A face oculta do conflito: desmatamento, avanço da fronteira agropecuária e expropriação de extrativistas de Lábrea - sul do Amazonas

Abstract

The present work aims to approach territorial and environmental disputes involving extractivist families living in Southern Labrea, a municipality in the countryside of Amazonas state. This region has been infamous in the last decades for concentrating the highest incidence of violent expropriations and assassinations of rural leaders and workers. The present research intends to socially situate the several players within the realm of land conflict in the abovementioned region as well as to produce ethnography on particular situations of conflict arising among, on one hand, squatters, extractivists, and those who were settled in governmental land reform programmes, and on the other hand, land grabbers, farmers and lumbermen. The text reconstructs how mechanisms of physical and symbolical violence work when mobilized by both farm and State representatives, which end up with the process of expropriation.