Ilhas e Várzeas de Histórias, Conflitos e Identidades: Trajetórias Sociais e Políticas dos Ribeirinhos de Abaetetuba

Abstract

The purpose of this thesis is to describe the social and political formation of a group that defines itself as riverside. They live on the islands and floodplains of Pará city of Abaetetuba. Therefore, the research focuses on three paths that constitute themselves. In first, the thesis examines land policies that support the group, notably the Agroextractive Settlement Projects (PAE) and Nossa Várzea Program, run by the Federal Heritage Department. The second path is the population’s sociogenesis that occupies the empirical locus and how this pattern relates to economic exploitation of the Amazon cycles, displacements and conflicts that contributed in a historical perspective for the riverside identity’s emergency in the city. The third path deals with the main episodes of alliances, splits and political action that composes the organization of the group, since the formation of fifty-seven Base Ecclesial Communities (CEB) to the creation of the Riverside Movement of the Islands and Floodplains of Abaetetuba (MORIVA). The articulation of these trajectories is based on the historical Brazilian territorial planning strategies, in particular the management of public lands, which established the main generative mechanisms of inequality and exclusion for the access to land in the Amazon region. The main issue of this research is the second half of the 2000s when the three paths converge. Political identity, the height of public policies and the creation of social movement influenced each other. Conducting fieldwork for gathering information through interviews with leaders, public managers and locals, was added to the literature review on group, land policies and social movements in the Amazon. Besides that, they were analyzed the legal provisions associated to a large range of land schemes and those who supported the implementation of land policies in Abaetetuba. On the other hand, it was emphasized the assumption of riverside identity and their mobilization as a political category, in the face of the land regularization policies. This perspective runs out the simplistic opposition between the group’s autonomy in relation to the State versus movements’ cooptation strategies.