salto Santiago Power Plant. As a product of the developmentalist policy of the 70s, this town had been planned and built with the objective of being subsequently abandoned. Thus, all the houses, public equipments, and premises were to be removed when the construction of the plant was over. When this happened in 1983, all of a sudden a population that had reached 13,000 at the peak of construction had to take a new course and look for a different place to live in. The ruins that remained - the road system, drainage facilities, sewage, water supply system, some swimming pools, some floors of the cinema and bus station, and the foundations of all the buildings - were covered by the vegetation, remaining thus for 15 years.

In 1998, some of the settlers that had lived in that camp-town decided to recover those ruins. After their first efforts, the whole settlement and the leaders of the Movement realized that they could extract from there the bases for the construction of the 'centrality' that they sought by promoting the constitution of an urban nucleus which might develop the conceptions of production and life from the reinvention of the idea of the city itself.

Thus, it is on this conception of another possible city - a city that allows its reverse, that germinates in the obscure land that absorbs and negates - that this study intends to focus. In its potential for transformation, due to the breadth of what it is proposed to be built there, this city also encompasses the amplitude of the action of MST itself: in the struggle for the subversion of the hegemonic structures of domination through the reinvention of practical action as political action, the Movement of Landless Workers seeks to reinvent the place of politics itself.