Urbanização contemporânea na Amazônia e os fragmentos de cidade: o caso do município de Careiro e as vilas Araçá, Purupuru e Samaúma

Abstract

In order to understand the particularities of the immense Amazonian territory, it is necessary to develop numerous types of studies. However, when it comes to urbanization in the Amazon, we still have few studies carried out on small cities and occupation processes in this part of the Brazilian territory. When we search for information regarding the foundation of cities in Amazonas, we still find few bibliographic productions. Which leads us to turn our gaze to the villages, which are currently district headquarters and represent the transition between the rural and the urban, and which also play a role in small towns in their region of influence, incorporated into the municipal headquarters. In order to identify how urbanization processes occur in the Amazon, we studied the case of the municipality of Careiro, in the State of Amazonas. Highlighting the “new” configuration of space occupation performed by the villages today. Although the villages have played an important role in the formation of the Brazilian urban space since the colonial period, today their configuration and function are no longer the same. We aim here to emphasize the discussion about urbanization and the understanding of the role of three villages belonging to the municipality of Careiro, in the urbanization process of the Amazon region, also aiming to understand how these villages are linked with the surrounding cities and the metropolis. We highlight the way of life of the population in the articulation of the rural with the contemporary urban based on works of great relevance in the national and local aspects. In this way, we seek to understand how the municipality of Careiro manifests this new urban dynamic, where the relationship with the river remains, but the presence of road circulation is more strongly inserted in the articulation between the cities connected by the highway. We highlight the municipality Careiro and its creation according to the BR 319, with its particularities since its foundation, starting with the headquarters that escapes the rule of having the same name as the respective municipality. Its formation process is unique, and even though it belongs to the Metropolitan Region of Manaus, its description is far from homogenizing the other municipalities. In this municipality we find very different villages, even though they are in the same region, they have their own characteristics in physical, population and economic terms. Such characteristics reinforce the idea of discussing the relations between urban and rural, present in the way of life of the population of these villages, from the perspective of new social dynamics established since the 1970 in the Amazon, with the implantation of highways in the middle the forest. The description of the villages is necessary to understand the processes of occupation and urban development policies in the Amazon, through the configuration of the villages, as we are dealing with a region with numerous characteristics and particularities, which even though they are far from the political and administrative centers , present homogeneities in their social and economic aspects. From the description, one can somehow identify the way in which the population of these villages is inserted in the urbanization process thought for the Amazon today.