Where do the winds blow? New political cartographies and extractivism in the AmazonAbstract
New cartographies: the objective of this article is to contribute to the analysis of economic and geopolitical processes by national and international agents. We seek to identify the cartographies of power and the movements that are rapidly altering territories. It also covers the actions of companies and corporations responsible for conflicts with social, ethnic, gender, and worker groups. This context reveals a climate of violence that tends to expand. The analysis and data are the result of research conducted in municipalities along the Cuiabá-Santarém Highway in the western state of Pará - BR-16. This is one of the most affected regions of the Amazon in terms of socioeconomic and environmental changes as a result of the implementation of large infrastructure projects - ports, roads, railways, and hydroelectric plants - to enable the export corridor for commodities and the expansion of agricultural and mining ventures.
Keywords:
Amazon; political cartography; conflicts; extractivism; infrastructure projects; deforestation
Resumo
O objetivo deste artigo é contribuir com a análise de processos em curso na Amazônia provocados por novos interesses econômicos e geopolíticos por parte de agentes nacionais e internacionais. Procuramos identificar as cartografias de poder e os movimentos que alteram os territórios com grande velocidade e também a atuação de empresas e corporações responsáveis por conflitos com coletivos de atores sociais locais. Esse contexto revela um clima de violência que tende a se expandir. A análise e os dados resultam de pesquisa realizada em alguns municípios atravessados pela Rodovia Cuiabá-Santarém (BR-163), no Oeste do Pará. Trata-se de uma das regiões da Amazônia mais afetadas pelas transformações socioeconômicas e ambientais em função da implantação de grandes projetos de infraestrutura - portos, estradas, ferrovias e hidrelétricas - para viabilizar o corredor de exportação de commodities e a expansão de empreendimentos agropecuários e minerais.
Palavras-chave:
Amazônia; cartografias políticas; conflitos; extrativismo; projetos de infraestrutura; desmatamento
Resumen
El objetivo de este artículo es contribuir al análisis de los procesos en curso en la Amazonía, provocados por nuevos intereses económicos y geopolíticos de agentes nacionales e internacionales. Buscamos identificar las cartografías del poder y los movimientos que transforman los territorios con gran rapidez, así como la actuación de empresas y corporaciones responsables de conflictos con colectivos de actores sociales locales. Este contexto revela un clima de violencia que tiende a expandirse. El análisis y los datos proceden de una investigación realizada en algunos municipios atravesados por la carretera Cuiabá-Santarém (BR-163), en el oeste del estado de Pará. Se trata de una de las regiones de la Amazonía más afectadas por las transformaciones socioeconómicas y ambientales derivadas de la implantación de grandes proyectos de infraestructura -puertos, carreteras, ferrocarriles y centrales hidroeléctricas- destinados a viabilizar el corredor de exportación de materias primas y la expansión de emprendimientos agropecuarios y mineros.
Palabras-clave:
Amazonía; cartografías políticas; conflictos; extractivismo; proyectos de infraestructura; deforestación
Introduction
This article stems from concerns regarding the major challenges facing humanity in the face of imminent, unexpected events resulting from climate change, to which neither science nor technology has answers commensurate with their magnitude. Western rationalism underpinned the beliefs of modernity and formulated concepts that have persisted through the past centuries to the present day. This is the case with the notion of development, which has progressively established itself as a grand narrative, viewed by Rist (2002) as a belief, to denote both economic growth associated with ideas of progress and modernisation, and more recently, social justice and policies to reduce social inequality.
Many studies in philosophy, science, and the arts have sought to elucidate the essence of modernity and, above all, have criticised the model of society based on an obsession with economic growth and the domination of nature (Bauman, 2007; Morin, 2008; Polanyi, 2000).
The Amazon is at the epicentre of the global debate on climate emergencies (Rodrigues, 2024). In the contemporary imagination, there is growing hope regarding the ecosystem services it provides (supporting, provisioning, regulating, and cultural services) and the narrative surrounding the need to save the region and its supposed ability to save the planet. This would make it possible to alter or postpone the negative effects of climate change, caused primarily by the intensive model of fossil fuel production and consumption, which has more recently become associated with the green economy/low-carbon colonialism (Tornel, 2025).
But, after all, what role can the Amazon play in these climate processes if its very integrity is under threat? How can we envisage the planet’s future without linking it to the effects of intensified resource extraction, increased wildfires, deforestation, and water pollution over the last decade? Such questions guide the analysis of current dynamics in the Amazon and the role it may play in global cooperation on climate and societal transition.
There are developments that shape and/or drive new spatial patterns and can increase corporate land use, deforestation, land grabbing, and the violence and conflicts that have historically been observed in the Amazon. The future scenario would be the expansion of this situation in the face of extractive megaprojects that are being established or planned for this region. This is because large-scale projects increasingly dominate the landscape and territorial dynamics of this region, bringing in investments from the global system, with its speculative mechanisms, linked above all to agribusiness and mining.
This trend reinforces the privatisation of land - it is a path towards legitimising private land ownership, as well as the colonisation and commodification of nature. It is therefore essential to understand the direction in which the global economy is heading and what this reveals about the impacts on the Amazon and its consequences in relation to climate change.
With this article, we aim to contribute to the analysis of highly complex processes, shaped by the interests of various actors and agencies operating in the Amazon today. At the same time, we seek to identify new (geo)political cartographies that manifest as movements altering territories of former ‘occupation’ and highlighting the disputes and clashes of interests between international companies/corporations organised into production chains and local actors. We also observe the emergence of new forms of conflict and their simultaneous occurrence across different regions (Castro, 2019). The results of the ongoing research point to a correlation between the intensive model of land use - large-scale neo-extractivism - intensive territorial alteration and the climate changes observed in the country.
The research employed a qualitative and quantitative methodology carried out in municipalities traversed by the BR-163 and BR-230 highways in Pará (Itaituba, Trairão, and Novo Progresso), and involved direct observation of the socio-economic dynamics present there. From a methodological perspective, this study is based on critical analyses, through: i) field research conducted in Itaituba, Rurópolis, and Trairão between 2014 and 2024; ii) the CPT’s ‘Cadernos de Conflitos no Campo’ (Field Conflict Notebooks); iii) semi-structured interviews with the Pastoral Land Commission (CPT). In addition, secondary data produced by the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE), the National Institute for Space Research (INPE), the institutional website of the BR-163 concessionaire (Via Brasil BR-163), and MapBiomas Brasil were utilised.
It is worth noting that we have been conducting research in western Pará since 2014. Over the last decade, we have observed the emergence of new issues, and we are currently refining our studies on infrastructure and logistics. We have noted the overlap, within the same territories under analysis, of various socio-economic dynamics arising from government and corporate policies focused on logistics infrastructure, such as ports, motorways, railways, and hydroelectric power stations. The main objective of these constructed or planned projects is to facilitate and establish a new level of fluidity for long-distance transport, with a view to the movement of agricultural and mineral commodities and to increase economic gains, primarily for multinationals, banks, funds, and asset managers.
In the towns of Itaituba, Santarém, Altamira, Trairão, Rurópolis, and Novo Progresso, in western Pará, the logic of new frontiers is imposing itself on the dynamics of traditional frontiers and permeating life in the Tapajós and Xingu river valleys. Although the notion of a frontier is a classic concept in studies of settled areas, as Martins (2009) notes, we adopt it as a historical category that helps us understand territorial dynamics - economic, social, ethnic, political, environmental, and institutional. It is worth noting that these dynamics constitute a relational field: formed by agents and agencies, by interests, alliances, and conflicts involving the actions of the State, the national and international markets, and local actors. These dynamics and relational fields are observable in places where there is rapid change in land use, involving the extraction and exploitation of certain resources or the production and circulation of specific commodities (Waroux & García, 2025).
Running counter to sustainability
Latin America’s economy has always been characterised by the intensive exploitation of natural resources. Over time, foreign trade patterns have been sustained by the intensification of the extraction of primary commodities and the expansion of the frontier into new territories. The richer the region in forest, river, soil and subsoil resources, the greater the scale of their exploitation, in the dominant form of extractivism as part of large-scale accumulation, whose colonial strategies linking the West and the African-American world have been present in the history of all countries in the Americas.
The development model adopted in Brazil follows the same pattern, as it has been based on the extraction of plant, animal and mineral resources, with an international integration that is dependent, subordinate and functional to the market of transnational capitalism, whose markers of progress and development continue to shape, to this day, the notion of ‘being contemporary and modern’, with an ideology rooted in a (geo)political culture of the market and for the market (Wallerstein, 1989), notably the dynamics of the financial market. In this context, the (geo)political actions of the Brazilian state align with the process of globalisation and financialization, as a means of fulfilling a consensus agenda of commodities and profitable transitions from extractives/green colonialism, as analysed by Bringel and Svampa (2023).
This is a global division of labour that manifests itself in the roles assigned to different countries within the global system: on the one hand, countries specialising in the export of raw, semi-processed and primary goods with low added value; and on the other, countries exporting capital in the form of equipment, patents, digital technologies, artificial intelligence, and a range of financial and investment products.
Technological advances have enabled the extraordinary rapid depletion of natural resources and their transport over long distances, underpinned by what is known as Industry 4.0. Within this framework, corporate practices for controlling production processes are adopted, enabling the synchronisation of flows in real time and facilitating the manufacture of individualised and customised products (Rodrigues, 2020). However, it is also worth noting that technological advances have been incorporated into processes of information integration and interoperability, standardisation relating to cyber-physical systems (CPS) and the Internet of Things (IoT), cybersecurity and data privacy, and scalability issues, as they increasingly incorporate connected objects into manufacturing networks (Kohler & Weisz, 2016).
All these changes can be observed in the transport routes for goods from the Amazon to the global market. Large volumes of raw materials, as part of global production chains, are transported by road, rail, waterways, and ports (Castro, 2012). This leap forward was made possible by the enormous development of river and maritime navigation technology, which has achieved efficiency and optimised timing and movements within the global arena.
Technological innovation lies at the heart of the movement of huge volumes of freight, which has enabled extraordinary speed, efficiency, and just-in-time procedures, adapting to the new demands and timeframes of the global market. We are facing more complex situations in which the financialised synchronisation between flows, fixed assets, value chains and commodities points to a growing dependence on neo-extractivism (Soener, 2023; Castro, 2018; Rodrigues, 2024).
The Green Revolution of the 1970s turned agricultural monoculture into a driving force behind mass food production. All of this ultimately led to policies aimed at the growth of large-scale agriculture, which is consequently intensive in its use of chemical inputs; and, alongside other sectors, it has capitalised on the global commodities boom, which continues to ignore its environmental damage (Ollinaho, Pedlowski & Froger, 2023).
The result we see today is devastating, particularly in terms of the diseases caused by the pollution of land and waterways. This expansion of monoculture - the production of grains (soya and maize), oilseeds (dendê), eucalyptus and other monocultures - entails the intense and continuous extraction of resources, soil nutrients, water, and groundwater - thus constituting a neo-extractives process due to its technological intensity. The accounts heard during fieldwork highlight practices of violence in territories occupied by traditional populations with their own systems of knowledge and practices of collective land and territory use. Much of this violence is observed in land expropriation processes, often pushing these communities to the urban peripheries (Aldrich et al., 2020).
Neo-extractivism remains a pillar of the Brazilian economy, as “beyond the ownership of resources, the rules and functioning of production processes geared towards competitiveness, efficiency, profit maximisation and the externalisation of impacts are perpetuated” (Gudynas, 2015, p. 15). Such dynamics remain fundamental to the production of raw materials and emerge as corollaries of Brazil’s dependency - including in relation to major global corporations -, reproducing the international division of labor and colonial practices, while deepening the effects of human-induced processes highlighted by Porto-Gonçalves (2012) and Leff (2020) in their critique of political ecology.
On the other hand, this trend is taking place against the backdrop of a long-standing structural process of deindustrialisation in the country and the increasing precariousness of work, which condemns the Brazilian economy to the exploitation of its environmental heritage for the generation of abstract wealth under the dictates of the international financial economy (Bronz, Zhouri & Castro, 2020). Countries rich in natural resources can generate substantial financial revenues and increase their Gross Domestic Product without, however, establishing the necessary foundations for reducing social inequality, as this requires breaking with the dynamics of dependency, capital accumulation, and colonialism, thereby exacerbating the concentration of land and income.
The socio-environmental consequences of neo-extractives in the Amazon
The outcomes of recent socio-metabolic processes, particularly the mechanisms of the Amazon’s ‘incorporation’ into the global sphere, are embedded in distinct economic and (geo)political contexts. In the decades following the Second World War, there was optimism regarding the possibilities for the global spread of processes associated with social and economic liberalism, with the increasing destruction of traditional forms of social structuring, the rise of modern industrial capitalism, and the growing productive integration of nature and the technification of productive structures
We are thus experiencing another historical period in which the present lies on the horizon of the ‘new era’ of modernity; and, particularly in recent decades, this has been anchored in: i) neoliberalism, with the State-Finance nexus (Aalbers, 2020); ii) financialisation, with the prominence of sovereign wealth funds, the changing roles of national development banks and central banks, and the impacts of currency internationalisation; iii) public investment in regional and global infrastructure (Vasilakos, Pitelis, Horsewood & Pitelis, 2023); iv) the ‘digitalisation of the world and of life’ (multiple technologies and technical networks); v) the platform economy, semiconductors and artificial intelligence; and, vi) furthermore, the formulation of an environmental agenda grounded in principles of justice and human rights, strongly incorporating the challenges of the environmental crisis.
It is worth emphasizing the ideas that emerge as dominant in this scenario - such as the utopia of the bioeconomy, and the mobilization of sustainability discourses without renouncing the structures of economic accumulation within a multipolar order - through which influential global actors seek to legitimise and normalise conquest, occupation and colonisation (Rodrigues, Campos & Santana Jr, 2022). This scenario informs us about the commodification of the economy, of relationships, and of the (imposed) production of global agendas and agents.
In line with neoliberal ideals, between 2019 and 2022, the Brazilian state sought to relax and reduce oversight of environmental impacts, as pointed out by Vilani, Ferrante and Fearnside (2023). The pressures to weaken legal mechanisms for environmental protection are confirmed by evidence gathered during fieldwork.
It is no coincidence that, during Brazil’s last government, there was a massive increase in deforestation in the Amazon, fuelled in part by anti-environmental policies and decrees, as well as tolerance of - and even incentives for - illegal activities, leading to record levels of deforestation and wildfires. Current policies are geared towards promoting the rights of indigenous peoples, resuming the demarcation of Indigenous Lands and Quilombola Territories, and the preservation, conservation and sustainable use of ecosystems, biodiversity and forests, whilst also focusing on the protection and restoration of native species and vegetation, as well as environmental enforcement and monitoring.
Whilst the intentions underlying environmental legislation are laudable, they do little to challenge the structural mechanisms that perpetuate the current model, thereby highlighting the tensions that undermine the effectiveness of these initiatives. The data reveal a trend towards the expansion of agricultural and mining frontiers, biodiversity loss, and conflicts with local stakeholders (Peres et al., 2023).
Socio-economic dynamics and territorial transformation
[...] I arrived here in Pará on 4 August in seventy-five. Seventy-five [1975]. [...] When I arrived here, this road was just scrubland. So you could see the track winding this way and that, you know? Every five hundred metres or so, you’d turn off onto that track, and then there in the bush, there was a settler’s house... a settler’s house there. Then they started clearing the Trans-Amazonian Highway and the Santarém-Cuiabá road, didn’t they? Hmm. It started there; some people from the government started it and promised that every five kilometres there would be a school, a schoolhouse (Interview conducted with one of the so-called pioneers of the Trans-Amazonian/BR-230 and Santarém-Cuiabá/BR-163, on 13 October 2022).
The new march to the Northwest is interwoven with stories such as this one, concerning frontier dynamics and social experiences steeped in memories and lived experiences. This peasant, migrant, and ‘pioneer’ mentioned above encapsulates a spatio-temporal snapshot of his feelings and thoughts and enables us to link global processes with local changes. This is the case in Western Pará, which is a “micro-space” representative of a historical cartography of conflicts, the result of a socio-economic and political formation process that was socially constructed through the (use of) violence: physical, symbolic, epistemic, ethnic, racial, and gender-based (Rodrigues, 2020).
The Amazon is associated with a history of colonial violence linked to the territory and the pressures imposed on the populations living there, particularly given the intensification of colonisation processes and the opening of major highways in recent decades, starting with the Belém-Brasília Highway (BR-010) in the 1950s. The map of agrarian conflicts identifies the expropriation of traditional populations from their lands, land grabbing, massacres, and killings ordered by those in power and their gunmen, as markers of places and times (Rodrigues, Campos & Santana Jr, 2022).
Images of violence are recorded in people’s memories and bodies, and for this reason, they have become a key to interpreting the socio-economic dynamics in the Amazonian regions. Furthermore, with the hyper-globalized market, economic interests in natural resources have expanded, intensifying pressures and conflicts over land, forests, water, soil, and the subsoil. This situation constitutes a kind of dual movement: the expansion of economic exploitation and the action of the Brazilian state, with its development-oriented policies (Rodrigues & Nahum, 2023).
Since the first major road linking the Amazon to the rest of Brazil (the Belém-Brasília Highway) was paved in the 1970s, around 94 million hectares of natural Amazonian vegetation (including forests and wooded savannahs) have been cleared. During the period 1985-2021, the total agricultural area increased even more rapidly to 43.5 Mha (cattle pastures ~ 36.3 Mha; agricultural land ~ 7.2 Mha) (Peres et al., 2023). The map shows the major changes in land use and land cover from 1985 to 2020, and the continuing loss of forest cover, as indicated by the arc of deforestation, that broad band marking the shifting boundaries of the forest.
The increase in deforestation is linked to the expansion and territorialisation of livestock farming and timber extraction in the 1970s and 1980s, as well as mining, and is currently driven by the grain industry, infrastructure, and mining projects. Deforestation tends to encroach upon Conservation Areas and Indigenous Lands along the Cuiabá-Santarém Highway (BR-163), following the course of the Tapajós River. Under the current government, this trend continues
Itaituba and Novo Progresso, on the BR-163 highway, have been among the municipalities in the Legal Amazon with the highest deforestation rates since 2014, with a cumulative total, from 2014 to 2021, of 1,657.07 ha in Novo Progresso and 1,292.56 ha in Itaituba, for pasture production, land speculation, and monoculture grain plantations. The expansion of pastureland deserves special mention, and so we show below its development over two decades.
Pastures seem to be a focal point for various pathways of land-use transition. Forest is converted directly into pastures or into land for commercial agriculture, with over 90% of deforestation in the Amazon being for the creation of pastures (Mapbiomas, 2024).
This process resulted in a 363% increase in the area of pasture within the biome during the period, with the total area of pasture expanding from 12.7 million to 59 million hectares (Mapbiomas, 2024). According to Monteiro and Bernades (2024), cattle are used to demarcate a property and claim the land, which was likely acquired through fraudulent means, such as land grabbing, as well as to ‘tame’ the land so that it can subsequently be used for grain cultivation. It is worth emphasising that livestock farming contributes to greenhouse gas emissions, mainly through the production of methane and nitrous oxide, generated by the digestion of ruminants and the management of faeces and urine (Da Costa, Debone & Miraglia, 2025).
A form of extractive violence, involving deforestation, with a cumulative total from 2014 to 2024 of 2,973.53 km² in Novo Progresso and 2,687.99 km² in Itaituba (INPE, 2025), mainly for the creation of pastureland. This is evidenced by the percentage increase in the number of head of cattle and the percentage of pasture areas. In Itaituba, Novo Progresso, and Trairão, the percentages of the number of head of cattle (2004 to 2023) and pasture area (ha) (2000 to 2022) were, respectively, 123.60%, 102.07%, and 349.2804% (IBGE, 2025); and 295.09%, 388.92% and 494.675% (Mapbiomas, 2024). It is worth noting that in Brazil, pastureland for beef cattle covers around one-fifth of the entire country, constituting the main driver of deforestation in the biodiversity hotspots of the Cerrado and the Amazon Basin (De Paula et al., 2025).
According to data from the Pastoral Land Commission (CPT) contained in the Report on Rural Conflicts (2022), the Legal Amazon accounted for a total of 1,107 rural conflicts in 2022, representing more than half of all conflicts in the country (54.86%). Furthermore, of the 47 murders in rural areas recorded in Brazil in 2022, 34 occurred in the Amazon, representing 72.35% of all murders in the country.
Farmers were responsible for 23% of land conflict incidents, followed by the federal government, with 16%. Next came other businesspeople (13%) and land grabbers (11%). The main change compared to 2021 was the increase in the federal government’s involvement in land conflicts, which jumped from 10% to 16%. This is closely linked to the expansion of illegal land grabbing and the relaxation of controls on socio-environmental crimes in these areas. It is worth noting that the municipality of Novo Progresso was the epicentre of a movement coordinated by large-scale farmers to illegally occupy Conservation Units and Indigenous Lands, which cover vast areas of preserved forest rich in minerals.
According to the CPT social worker interviewed, there is a:
[...] an escalation of conflicts between those who wish to seize the land in some way and those who wish to continue resisting and remaining on their territories. Whatever the conflict, it arises from logging in certain settlement areas, which are public lands, or from the expansion of ports, as well as from property speculation, land speculation, or from mining, particularly now that mining operations are encroaching on indigenous lands, and from these large-scale developments [...] (Interview conducted in August 2022).
According to another CPT social worker interviewed:
The town of Itaituba has swelled. We now have more violence in the town; more cars, more people, a growing population, and less infrastructure in terms of public policy in the area. It also strikes me as very clear that, given everything I’ve just mentioned, the State is failing to implement public policies. If there was neglect before, now it seems to be more deliberate. What we realise is that the State is not actually absent. It is present, condoning and favouring these large-scale projects, such as the ports. We can see this in the licensing processes themselves. So, what has changed? What used to be neglect on the part of the State, as we saw it, is now more of a presence in relation to the projects, the large-scale developments, and agribusiness, precisely to facilitate the whole context of these developments moving forward (Interview conducted in August 2022).
Novo Progresso is plagued by numerous conflicts and widespread violence against rural workers living in the settlement known as Terra Nossa. According to residents, the violence stems from the actions of land grabbers, gold miners, mining companies, the local elite, and loggers. The small-scale farmers’ settlement has suffered from the expansion of soya cultivation since 2019 and has been affected by arson attacks. The areas set alight in 2019 became known nationwide. These were arson attacks that took place on a date that became known as ‘Fire Day’. They occurred simultaneously in various locations along the BR-163 highway, including Conservation Units, highlighting a planned action used as a strategic means of illegal land occupation (Lacerda, 2023).
These areas now form a continuous stretch of land that has been converted into soya fields (Camargos, 2022). A very similar situation is unfolding in rural workers’ settlements in the municipalities of Itaituba and Trairão, with simultaneous land grabs occurring in various parts of these settlements, alongside land grabbing and the illegal sale of collectively owned land. The Areia Settlement, established in 1998 in the municipality of Trairão, has been invaded and is being exploited by loggers, whilst farmers are illegally occupying plots.
Hegemonic actors and the scales of action and exploitation
The Amazon region of Pará, as evidenced by research in the area in question, represents the embodiment of a hegemonic, top-down policy centred on neo-extractivist megaprojects and state intervention in the construction of the following infrastructure projects: a railway (Ferrogrão), waterways (Teles-Pires and Tapajós), dozens of large and medium-sized ports and the expansion of the BR-163 motorway, the São Luiz hydroelectric complex, on the Tapajós River, at Cachoeira do Caí, Jamanxim, Cachoeira dos Patos, Chacorão, Jardim de Ouro and Jatobá, as well as the planned hydroelectric plant at Oriximiná, on the northern channel of the Amazon River, and small hydroelectric power stations (at Cupari, Itapacurá/Rurópolis and Itaituba). It is also worth noting the tarmacking of the stretch between the Campo Verde District and Itaituba and Rurópolis (BR-163/BR-230) and the concession project for the middle reaches of the Tapajós River (from Itaituba to Santarém). This, therefore, signals a convergence in the political and economic agenda
The notion of development reinforces the importance of large-scale infrastructure projects. The aim of these projects is to create functional transnational territories that can be connected to global production and trade networks. Consequently, there is a pendulum-like movement to transform territories of life, traditions, and rights into a commodities corridor, to facilitate the flow of large-scale production, particularly from the Midwest and the Amazon, where it is expanding rapidly. These projects would contribute to the formation of a multimodal commodities corridor, comprising a complex of roads, railways, waterways, and ports. This highlights the role of commodity logistics and Amazon’s place within major global production chains (Ravena, 2012; Castro & Castro, 2022). A movement which, following current economic and political dynamics, projects itself into the future with its own cartographies of power
Today, ports represent the most significant manifestation of neo-extractivist megaprojects. In this case, the Itaituba Port Complex, on the Tapajós River, as shown in Figure 3, would form part of or be integrated into the global agribusiness ‘food’ production and distribution networks. In total, there are more than 20 ports currently in operation, with plans to build a further 20 ports between the municipalities of Itaituba and Rurópolis.
This territorialisation through ports, as cartographies of power, constitutes a process of appropriating geographical space that integrates markets, production, and finance, and establishes a new territorial division of labour, resulting in the intensification of asymmetries and inequalities on a global scale and, above all, at regional and local levels
This power structure is currently manifested by the presence of global mega-corporations, with vast capital, in the Itaituba and Santarém region (Rodrigues, 2021). The large agri-food corporations that dominate the market and the global grain trade, such as ADM, Bunge, Cargill, and Dreyfus, are conglomerates, generally operating as consortia or networks, which have incorporated new investors and new regions into exploitative profit-driven processes. Thus, trading companies and multinational grain firms have been vying for control of the supply chain through large-volume deals and the monopoly on the use of territories.
By dominating a sector, for example, that of agricultural inputs and products, for such a long period, business conglomerates influence not only the form, operating patterns and domestic prices of inputs, but also the direction of agricultural innovation and agricultural policy, as Clapp (2021) points out. It is also worth noting that infrastructure projects impose themselves on existing structures as a transformative force and drive processes of creating new territories for the appropriation, use, and organisation of specific areas of space through hegemonic logics, techniques, and policies
Also linked to the port complexes in western Pará is the emergence of a new dominant economic force in road infrastructure: the Via Brasil BR-163. The resurfacing works on the BR-163 between the municipalities of Novo Progresso and Itaituba were completed in November 2019. In the same year, the Brazilian government established a concession project through Decree No. 9,972. In July 2021, the auction took place and the concession was finalised, with a 10-year contract signed in April 2022 between the concessionaire, Via Brasil BR-163, and the Brazilian government (Rodrigues & Nahum, 2023).
The Via Brasil BR-163 concession was awarded to four companies: Conasa Infraestrutura, Zeta Infraestrutura, Construtora Rocha Cavalcante, and M4 Investimentos & Participações. However, Conasa Infraestrutura is part of the Conasa Group; it is a holding company managing Special Purpose Entities (SPEs), operating in the sanitation, public lighting, and motorway sectors (Via Brasil, 2025), and has Generate Capital, a US green investment fund, as a shareholder. In 2023, this fund will become the majority shareholder of Conasa, with a 60% financial stake and 44% control. Conasa Infraestrutura is responsible for managing over 1,000 kilometres of the motorway linking the dense grain-producing areas of Mato Grosso to the ports in Pará. This stretch is one of the main corridors for transporting grain to the port terminals of the Arco Norte (Tapajós River).
According to Kanai & Schindler (2019, p. 303), it is necessary to “increase economic competitiveness through greater connectivity with transnational value chains”. The development and control of infrastructure and integrated logistics (the political geography of power) have facilitated control, shaped the geographical landscape, and ensured regular flows of commodities. The corporate port complex (involving Cargill, Bunge, Amaggi, Cianport and Hidrovias do Brasil), located in Itaituba, handled almost 79 million tonnes of agricultural commodities (soya and maize) between 2014 and 2024, comprising 39.0 million tonnes of soya and 39.5 million tonnes of maize (ANTAQ, 2025), as shown in Figure 4.
Chart showing total port throughput in tonnes (t) at ports along the middle Tapajós River, Itaituba (2014-2024)
According to Mataveli et al. (2021), infrastructure planning and construction projects promise progress and an imagined future, development and job creation. Consequently, this contributes to intense land and property speculation, land grabbing and land acquisition processes, infrastructure construction, and the expansion of grain monoculture in Trairão, Rurópolis and Novo Progresso.
All these territorial dynamics are characterised by land conflicts in municipalities along the BR-163 highway (2013-2023), as shown in Figure 5.
In the wake of these conflicts lie multiple forms of violence, which can be categorised as follows: i) conflicts over water use (rivers and lakes) between fishermen and companies; ii) human rights violations, since, in accordance with ILO Convention 169, indigenous and traditional peoples and communities must be consulted regarding actions and/or projects that affect them; iii) pollution (noise, visual, water and air); iv) an increase in sexual exploitation and urban and rural violence; v) the expansion of drug trafficking networks and the drug market; v) furthermore, property and land speculation, which ultimately intensify struggles over land and ownership among small-scale producers; vi) deforestation; vii) rising cost of living and increased socio-economic vulnerabilities among traditional communities and peoples, which hinder the maintenance and conservation of their ways of life and their ability to remain in their territories (Rodrigues & Castro, 2025). At the national level, research has demonstrated how these processes reshape the dynamics of land appropriation in the international market by foreign groups (Sauer & Leite, 2012).
Because of all this, the failure to regularise rural and urban properties has led to rising rents and the cost of living, as well as an increase in road accidents, death threats, and land disputes. Incidents involving these developments have affected local communities and have become a source of conflict.
According to Santos (2013, p. 171), “the geography of flows thus depends [also] on the geography of fixed infrastructure”, that is, on the expansion and operation of ports in the northern region and on the improvement and maintenance of the BR-163 motorway (Santarém-Cuiabá), which was completed in November 2019. Today, more than 18 million tonnes of grain flow along it. Today, the region along the BR-163, from Sinop (MT) to Itaituba (PA), hosts the largest concentration of agri-food megacorporations (agribusiness/livestock/meat processing plants) in Brazil and the world. They dominate the agricultural inputs and products sector and exert influence not only over product prices, but also over the direction of innovations and agricultural policies and national logistics systems, with a particular focus, currently, on the Legal Amazon.
Indeed, these mega-corporations lobby for more credit, financing, and environmental deregulation (the ‘devastation bill’, environmental licensing, and amnesty for those responsible for deforestation in the Legal Amazon) as well as the liberalisation of territories protected by the 1988 Constitution (the time limit for indigenous peoples’ lands, logistics projects, and oil exploration along the country’s equatorial coast). In spaces for dialogue with other actors and in the diversity of perspectives emerging from social movements, for example, we find alternative interpretations of development processes and of the issues underpinning the main contemporary challenges and their critique.
It is worth noting that the activities of mega-corporations in the Amazon have not been proceeding smoothly, nor have they been met with passivity. There are uprisings and political struggles that the Amazonian peoples have been waging to disrupt or halt the commodity supply chain, the ongoing extractive projects of colonisation, the extraction of resources from their territories, the violation of human rights, and the denial of self-determination and the very existence of indigenous and traditional peoples.
Among these political struggles, we highlight the occupation of the port of Cargill, the world’s largest multinational in the agri-food sector, in Santarém (PA). For 33 days - from 22 January to 23 February 2026 - more than 1,200 Indigenous people from 14 ethnic groups occupied the company’s terminal, protesting Decree No. 12,600/2025, which privatised three Amazonian rivers (the Tapajós, Madeira and Tocantins), and against the dredging of the Tapajós River to serve the port’s interests and turn the river into a commodities corridor. The decree was finally revoked by the federal government on 23 February 2026.
The protest called attention to the risks posed by privatisation and dredging, led to the suspension of grain unloading from lorries at the port, and subsequently brought the company’s operations to a standstill. The protesters also demanded prior, free and informed consultation as a universal right of traditional peoples, as provided for in Convention 169 of the International Labour Organisation (ILO), which establishes the obligation of States to consult the peoples concerned, through appropriate procedures and, in particular, their representative institutions, whenever legislative or administrative measures are envisaged that are likely to affect them directly.
The struggle of the indigenous peoples, alongside various social movements that occupied the Cargill Port, was an anti-capitalist struggle, rooted in a worldview distinct from Western rationality and the project of ‘modernity’. It constituted a struggle for existence, for social reproduction, for the preservation of traditions, cultures, ways of life and specific territories, as well as for the rights of traditional peoples. Nature was also affirmed as a subject of rights and therefore cannot be commercialised or commodified. Thus, this political act sent multiple messages: i) unity, collective effort and political organisation can secure social and political victories, including against neo-extractivist megaprojects (planned by the state and/or corporations); ii) there can be no compromise or negotiation regarding the erosion of fundamental, territorial and environmental rights, nor regarding the rights of nature and the right to a good life.
This mobilisation has therefore stood in opposition to the processes of appropriation, exploitation and energy extraction serving a political economy operated by the state in partnership with mega-corporations, and manifested through modernist infrastructure (Dunlap, 2026). Consequently, socio-territorial conflicts are on the horizon, and indigenous peoples, through these actions, signal the direction of the winds in the face of market imperatives and the commodification that drives the global capitalist economy. This process also centres on the implementation of violent technologies, through the normalisation of their logics, apparatuses, and subjectivities, colonising and pacifying diverse cultures and natures, with the aim of integrating and reconfiguring the Earth and its territories (Dunlap, 2026).
Conclusions
Whilst the crises of capitalism have relied on scientific resources and technological advances to renew cycles of capital accumulation and drive the search for new resource frontiers, today ‘environmental consciousness’ demands epistemological and ontological shifts to conceive of alternative possibilities for knowledge and planetary survival. This article has highlighted the new cartographies of power that structure the movements of neo-extractives expansion towards the Amazon and the increase in conflicts as an established pattern, fuelled by the State-Market/corporate partnership. Despite the state’s institutional discourse speaking of keeping the forest standing (and committing to the Paris Agreement on climate change), through the restoration of degraded areas-even via the commodification of nature (carbon credits and other green market mechanisms)-and promoting a socio-economy based on the social values of the peoples of the forest, waters, and land. Our analysis points to numerous economic actors, scales of action and exploitation, and a political map of the arrival in the Legal Amazon of many neo-extractive projects, as well as numerous processes of land appropriation and social and environmental expropriation, and various socio-territorial conflicts.
In conclusion, this is the direction in which the winds are blowing in the current dominant political landscape: neo-extractives. The challenge also lies in understanding the behaviour and actions of the Brazilian state in fulfilling its international agreements (on climate, human rights, and the EU-Mercosur agreement). And, above all, the impasses or crossroads involved in preserving the immense socio-biodiversity, which, as well as acting as a climate regulator, is one of the main natural and cultural heritage assets and a source of social reproduction for the Brazilian people and for the peoples inhabiting the Amazon regions.
Acknowledgments
This research was supported by the Brazilian National Council for Scientific and Technological Development (CNPq)
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The entire dataset supporting the results of this study was published in the article itself.
Source: IBGE (2021)
Source: MapBiomas (2025)
Source: The authors, 2026.
Source: ANTAQ (2025)
Source: CPT (2024)