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Paper short abstract

Based on an ethnographic approach, this paper examines the concept of walking within the Pastoral Land Commission (CPT) in Bahia, Brazil. In this context, pilgrimage constitutes a method through which rural communities claim their rights and resist land grabbing and development projects.

Paper long abstract

This paper focuses on the meanings of walking, a key concept of the Pastoral Land Commission (CPT), an organisation affiliated with the Catholic Church in Brazil. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork conducted with the CPT of the Diocese of Juazeiro, in the state of Bahia, Northeastern Brazil, I aim to analyse walking as both a concrete and an abstract practice. First, walking can be associated with pastoral activities such as goat herding on communal land in traditional communities of the Caatinga, a semi-arid biome. More broadly, walking together aligns with the CPT’s engagement with rural communities in struggles against land grabbing. In this context, pilgrimages organised by the CPT merge these meanings of walking while operating as a method of political claiming. I discuss two ethnographic cases from pilgrimages in the backlands of Bahia, carried out at different scales (local and regional), both of which articulate forms of resistance rooted in pastoral and rural livelihoods. I therefore suggest that pilgrimage is a weapon in conflicts over land and water, which oppose, on the one hand, rural communities and, on the other, development projects that dispossess land and evict people.