We discussed the trajectories of the capitalism expansion frontiers, and it environmental, social and ethnic impacts, on the Maranhão Amazon. The cited information result from bibliographic, documental and field research, in which we collected testimonies of rural workers and Indians, living in the region. We demonstrated that, even among Terra Indígena Araribóia's Guajajara communities (in which we concentrated this research), distinct options of conviviality with the surrounding society and its expansion frontiers are being made, carrying distinct impacts at their quality of life; we also demonstrated that the Indian communities most vulnerable to this expansion frontier are the Awa ones, which remain in imminent extinction risk. We conclude with some considerations: about the measures to be taken in the public policies field of action, facing the currently very quick devastation of the region, and the severe life conditions of its inhabitants; about the importance of Maranhão in the study field about peasant's sociability, domination, violence and resistance forms, as a counterpart to those which characterized the so called "cangaço" cycle in Northeastern Brazil.
Maranhão Amazon; Devastation; Rural workers; Indian communities