Os “piaçabeiros” no médio rio Negro: identidades coletivas e conflitos territoriais

Abstract

In the municipality of Barcelos-Amazonas [State, Brazil], mid Rio Negro [Black River], the political mobilizations that instigate collective identities, are related to the ideas that the social agents can assure their territorial rights, which imply the social reproduction of traditional peoples and communities. These agents are mobilized in associations, cooperatives, trade unions, and in a colony of fishermen/women demanding access to the natural resources and territory, which in this case, coexist. It is these social agents that call themselves “piaçabeiros”, fishermen and “patrõezinhos”, or constitute indigenas peoples (Tariano, Tukano, Baniwa, Baré, Arapaço, Werequena, Tuyuca). The present dissertation aims to comprehend the dynamic of the territorial conflicts in Barcelos, AM, the central problem being the social implications of these conflicts for the extractivist practices of piaçaba traditionally executed by the self-defined “piaçabeiros”. The designation “piaçabeiros” is marked by discontinuities with respect to the social representation of these agents. For the realization of the research, an undertaking of 4 discontinuous years of fieldwork was necessary, together with the social agents mentioned above, as well as a documentary, bibliographical and archive survey. I interviewed a total of 40 social agents with in the extractivist workers, indigenous people, fishermen/women and piaçaba traders. With the demand for the demarcation of the indigenous land, done by the very indigenous people themselves, of distinct ethnicities of the mid Rio Negro, beginning in 2001, but made official in 2007, the territorial conflicts are intensified in the town, that already was present with the domination of the piaçaba traders designated as “patrões” at the [small] rivers that give access to the so called “piaçabais”. The production unit desginated as “piaçabal” is not only the place of where the piaçaba palm tree occurs. Such a unit is also especially articulated in a complex of social relations entwined in extractivist practices. In the scope of these conflicts, the mobilized and articulated social agents began to distinguish themselves and mobilize (ALMEIDA, 2004) through collective identities, instigating them and looking for identity recognition (FRASER, 2012) to pressure and assure what they consider territorial rights, which are articulated with the logic of access to natural resources. The piaçaba extractivist laborers are immersed in this power game and subordination between the dominant commercial sistem (“aviamento”) and the demands for access to resources that can be assured by the domain of the territory.