Territoriality and resistance in the amazon forest

Territorialidad y resistencia en foresta amazonica

Abstract

Considered one of the greatest natural assets of the Brazilian territory and of humanity, the Amazon forest undergoes profound structural changes: territorial conflicts, mineral extraction and the relationship with gold mining. This article aims to address how the resistance of traditional communities in the Amazon rainforest occurs, relating the groups and communities that act in defense of the preservation of the traditional activities carried out by the people, as well as the continuity of the standing forest and the guarantee of the rights exercised over the space. The methodology used consists of bibliographical and documentary analysis. The results point to a significant increase, over the last few years, of violence and conflicts, whose economic interests have driven racist groups linked to illegal deforestation and predatory mineral extraction in protected areas.

Keywords:
territoriality; resistance; traditional communities; amazon rainforest

Resumen

Considerada uno de los mayores bienes naturales del territorio brasileño y de la humanidad, la selva amazónica sufre profundos cambios estructurales: conflictos territoriales, extracción de minerales y relación con la minería aurífera. Este artículo tiene como objetivo abordar cómo se produce la resistencia de las comunidades tradicionales en la selva amazónica, relacionando los grupos y comunidades que actúan en defensa de la preservación de las actividades tradicionales realizadas por los pueblos, así como la continuidad del bosque en pie y la garantía de los derechos ejercidos sobre el espacio. La metodología utilizada consiste en el análisis bibliográfico y documental. Los resultados apuntan a un aumento significativo, en los últimos años, de la violencia y los conflictos, cuyo interés económico ha impulsado grupos racistas y vinculados a la deforestación ilegal y extracción depredadora de minerales en áreas protegidas.

Palabras clave:
territorialidad; resistencia; comunidades tradicionales; selva amazónica

Resumo

Considerada um dos maiores patrimônios naturais do território brasileiro e da humanidade, a floresta amazônica sofre profundas mudanças estruturais: conflitos territoriais, extrativismo mineral e a relação do garimpo. Este artigo objetiva abordar como ocorre a resistência de comunidades tradicionais na floresta amazônica, relacionando os grupos e comunidades que atuam em defesa da preservação das atividades tradicionais exercidas pelos povos, bem como na continuidade da floresta em pé e da garantia dos direitos exercidos sobre o espaço. A metodologia empregada consiste em análise bibliográfica e documental. Os resultados apontam aumento significativo, ao longo dos últimos anos, de violência e conflitos, cujo interesse econômico impulsionou grupos racistas e ligados ao desmatamento ilegal e extração mineral predatória em áreas protegidas.

Palavras-chave
territorialidade; resistência; comunidades tradicionais; floresta amazônica

Introduction

The Amazon forest is characterized as one of the greatest natural assets of humanity, being regionalized according to its territorial occupation, in the legal Amazon, appropriating strips of the seven states of the North Region, west of Maranhão and north of Mato Grosso, in addition to the International Amazon, incorporating areas of the Brazilian territory and other countries located in the extreme north of South America. Its natural condition is characterized by an equatorial climate, with no defined season, broadleaf arboreal forest, being divided into three large areas: igapó forest, floodplains and terra firme.

Faced with a new global geopolitical scenario, characterized mainly after the 90s of the twentieth century, with the new world order, external actions of a capitalist nature and cultural exchange persist. The present work aims to address the resistance of traditional communities in the Amazon forest, relating the groups and traditional communities that act in defense of the preservation of the traditional activities carried out by the people, as well as in the continuity of the standing forest and the guarantee of the rights exercised over it. the space. The direct relationship between capital and the environment, the quest for sustainability and land conflicts are key issues addressed. It is noticeable that the major environmental events and conferences were preponderant in the development of goals, actions and agreements between countries, aimed at environmental preservation and conservationist economic activities.

ECO 92, held in Rio de Janeiro, in the last decade of the 20th century, aimed to establish measures of a socio-environmental nature, to draw attention to the already existing impacts on the Amazon forest, observed from the exploitation of rubber, at the end of the 19th century and expanded in the 20th century, based on the national integration project, with the construction of highways, hydroelectric plants and an increase in the migratory contingent. The portrait of the black population, residing in quilombola communities in the region, with a high incidence in the state of Pará; riverside dwellers, occupying vast areas in the midst of the Amazon rainforest, with a predominance of the floodplains of the Amazon basin; family and extractive producers who use the forest as a scenario for acquiring capital, through mineral, animal or plant exploration, as well as subsistence activities, and which are used as a basis for presenting local characteristics and the destructive scenario in the face of the interests of landowners and large business organizations.

The portrait of the Brazilian territory, in view of the State's promotion actions and national integration, constitutes the land history in the country. Carlos (2007) emphasizes the pioneering actions and rural public policies aimed mainly at large producers, such as government subsidies, long-term financing and access to transgenic organisms in the 20th century, which expanded the formation of large estates over the country and provided rural-city migration. . According to the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE), since the 1970s, Brazil has been considered an urbanized country. Accelerated urbanization, without planning, which took place in the second half of the 20th century, in the face of transformations related to the socioeconomic model of the country, ceasing to be an agro-exporter and starting to be characterized as an industrial urban area.

Late industrialization and the absence of housing policies resulted in irregular occupations throughout the territory, with aggravating situations in areas of greater demographic density, especially in the North Region for the capitals of Amazonas and Pará. It is known that since the colonial period public policies, aimed at land organization, have been exclusive, reducing the possibilities of land acquisition by blacks and other marginalized groups. Relationship of social exclusion, historically justified by the exploitation of blacks and Indians as labor for agricultural activities. Episodes such as land grabbing, occupation of public and private lands irregularly, through forged documents; land law, favoring access to properties by the population with greater financial power and the absence of agrarian reform, as seen in other countries with socioeconomic conditions similar to Brazil, are factors resulting from land inequalities, which promote land conflicts and victimize thousands people annually in Brazil. Because, according to the Brazilian Constitution, housing and access to land are duties of the State and must be guaranteed by the public power. Therefore, when these actions are not matched, it becomes the citizen's right to occupy.

Urban expansion and the formation of MATOPIBA, an acronym that establishes the advancement of agribusiness, mainly related to soy production in the states of Maranhão, Tocantins, Piauí and Bahia, are discriminatory actions in the face of increasingly fragile environmental public policies, which result in negative impacts. environmental and social aspects of space. The North Region is the largest region in terms of territory in the country, being the second least populated and with several demographic gaps due to the occupation of the closed forest, as well as the rivers that make up the Amazon basin. It is the Brazilian region, according to the IBGE (2010), with the highest concentration of indigenous people and about 70% of its inhabitants declared themselves black in the last demographic census of the year 2010.

Blacks, indigenous peoples and other groups, whether or not they come from traditional communities, suffer, in the middle of the 21st century, from diversified actions that promote exclusion and discriminatory practices. Several reports presented on websites and news newspapers express the resistance and struggle for rights within the Amazon region. Child sexual exploitation, gender discrimination and social inequality are striking features in the face of interventionist actions by the State and multinational groups. Becker (2006) lists exogenous actions as a prevailing feature in the forest's cultural arrangement and establishes the impacts of this socioeconomic intervention. Santos (1996) establishes, in the face of critical geography and the globalized world, the contributing relationship to the increase in social inequality, in the face of technological advances, based on the informational technical-scientific revolution and the arrangements that make possible a greater concentration of investments and wealth within from Brazil.

The territory, being a category of analysis of geography, conceptualized in different ways, presents itself as a space that enjoys the power relationship of the individuals present, but contemporary actions establish the deterritorialization of space and local traditions. Resistance actions in the Amazon and other occupied areas, in Brazil and in the world, need to be continuous, enabling the continuity of traditional communities and rituals inherited from different generations.

Reflection on the theme

One of the greatest natural assets of the Brazilian territory and of humanity is the Amazon rainforest. However, historically this region is marked by territorial conflicts, mineral extraction and the relation of mining to the region, these are problems that have increased considerably over the years, mainly with the formation of small villages and towns that formed several municipalities.

In the first part of the article, the historical and contemporary context of the agrarian question in Brazil is presented, which has historically been marked by several treaties and territorial agreements and how these affected one of the greatest assets of the Brazilian territory. In the second moment, a brief analysis of the history of black people in Brazil is carried out, in which the worker was not seen as a human being, but as a commodity belonging to another man. For more than three centuries, this was the main work relationship in the Brazilian territory, through enslaved labor.

Then, the resistance of traditional communities to agrarian issues in the Amazon is presented, the struggle of riverside communities and other communities that, within the Amazon, reflect resistance to issues of the capitalist world marked by social inequalities and land conflicts. Finally, the quilombola communities in the Amazon are portrayed. It is noteworthy here that, despite more than three centuries of slavery in Brazil, little is said about the African presence in the existing quilombos in the region, as well as the struggle to remain in historically traditional territories that suffer human rights violations, even with the right to land guaranteed by law.

Historical and contemporary context of the agrarian question in Brazil

The Brazil presents in its territory an unequal land organization, being defined by geography as a country of intense land concentration. According to data presented by (IBGE), according to the last agricultural census, carried out in 2006, within the Brazilian territory, approximately 90% of rural properties in the country fit into the family farming modality, however, they represent only 27% of Brazilian arable land. The process of land concentration within the Brazilian territory can be analyzed among all biomes, with emphasis on the Atlantic Forest and Cerrado, both classified by Normas Meyers as hotspot, a term that establishes areas of great biodiversity, in a high stage of degradation, under maximum attention of the government, mainly to species of fauna and flora that need to be preserved.

Currently, the Amazon forest stands out, one of the greatest natural assets of the Brazilian territory, in progress in the degradation process, related to agriculture, extractivism and biopiracy, and where many traditional communities are losing their properties due to the advance of agribusiness. Becker (2006), in his geopolitical work at the turn of the third millennium, establishes the existing relationship between human beings and the space occupied, as a basis for productive processes, which, even in the face of environmental policies structured in summits, do not contribute to the process of forest preservation.

In Brazil, several treaties and agreements have historically been carried out. Among them, we can mention the Treaty of Tordesillas, carried out by the Portuguese and Spanish crowns in 1494, whose objective was to divide lands in South America between the two colonists. In the lands belonging to Portugal, there was a structuring in which the territory was divided into hereditary captaincies, being administered by the grantees, people trusted by the Portuguese crown and who held high purchasing power, to the point of developing the space and the productive bases. For Santos (1996), space can be analyzed in three distinct periods, in which the process of occupation of human beings in space and their productivity takes place in different ways. In the natural environment, Santos (1996) states that human beings maintain a harmonious relationship with space, producing according to their needs. A large part of the population, in this period that precedes the 18th century, lives in rural areas and does not have advanced production techniques, only the rudimentary ones, which makes production difficult and limited. The technical environment can be seen from the 18th century onwards, in which the evolution provided by the First Industrial Revolution, which broke out in England, on the European continent, enabled the growth of rural-city migrations and the development of machinery. Through the agricultural revolution, the industrial urban period begins in many European cities, modifying the productive system and increasing the impacts on the environment. The use of fossil fuels and the increase in deforestation for the production of raw materials are factors related to this purpose.

During the 20th century, Santos (1996) establishes the period of the informational scientific technical environment, when, through globalization and the green revolution of 1966, agricultural production and the relationship between human beings and space undergoes intense changes, related to the advance production and environmental impacts. For the geographer David Harvey, in his work Spaces of Hope, the process of capital accumulation was a geographical issue, in which social and technical relations produce spaces unevenly.

As can be seen on a global scale, with the new world order, established from the 90s, post-bipolarization, the world is classified into developed, emerging and underdeveloped countries, where productivity and aggregate technologies are different and reflect on the commercialization. Brazil, China and India stand out in food production in the world, being the countries with the highest production percentages, in addition, of course, to the United States and countries of the European Union and the United Kingdom. The difference between Brazil and the demographic powers of Asia lies precisely in the public that receives the goods and benefits. Brazil prioritizes the external market and the commercialization of products in commodities, unlike China and India, which prioritize internal commercialization.

During the colonial period, whether in America, Asia or Africa, territories colonized by Europeans, the main mode of production was plantations, which consisted of occupying large spaces, exploiting slave labor, monoculture and commercialization in the foreign market. Practices similar to those that marked the colonial period and favored land concentration are still common in countries on these continents. Presented by Cândido (2017), external actions conditioned by capitalism and the advancement of the global economy in relation to high productivity make it possible to return to the permanence of traditional communities and the development of agroecology.

In 1850, the Land Law was created in Brazil, whose main purpose was to guarantee the right of access to land for a large part of Brazilian citizens during the imperial period. However, this law intended the acquisition of land only with payment in cash, which ended up being inaccessible to a large part of the population, including blacks, who, at the end of the 19th century, were abolished from slave labor. Also in this period, a recurrent practice in rural spaces was land grabbing, which consists of the process of falsifying land documents, seeking to confer “legality” on land that, in fact, was irregularly occupied or taken.

In the 20th century, the world and Brazil underwent major transformations, arising from the second Industrial Revolution, the 1929 crisis and the Treaty of Petrópolis, which expanded the region destined to the legal Amazon forest, as well as the North Region, through the incorporation of today's state of Acre as a Brazilian territory. In this same century, Brazil ceased to be considered an agro-exporting country and became an industrial urban country, starting to produce clothing and food, non-durable consumer goods, without the necessary technology for their production.

From the 1960s, the green revolution was announced in Washington in the United States, whose dilemma was to end hunger on the planet due to the creation of new productive techniques and innovative machinery. Unfortunately, hunger is not over, because, as we know, hunger is the result of inequality in the distribution of food and not of low production. The most significant change in Brazilian territory, and in other countries, consisted of the mechanization of crops, which, from the insertion of more modern cultivation techniques, began to depend on an ever smaller amount of labor, leading, in this way, to , to a considerable increase in country-to-city migration and providing the emancipation of several cities around the BR-163, integrating the capital of the state of Mato Grosso to Santarém, in the state of Pará, in the middle of the Cerrado belt and mainly of the biome Amazon.

Brazil is considered, according to the IBGE, urbanized since the 1970s, a period that consolidated a higher rate of inhabitants in urban areas, compared to rural areas. However, the urbanization of the Brazilian territory was not planned and took place at an accelerated pace, requiring basic infrastructure, assistance to inhabitants from rural areas, favoring their occupation in irregular areas, such as riverbanks and slopes. Brito and Pinho (2012) report inequality in population distribution in Brazil, which is concentrated mainly in cities with approximately 500,000 inhabitants, cities that currently face challenges related to the lack of urban planning and resulted in irregular occupations.

During the 20th century, the Amazon region underwent major transformations and a demographic increase, indicated by the IBGE, due to the growing migratory flow, carried out by the rubber boom and the government campaigns for national integration. For Becker (2006), this process, accompanied by globalization, favored greater incorporation of the forest as a production space, carried out in opportune ways at different times by exogenous agents. In the 1960s, Pedro Pinchas Geiger, author of the regionalization of Brazil into geoeconomic regions, classified the Amazon forest as the region of the future. The report was carried out in comparison with other Brazilian geoeconomic regions, in which the Northeast was classified as the region of the past and the Center-South as the region of the present.

Geiger (2003) states that, in the 1960s, the Amazon region was undergoing a process of socioeconomic development, established not only by the rubber cycle but also by the installation of the Manaus free zone, an industrial productive pole, installed in the state capital. of Amazonas, which resulted in an increase in production and industrial decentralization in the Brazilian territory, in addition to the creation of the Superintendency for the Development of the Amazon (SUDAM). In this period, the North Region had only three states: Amazonas, Pará and the then elevated to state status, Acre.

It is important to highlight that Acre was considered a federal territory, being administered by the Union until the 60s, as well as Rondônia, which came to be called Guaporé, Roraima, called Rio Branco and Amapá. Both elevated to the category of federation unit only in the Constitution of 1988, as well as the state of Tocantins, which was divided from the state of Goiás and integrated into the North Region, constituting the largest region in territorial extension, with seven states and the second smallest in population size, with about 16 million inhabitants, according to the last demographic census carried out by IBGE (2010).

In the Amazon region, one of the areas that have been experiencing intense soy production is called MATOPIBA, corresponding to the south of the states of Maranhão and Piauí and west of Bahia, all located in the Northeast Region and the extreme north of the state of Tocantins, whose The area represents an expansion of the national agricultural frontier in the 21st century, evidencing the growing rate of deforestation due to agribusiness. Carter (2010), comparing the Gini index to agrarian issues in developing countries, found that Brazil ranks first in land concentration and social inequality among emerging countries, followed by Argentina and Colombia, both located in South America. Conclusive analysis of inequality in access to rural property within the Brazilian territory showed that it is the result of public policies aimed at landowners and modern productions, seen from the second half of the twentieth century and the deficiency in encouraging family production and subsidies to small farmers .

The artistic movement with a strong impact on Brazilian culture, represented in history, was pre-modernism, which analyzed political issues and social aspects within the Brazilian territory. Cunha (2002), as a great representative of the literature of this period, which marks the transition from the Brazilian Empire to the Republic, defines the struggle for land in one of his main works, The Sertões.

The sertanejo is, above all, a strong man. He doesn't have the exhausting rickets of mestizos on the coast. Its appearance, however, at first glance reveals the opposite. It's clumsy, awkward, crooked. Hercules-Quasimodo is the permanently fatigued man. However, all this appearance of tiredness is deceiving. On the reverse, the man is transfigured and from the ordinary figure of the clumsy tabaréu, unexpectedly replacing the dominating aspect of a coppery and powerful titan, in a surprising unfolding of strength and extraordinary agility. (CUNHA, 2002, p. 36).

The reference presented in the excerpt above represents the struggle of the rural worker, in the northeastern sertão, as a result of the drought and the factors adverse to production, mainly subsistence. This is the Northeastern scenario, which is present in the life of rural workers in other Brazilian biomes, including the legal Amazon, where the search for land is a constant struggle.

Historically, actions that propose the regular division of rural properties have been debated. About 2,000 years ago, Plato and Aristotle argued over land ownership. In the Middle Ages it was no different, there was a peasant insurrection, seeking better living conditions. The fight continues today, for the attention of the government, through policies to encourage small producers. The French Revolution of the 18th century was driven by movements resulting from conflicts over land structure. And in the twentieth century, approximately forty countries promoted agrarian reform in their territories. Carter (2010), when analyzing social inequalities, democracy and agrarian reform, contextualizes the process of redistribution of land and wealth since the period of the Hebrews, Greeks and Romans, emphasizing the 20th century as the period of great progress as a result of of the policies created by the countries. Demographic, political and economic factors are established as the main factors for the occurrence of reforms and legislative development in land access policies.

In Brazil, the Movimento Sem Terra (MST) represents the fight for agrarian reform and land redistribution of properties that do not fulfill their social function. According to data from the National Institute of Colonization and Agrarian Reform (INCRA), in Brazil, currently, about 1 million families have been settled in about 88 hectares of land, in a total of 9 thousand settlements distributed throughout the country. Carter (2010) analyzes the process of occupations in the period between 1985 and 2006 and reveals the North Region as the region of the country with the highest rate of settled families and distributed area. However, there are still many families in camps, and the impasses caused by the dispute over properties account for thousands of lives lost in land conflicts.

The Pastoral Land Commission (CPT) accounts for an average of more than a thousand deaths recorded as a result of land conflicts. The states of Pará and Maranhão, a region known as “the parrot's beak”, are the states in the Legal Amazon with the highest rate of deaths from agrarian conflicts. Among the factors that result from this sad statistic, one can mention the expansion of the agricultural frontier and land-grabbing practices in the region that affect the permanence of families and continuity of traditional communities in the region.

It is important to point out that the Brazilian and world agrarian context is experiencing intense conflicts and crises in their historical contexts. It was observed, from the reading and bibliographic review for the production of this material, that the index of land concentration and difficulty in accessing land have been increasing in recent years. Facts portrayed through surveys and published data, mainly by the IBGE and other informational mechanisms, show that the reports presented by public authorities and heads of State, justify that public policies, aimed at greater and better land distribution, are carried out, but have great obstacle to bureaucracy, established by the absence of policies aimed at the neediest population. The search for space for appropriation and production is continuous and guaranteed by the Brazilian Constitution, given that, as already mentioned, from the moment that the representative powers do not fulfill their duties, the act of occupation becomes a right.

A brief analysis of the history of black people in Brazil

The tradition of fighting inequalities and racism has been present in Brazil since the end of the 19th century, starting from the first articulations of struggles fought during the slavery period, until the implementation of Law nº 10.639/03, which made the teaching of Afro-Brazilian History and Culture. With that, the concern with the situation of the blacks assumed an importance compared to other nations, because here the heritage of Africa is more present, but less valued, and this devaluation is guided mainly by the social inequalities evidenced throughout the historical process.

For a long time, the memories and histories of the Brazilian black population were limited to slavery and trafficking, and their representations were based on the slavery process, in which the various forms of resistance were forgotten and hidden, as well as the idea of a harmonious relationship in the face of slavery. the gentlemen.

The basis of this inequality lies in the constant denunciation of the so-called myth of racial democracy, which during the 20th century was presented by Gilberto Freyre, although in his work Casa Grande e Senzala (2005) it was not written directly with this name, he described a peaceful coexistence, harmony and whose miscegenation characterized a particularity of the Brazilian people. Later, authors such as Florestan Fernandes and Carlos Hasenbalg refuted this thought, saying that in Brazil there was racial prejudice and inequality between whites and non-whites in economic and educational terms, among other indicators.

According to Hasenbalg (1979, p. 114), racism is like an ideological construction incorporated and carried out through a set of material practices of racial discrimination, which is the primary determinant of the position of non-whites in relations of production and distribution.

Racism in Brazil differs from what was practiced in South Africa during the Apartheid regime, as well as from the racism practiced in the United States. The racism that exists in Brazil is subtle and silent, because it is veiled. However, this does not mean that it does not make more victims than the one who is explicit, makes victims anyway, which is confirmed in practice through official statistics of violence, religious intolerance towards practitioners of religions of African origin and vulnerability and distance social and economic, which separate whites and blacks in society.

About this, Munanga (2017, p. 37) describes that the difficulty lies precisely in the peculiarities of Brazilian-style racism, which differentiate it from other forms of manifestations of discrimination in human history, such as the Nazi regime, the Jim Crow laws in southern United States and apartheid in South Africa. Over the years, racism has undergone several mutations in its figures linked to discourse, culture and society. According to Aruda,

even today, the view associated with blacks through the prism of racism attributes the causes of their condition to blacks themselves, whether due to accommodation or lack of quality for social ascension. In this way, the poverty of blacks and their absence in spaces of power and in the production of knowledge has been naturalized throughout our history, given that in the past there was no care or concern to record the struggle of blacks throughout the process history of Brazil (ARRUDA, 2016, p. 14).

For more than three centuries, the main work relationship in Brazilian territory was enslaved labor, in which the worker was not seen as a human being, but as a commodity belonging to another man who could be bought and sold at any time. time. We corroborate Brito (2010) by highlighting that the Brazilian state and manorial power during the period of slavery is undeniable, especially in the official history records that it concealed and omitted, but that did not prevent the contributions of African men and women and descendants from also acting in this context. scenario as people endowed with will.

The resistance of traditional communities to agrarian issues in the Amazon

The constant struggle of riverside communities, within Brazilian territory, reflects the resistance of many traditional communities to issues related to the globalized world. Santos (1996) explains that the second half of the 20th century is marked by social inequality, land, urban and political conflicts in Brazil and in the world. Such factors are aggravated due to intense territorial interventions, be they the increasing presence of global companies or even the process of cultural exchange promoted by the communication vehicles. As an example, we can mention the construction of dams, the advance of the agricultural frontier and land grabbing.

According to the National Commission for the Sustainable Development of Traditional Peoples and Communities (CNPCT), traditional communities can be characterized as quilombolas, faxinalenses, caiçaras, gypsies, mangaba collectors, coconut breakers - babassu, terreiro peoples, traditional Pantanal communities , fishermen, extractivists, Pomeranians, retirees from Araguaia and pasture background communities. Among the main struggles presented by inhabitants of traditional communities, one can mention the regulation of land and the impasses resulting from social vulnerability. Many families, living under these conditions, do not have access to education and health services, services considered basic for all Brazilian citizens.

Campos Filho (2002), in his work on the tradition and rupture of the Pantanal, establishes a direct relationship between the different landscapes existing in this biome and the process of its formation and consolidation by the presence of different peoples, constituting, in this space, traditional communities. Among them, we mention the indigenous people and their local traditions, which have made it possible throughout history to preserve this and other biomes in Brazil.

According to the Society, Population and Nature Institute (ISPN), the Amazon forest stands out as a great global reference. In the indigenous context, it comprises approximately 200,000 people, 420 different peoples, 86 languages and 650 dialects, occupying a total area of 21.5% of the legal Amazon. The Amazon forest presents itself as a large area of exploration and great importance for society in general. Representing the indigenous population within Brazilian territory is expressing respect and intense significance for the country's native population. According to the IBGE, in the colonial period, there were an average of six million indigenous people in Brazilian territory and, at present, according to the same institute, this number is less than one million inhabitants.

Historically, it is known that the Amazon forest is of great importance as an area for the exploitation of the well-known drugs of the sertão, spices taken from the forest and sold. In the middle of the 19th century, the rubber boom spurred migration to the region; in the 20th century, following the country's development period, passing through great rulers such as Getúlio Vargas, who made the implementation of basic industries possible, concentrating on the Center-South Region, and Juscelino Kubitscheck, who in his mandate guaranteed national integration, through of its “fifty years in five” plans and goals. Since then, a growing development of the Amazon region has been observed.

Santos (2000), regarding the regionalization of the Brazilian territory into four Brazils, together with professor Maria Laura Silveira, points to the Amazon region as a region of constant delays and lack of attention on the part of the public power, because even in the face of historical political of attention to the region, through the construction of waterways, highways and SUDAM, the region presents numerous factors of struggles and needs for the preservation of its historical and environmental heritage. Struggles that had the support of Chico Mendes, during the 1980s, encouraging the resistance of the rubber tappers for the preservation of the forest and mainly for the continuity of extractive activities, which provide resources for the population and cities in general, related to the production of the main raw material for rubber in a sustainable way. Economic activities related to the secondary sector, with the installation of the Manaus free zone, concentrate several global industries, including the Asian companies Samsung and Honda, which use the productive space and government incentives to carry out their production. Another city in the Amazon region that stands out in the secondary and tertiary sectors is the capital of the state of Pará, Belém. Due to its high population rate and strategic geographic position, close to drainage channels, it attracts companies and businesses to the region.

Currently, the expansion of the agricultural frontier is the factor with the greatest impact related to local productivity, which increases land concentration in the region and reduces the area destined for production on a smaller scale, under the responsibility of peasants. Mineral extraction and the relationship between mining in the region are historical problems, they are mainly related to the formation of small villages and towns and were contributors to the formation of several municipalities. This economic activity has a direct impact on soil and water resources, driving conflicts between inhabitants of traditional communities, such as riverside communities and indigenous villages, and generates other dilemmas, including prostitution. As examples, we can cite the region of Serra Pelada, the great Carajás and the construction of the Belo Monte dam, which even though it is not portrayed as a mineral exploration, establishes the invasion of the Xingu indigenous reserve. Several environmental and social impacts on the Amazon forest were historically committed due to the explorations carried out, such as deforestation, deviation from the natural course of the river and the emission of methane gas, through the decomposition of submerged trees, directly affecting traditional communities, such as riverside and indigenous peoples, who need preserved natural resources to continue their traditions and subsistence.

The growing illegal and unsustainable exploitation of the forest contributes to the constant scarcity of resources and the economic impact on families who need the forest standing to carry out their activities. According to data presented by ISPN, obtained through the New Brazilian Social Cartography project, the legal Amazon has about 1,000 quilombola communities, all of which have been mapped and distributed among the states of the region, with emphasis on the states of Maranhão and Pará, that aim mainly to keep alive the traditions of their antecedents.

There are countless reports related to land conflicts reported in Brazilian territory, especially in the Amazon forest. The legal Amazon is known as the largest reserve of natural resources on the planet, according to research and data released by forest protection and care companies and non-governmental organizations. Historically, projects associated with the integration of the Amazon rainforest through the BR-163 (Cuiabá - Santarém) and the growing cattle ranching in the region have expanded local production and mainly the occupation process, resulting in an increase in degraded areas and expansion in deforestation rates. , aggravated by the creation of pastures and the planting of soybeans, especially in the MATOPIBA region.

According to Benatti, Santos and Pena da Gama (2006), the expansion of degraded areas in the Amazon region directly impacts the environmental context, generating losses such as leaching and desertification of certain areas, in addition to social impacts, which result in a lot of violence. and expropriation of the rural population to other environments. Popularly, the south of Pará is known as “Land without law”, due to the intense land conflicts that take place in this region and the absence of public policies to support the local population. Girard (2008) highlights in his geographic atlas the intense concentration of conflicts, mainly in the states of Pará and Maranhão, already mentioned earlier in this article.

Benatti, Santos and Pena da Gama (2006) highlight land grabbing, irregular or illegal acquisition of land, as one of the main factors resulting from conflicts in the Amazon region. It is known that this fraudulent process for the acquisition of public and private land has been part of the land history of the Brazilian territory since the 19th century, and even today it generates conflicts in all regions of the country. It is worth emphasizing that the land acquired from the land grabbing process is established by agricultural production, livestock and speculation.

Unfortunately, agrarian conflicts are historical and far from over. Benatti, Santos and Pena da Gama (2006) point out historical processes that have driven land conflicts in the Amazon, as well as in Brazil, including land grabbing and growing land concentration, in which thousands of people die as victims of direct actions or migrate of its properties as a way of preserving life. According to the Instituto Socioambiental, adequate living conditions that guarantee population security to survivors of agrarian conflicts and the permanence of traditional communities in the Amazon will only be possible with the support of the public power and social policies that contain the action of criminals and maintain stability. society in the region.

The inspection, performance of security and regulatory bodies, such as the Brazilian Institute of the Environment (IBAMA), Instituto Chico Mendes da Biodiversidade (ICMBio), INCRA and the National Indian Foundation (FUNAI) make it possible to combat deforestation and burning for the formation of areas for pastures and plantations, in addition to measures to support the indigenous, riverside, quilombola and other communities that inhabit the Amazon forest. Finally, for the implementation of these projects and objectives to be achieved by society, public policies are needed that aim at the sustainable development of the region, committed not only to the growth of economic activities but also to social well-being and, above all, to the preservation of the forest. .

Quilombola communities in the Amazon

The introduction of enslaved labor in Brazil occurred during the colonial period, initially by indigenous people and later by Africans. Slavery, according to Brito (2010, p. 5), was a regime of extreme violence (physical, social, psychological) that explains the inequalities that still exist in Brazil today.

Still according to Brito (2010, p. 7), all over Brazil, labor derived from trafficking was used: in the sugar mills in the Northeast, in the extraction of gold in the coffee plantations of the Southeast, in the extraction of rubber in the Region North and in the livestock areas of the South Region.

For more than three centuries the main employment relationship was through enslaved labor. However, acts of resistance, escapes and revolts were constant and took place in different ways. In a daily life of constant oppression and tension, enslaved men and women resorted to various acts to show their dissatisfaction and bargain, when possible, for better living and working conditions or even their freedom (BRITO, 2010, p. 12) .

However, when analyzing the Amazon region, one only remembers its biodiversity, conflicts and threats to traditional populations such as, for example, indigenous people, riverside people, rubber tappers, chestnut trees, artisanal fishermen and family farmers. However, little is said about the African presence and State policy. It appears that in the Amazon this subject was made invisible for a long time, even though this region has about 73.5% of the 15.8 million inhabitants of the North Region according to the IBGE, as reported by the G1 website (COSTA, 2013), and declare themselves black and brown, being the state of Pará with the largest number of people.

[...] for a long time there was the idea of the Amazon being marked as a region of indigenous culture, this meant that slavery and African culture were placed in the background, in this way, for a long time this theme was constituted in a true void in regional historiography. It is only from the thirties of the last century that the first studies on the African presence in the Amazon region began to appear. (FUNES, 1995, p. 10, apud ALMEIDA, 2013, p. 1).

With regard to the territorial actions of the state, in 1988, with the Federal Constitution, there was a milestone for the struggle and recognition of the rights of black populations. About this, Leite (2000, p. 335) states that the debate takes on a national political environment. And with that, behind some evidence, clues and evidence, new subjects, territories, actions and policies of recognition emerge. And in the face of this scenario, new questions arise related to identities that pervade the struggles for citizenship.

After the elaboration and discussion of the Constitution, a new reconfiguration took place in the process of territorialization in Brazil. That said, social struggles emerged, new subjects of rights and citizenship towards the remaining quilombola communities. With the publication of Decree nº 3.912/2001 by the then President of the Republic Fernando Henrique Cardoso, land regularization took place and later the titles of these lands passed by the Ministry of Culture, through the Palmares Cultural Foundation (BRASIL, 2001).

The quilombos that formed in various parts of Brazil during the entire period of slavery were present and existed in practically the entire length of the national territory. According to Brito (2010, p. 12), resisting captivity was something that happened in different ways. In a daily life of constant oppression and tension, enslaved men and women resorted to various acts to show their dissatisfaction and bargain, when possible, for better living and working conditions, or even their freedom. This period represented the main form of black struggle against slavery and the system of oppression that took away their freedom and life.

In the current political scenario, talking about quilombos and quilombolas is talking about the guarantee of a quality of life compatible with the dignity of the human person, which is one of the rights present in the Federal Constitution. According to Leite (2000, p.333), although it seems pertinent to equate the issue of quilombo lands with indigenous lands, both are similar only in terms of the already visible challenges and clashes, at the conceptual level (regarding the identification of the referred phenomenon) and at the normative level (as regards the definition of the subject of law, the criteria, stages and legal-political competences).

Throughout the national territory, it is possible to find quilombola communities, claiming the right to permanence and legal recognition of possession of occupied lands. According to data available on the Palmares Foundation website (SOUZA; PORFÍRIO, 2012), around 3,000 quilombola communities have already been identified in Brazil, and of these, more than 1,826 are certified by the aforementioned institution, totaling around 2.2 million people.

These titles are due to the struggle for quilombola rights carried out by INCRA, the federal agency that delimits and entitles the lands occupied by the remnants of quilombos. And it is in this sense that Leite (2000, p. 335) highlights that, for this part of Brazilian society, the quilombo means above all a right to be recognized and not just a past to be remembered.

However, despite having historical roots whose recognition took more than 300 years, and which was only possible to be made official after the Federal Constitution, the regulation project is now threatened. These threats are guided, according to Leite (2000, p.349), mainly because the process itself collides with the interests of the economic elites involved in land expropriation, disrespect for laws and the arbitrariness and violence that accompany land regularization.

In this sense, struggles and conflicts take place in geographic spaces, as Arguedas (2017, p.72) says, where a dominant social order occurs and is not passively accepted, it is questioned and confronted, therefore, they are the spaces and conflicts where other worlds possibilities struggle to assert themselves. There is a strong material and symbolic appreciation of space, in which the territory and territorialities are the foundation of strategies for asserting rights and autonomy on the part of social movements (CRUZ, 2014 apud ARGUEDAS, p. 72-73). Historically, quilombola communities suffer human rights violations, according to Arguedas (2017), there is a process of expropriation of their territories that follows a script of injustice due to the pressure currently exerted by agents linked to agribusiness.

In Castro's (2017, p. 9) conception, agrarian conflicts, expropriation of traditional populations from their lands, indigenous genocide, land grabbing, massacres and deaths announced by bosses and their gunmen mark the images and make violence a key to interpretation of society. Natural riches were and continue to be objects of greed. According to studies carried out by Atlas Amazônia under pressure (ROLLA, 2021), the main threats to the largest tropical forest in the world endanger the preservation of natural and cultural elements.

These conflicts that occur in the Amazon are marks of the development process of capitalism. Oliveira (2016) says that historically minorities have resisted the systematic aggressions of national society. For Porto (2017), this process of violations is not new in national history, and neither is the movement of resistance to the oppression suffered. If, on the one hand, since the colonization process, the Brazilian territory was explored by the colonizers in the removal of raw materials such as brazilwood and precious metals, on the other hand, there was resistance from indigenous and black peoples to slavery. This resistance was present throughout the construction of Brazilian society and remains until the present day.

It can be seen, therefore, that, throughout the history of Brazil, the black populations, as well as the indigenous and other minorities that inhabit the Amazon in recent years, have been suffering various actions that are carried out by man and with the endorsement of the State, from the expansion of soy, cattle raising, exploitation and expropriation of territories, as well as threats, forced labor, among other violations of Human Rights.

However, even with violence, the withdrawal of rights and criminalization of movements, accompanied by the appropriation of natural resources, social movements fight in defense of rights: social, ethnic and environmental. For Alves,

the social mobilizations articulated by the so-called quilombola communities in the quest to guarantee different rights, especially the recognition of the right to the lands they inhabit, are marked by conflicts in various social fields (above all academic, political and economic). In addition to the State itself, agents from the economic field play a fundamental role in this history, given the systematic intervention promoted on land and rights of quilombola communities (ALVES, 2017, p. 101).

We agree with Becker (1988), when analyzing that the profound structural changes that occurred in the Amazon had a decisive role in organized civil society, state governments and international cooperation.

Considerations

It was possible to verify that there is a struggle and resistance of the traditional communities in the Amazon forest that act in defense of the preservation of the activities, thus guaranteeing the continuity of the standing forest. They also act in relation to the rights exercised over space, even under the rise of an extreme rightwing politician in Brazil, with a history of speeches, racist attitudes and the absence of priorities in environmental public policies, which exposes minorities even more to the statistics of the violence and conflicts mainly in the Amazon region, whose economic interest is guided by natural resources, where there was an “authorization” of a level of explicitness of racism and conflicts greater than before, which boosted racists and groups linked to illegal deforestation, which before they were “hidden”, “coming out of the closet”.

Thanks

( Capes, CNpq, Fapesb, )

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Publication Dates

• Publication in this collection
  07 July 2023
• Date of issue
  2023

History

• Received
  07 Jan 2023
• Accepted
  28 Mar 2023