Na cercania da morte: situação de ameaça e terror de Estado em conflitos territoriais no Amazonas

Abstract

Death threats are recurrent violations in the shared experience of occupants in Manaus, Presidente Figueiredo and Iranduba (Amazonas) rural areas. The threats are projected among a plethora of violent acts that take part in territorial conflicts based in the dispute between economic agents and the occupants lacking legal security in land tenure. From either subtle and explicit acts, I observed one systematic action that takes political immobility and dispossession as main objective. Based in the fieldwork done between 2016 and 2018, the present thesis presents an ethnographical route that initiates in the not desired attribution of “ameaçadas/os de morte” (under death threats) and proposes the threat situation notion to consider the totality of violent acts and its effects to a collectivity. In this context, through the agents testimony I attempt to understand their experiences, marked by fear, suffering, silence, trauma and mourning; but also by resistances and healing. Through another analytical axis, state terror is considered as an essential role so that the threat situations can be possible. As a population and territory control practice through actions that rouse fear and political immobilization, the state terror is motivated by confluence between State and market agent’s interests. It’s more direct expression are found in the public security actions and in the executive and juridical agencies decisions. In this, the thesis comes to an end, in the encounter between the threat situation experience and the not achieved pursuit for justice.