“Ninguém vai tirar nosso território, nossa liberdade”: luta e mobilização coletiva no Território Quilombola Alto Trombetas 1, Oriximiná – Pará

Abstract

Illegal exploitation, state and private policies represent a threat to the traditional communities present in the Amazon. Logging and mineral exploitation, agribusiness, the implementation of hydroelectric plants and other macro-structural projects have motivated innumerable conflicts over land tenure between the owners of these enterprises and native peoples, among these, the remnants of quilombos. Quilombola communities in the Amazon, besides having their territorial spaces threatened, face impasses to regularize their lands. The remaining quilombola communities have their rights guaranteed in article 68 of the Transitory Constitutional Dispositions Act (ADCT), however it is Decree 4887 of 2003 that, in practice, articulates and officially regulates the territorial rights of quilombolas prescribed in article 68/ADCT. In Oriximiná, Pará, the social agents of the Quilombola Territory (TQ) of Alto Trombetas 1 - formed by the communities Abuí, Paraná do Abuí, Santo Antônio do Abuizinho, Sagrado Coração, Mãe Cué, and Tapagem - affected by policies of territorial control, expropriation, and processes of instrusion react and organize collective movements of claim and struggle for permanence in their territory. The Tapagem community is the locus of the research and the general objective is to "analyze the organizational actions of struggle and resistance engendered, in the period from 2003 to 2018, for the titling of the TQ of Alto Trombetas 1. The reflections of the present narrative follow an interdisciplinary perspective and are produced from methodological tools such as the ethnographic technique of direct observation, in-depth interviews and document analysis. It was identified that the conflict for territory goes beyond the environmental issue, entering the ethno-territorial and land rights. In this context, the very process of land titling, so bureaucratic and slow, becomes a strategy of the State and interest groups for territorial control. By creating a representative association to fight for collective rights, mobilize protests, debates, lawsuits, and resist the onslaughts of capital, the quilombolas are no longer mere extras in the face of domination and control policies; they become active subjects, builders of their own history, who confront the normative institutions with their presence and claims.