Colônias agrícolas e campesinato: raízes de uma nova territorialidade no médio Rio Amazonas, município de Urucará - AM

Abstract

The social subjects we deal with in this research, the colonists, peasants historically constituted in the floodplains of the middle Amazon River, especially in the municipalities of Urucará, Parintins and Urucurituba. In these localities, through the absorption of different cultural traits, they established economic, social and territorial relations, a condition that prevailed until the mid-1950s, when large floods / floods and land unavailability forced a permanent migration to land areas in the 1960/70. Historically the base of socioeconomic support of these municipalities, in particular Urucará, the focus of our research, was linked to peasant activity and its possible relations with land, forest and water made possible subsistence agriculture, extractive practices and fishing activities, highlighting the várzea in life and established relationships. Their mercantile integration made possible the exchange (products and merchandise) and at the same time a relation of exploration and subordination of peasant labor, a system broken or accentuated by the new political, economic and social conjunctures of the 1960s. This decade is emblematic not only for the visibility that the social movements in the countryside acquired in Brazil, but especially for the organization and strengthening of the peasantry in the middle Amazon River. The Catholic Church in the figure of some priests and missionaries who arrived in the state of Amazonas in the 1960s played a decisive role in the new directions of the peasantry, with progressive and libertarian ideological burdens, the Prelazias de Itacoatiara and Parintins laid the groundwork for an innovative project, choosing the peasant-riparian, as subjects of social transformation, throwing the seeds of liberation, autonomy and social development. Peasant territorialization on the mainland took place through Ecclesiastical Communities of Bases and agricultural colonies, strengthening their struggles through the creation of entities (associations, cooperatives, unions, School Family Agriculture) and mainly, of an institution that coordinates and articulates the actions together to the state sectors, engaged in one way or another, to awaken the political and social consciousness of these social subjects. The economic, political, and ideological crisis of the 1980s gradually eroded the importance that CETRU and the agricultural school had for the settlers and other social segments of the middle Amazon River. With the end of the military regime and institutions that provided financial support, fundamental for the functioning of physical and human structures, the entity loses importance, starting to dedicate itself exclusively to the work carried out by the Agricultural Family School. All this added to the emptying of the colonies, fragmentation of the leaderships, lack of confidence and institutional support were gradually restricting their activities, completely paralyzed in the late 1990s. With the end of the colonization project, CETRU and the Agricultural School, the last directors of the entity focused all their forces in agricultural cooperativism, aiming mainly at the internal and external consumer market. Guarana, the main economic product of the colonies, has become an important alternative to the crises and adversities of the globalized world.