July 27, 2021

10:07

Daniel Viegas

MANAUS – The rhetoric that the Amazon is a “demographic vacuum” is not new and, although it bears no relation to the truth, it continues to be repeated constantly, especially during periods of authoritarian governments. Getúlio Vargas, in 1940, during the dictatorial period of the New State (Estado Novo) (1937-1945), gave his “Amazon River Speech” and stated that “conquering the land, dominating the water, subjecting the forest were our tasks. And in this struggle, which has gone on for centuries, we are obtaining victory after victory.

During the civil-military dictatorship (1964-1985), dictator Emílio Garratazu Médici used the phrase “A land without men for men without land” to justify a public policy of territorial dispossession of the forest that culminated in the death of 3. 500 Cinta-Larga Indians (RO), 2,650 Waimiri-Atroari (AM), 1,180 Tapayuna Indians (MT), 354 Yanomami (AM/RR), 176 Panará (MT), 118 Parakanã (PA), 85 Xavante of Marãiwatsédé (MT), 72 Araweté (PA) and more than 14 Arara (PA), according to the National Truth Commission.

The Amazon was never empty, on the contrary, it was alive with an immense diversity of people and culture, who had social and commercial relations with each other and always resisted the invaders funded by the central government. Putting an end to this common sense, Professor Davi Avelino Leal carried out the interdisciplinary research “Worlds of Work and Social Conflicts on the Madeira River (1861-1932)”, which earned him a doctorate in Society and Culture in the Amazon from the Federal University of Amazonas and publication as a book by Valer publishing house.

Studying the period that preceded Vargas’ Estado Novo, the professor goes through the history of small towns, villages and parishes spread along the Madeira River and its tributaries over a period of 70 years and observes that there were agreements, strategies, ruptures and violent conflicts in reaction to the territorial invasions of traditional people and communities.

The research reveals how the civilizatory project of conservative modernization designed a social system based on the control of commodity prices, sustained on the aviation chain, which guaranteed the immobilization of labor and the compulsory exploitation of their labor force, drawing an authoritarian framework that, before being economic, was social, but did not mean development or the promised pacification.

The book also analyzes newspaper reports of daily attacks by the Mura, Parintintin, and Arara on the parishes, villages, and communities, announcing the attack of rubber extractors and chestnut growers against the bosses, which reveal a pattern of resistance initiated against the exploitation of labor power and the dispossession of territory.

The significant increase in the demand for latex in the international market directly influenced the employers’ strategies to immobilize the work force, even hindering manifestations of discontent by the workers, especially the northeasterners employed in this activity.

It was the beginning of the formation of large landowners in the Amazon, since the 1891 Constitution of the Republic had transferred the domain of unoccupied lands to the States, which started to create their own land legislation, allowing governors to grant large portions of land through Definitive Titles, which, even today, are used to perpetrate rural and urban land grabbing.

The researcher notes that in border regions, such as the Amazon at the end of the 19th century, what was at stake was not even the land itself, but the natural resources with market value. In this case, chestnut growers and rubber extraction sites were the main targets of interest and causes of conflicts on the Madeira River.

In this context, in which the land itself was worth little and the rubber roads were worth a lot, the conflicts and struggles set the tone of the relations for almost 70 years in which the extraction of gum and also of the chestnut competed in the international market.

In this book, the reader will have in his hands not only the product of dense and rigorous scientific research, but a light and fluid text that allows us to break with so many false theories repeated and unproven. Furthermore, Professor Davi Avelino leads us to reflect on and compare what the Amazon of the passage from the 19th to the 20th century has in common with the Amazon of the 21st century, from the rhetoric of an authoritarian government to the attacks on traditional peoples and communities in the quest for exploitation of natural resources.

“Painted bodies and drawings made with jenipap paint and burnt chestnut charcoal; in the left hand the bow and in the right the arrows sharpened with taquara tips. Chanting the warrior song, they marched to the front. They were the Kagwahiva-Parintintin, ready for the attack. The target: the house of the rubber tapper José Francisco Monteiro, who had recently settled on the Rio Baetas, a tributary of the Rio Madeira. What strategy is this? What are the consequences for the indigenous people and for the ” residents of the edge of the banks” of the Madeira River? At what point did this process reach its limits?