Cultivadores de guaraná: um estudo do processo de monopolização do território pelo capital no município de Maués-AM

Abstract

The present work aimed to understand the process of monopolization of the territory by the capital in the municipality of Maués-AM from the commercial production of guarana. As an economic activity it was found that the commercialization of guaraná has been registered since the 17th century by the indigenous Sateré Mawé, the inventors of this culture, who at that time already established relations of trade of this product with the Europeans and later with the Bolivians and Cuiabanos. From the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the commercial activity of guaraná was incorporated by those who were the result of forced miscegenation between the Portuguese settlers and the indigenous women, that is, the peasants, who came to predominate in the cultivation and marketing of guarana in the Municipality of Maués. With the growth of the guarana-based beverage industries in the early 20th century, the former Antarctic companies of São Paulo and Andrade de Manaus spent in this period marketing the guaraná with the peasants of Maués, and because of the increasing demand for raw material, in 1964 the beverage company Antártica installed its Guarana extracts factory in the city of Maués, creating a new social, economic and spatial dynamic in this municipality. In 1999 the then beverage company Antarctica merged with the Brahma brewery, resulting in the Beverage Company of the Americas-AmBev, one of the largest beverage companies in the world today. In the 90's Maués has a strong crisis in the production of guaraná, which will cause AmBev in partnership with Embrapa to begin to spread the cloned guaraná, which are more productive and disease resistant seedlings. These improved seedlings began to be distributed mainly from the 2000s, through financing from the banks. In the municipality of Maués the cloned guaraná found acceptance and at the same time resistance on the part of the peasants, however, is a productive rationality that little by little has been propagating, where the greatest example of this diffusion is the locality known as Urupadi, where about 60 % Of the peasants work with the clones, which causes them to produce more than 60% of all guaraná production in the municipality of Maués. In the part of the commercialization AmBev uses a system of commerce of the guaraná through intermediaries, that are financed by the company to commercialize the raw material next to the peasants, with whom in many cases they establish relations of integration. Research has shown that peasants in their relationship with capital are increasingly dependent, but this does not mean the end of their autonomy, only a need for social and economic reproduction based on the activity of guarana.