Violence, land conflicts and the dynamics of the agrarian economy in the Brazilian Amazon

Violencia, conflictos por la tierra y dinámica de la economía agraria en la Amazonia brasileña

Abstracts

In the Amazon, the land market is imposed by the conversion of the forest into land for economic purposes. Part of this land is the result of illicit actions, using different levels of violence and producing changes in the forest landscape. We argue that conflicts over land are signs in the territories of the action of mechanisms to generate land as a commodity in the region. Based on the situations of land conflicts mapped by the Pastoral Land Commission in the period from 2012 to 2021 and the analytical categories of the agrarian economy (technological trajectories, TTs) for 2006 and 2017, an analysis was built at the municipal level based on two periods. From 2012 to 2017, we sought to identify and characterize the territories where these mechanisms were present, observed in conjunction with the state transitions of the TTs from 2006 to 2017. From 2018 to 2021, we sought to identify processes and trends for the most recent period. Municipalities that converged to economies based on livestock and grain farming systems concentrated more than 60% of the conflicts that occurred in the decade. The results show the persistence of conflicts in historical areas, such as in the southeast of Pará, and in new borders, such as in municipalities on the Amazonas, Rondônia and Acre borders. There is also the internalization of violence towards the western Amazon, in municipalities with economies based on the biome in different arrangements, revealing new fronts of interest for the land resource. The results contribute to the debate on violence in the Amazon, based on the choices for the agrarian development model, which can result in illnesses of individuals and communities trapped in disputes, to control the ways of living and producing.

Keywords:
Violence; Rural Economy; Amazonian Ecosystem