A apropriação ecológica de seringais na Amazônia e a advocacia das rubber plantations

Visões conflitantes de meio ambiente e propriedade marcaram a história da apropriação dos seringais de 1840 até às primeiras décadas do séc. XX. A apropriação ecológica local - na qual terra significava floresta e o número economicamente lucrativo de seringueiras definia o tamanho e os contornos da propriedade seringueira - colidiu com o sentido científico-territorial da terra: apenas um solo a ser desmatado para a monocultura, sendo a propriedade definida por sua extensão. Os promotores das plantations associaram-nas a civilidade e os seringais a incivilidade e primitivismo, ofuscando a complexa combinação de percepção ecológica da natureza com concepções modernas de propriedade e de terra que caracterizava os seringais.Conflicting understandings of environment and property marked the history of rubber production in the Brazilian Amazon from 1840 to the early twentieth century. The local ecological approach to tenure - in which land was defined by the total forest ecology, and where the size and contours of property were delimited by the number of rubber trees that could be tapped profitably - clashed with the scientific-territorial meaning of land: a soil to be mastered through monoculture, with property defined by its territorial extension. The proponents of rubber plantations associated these properties to civility and progress, while associating the rubber-tapping economy to a lack of civilization and to primitivism, thus obfuscating the complex combination of ecological perceptions of the environment and modern notions of property and land tenure, which characterized the rubber extraction areas

A intervenção do ambientalismo internacional na Amazônia

IN 1989-2002, international environmentalism intervened in Amazonia. Supported and followed by the Brazilian government, this intervention ideology and projects reflect not only the economic and political interests of industrialized people but also their difficulty to abandon the predatory developmental principles and interests at home. It ignores that Amazonian is the historical-cultural patrimony of the Amazonian peoples, enhancing the superior status of science and the central position of scientists, large Ongs, international and state bureaucracy in the decision-making process. It, therefore, attributes a secondary rule even to those locals who preserved Amazonian environment.ENTRE 1989 e 2002, a Amazônia sofreu a intervenção do ambientalismo internacional. Permitida pelos governos brasileiros, essa intervenção, além do desejo de controle político, reflete as dificuldades dos povos industrializados em abandonar os princípios e os interesses desenvolvimentistas antiecológicos em casa. Os princípios e projetos do ambientalismo internacional reafirmam a atribuição de status superior à ciência, legitimando o papel central de cientistas e tecnoburocratas nos processos decisórios e ignorando que a Amazônia é patrimônio histórico-cultural dos amazônidas, em particular daqueles que praticam o plantio-manejo ecológico de recursos naturais, os quais apenas marginalmente têm alguma influência nas decisões

Rubber enterprises in the Brazilian Amazon, 1870-1930.

This thesis examines seringais (rubber estates) on the Brazilian Amazon from the perspective of capitalist social relations of production in the period from the 1870 to 1930. It is divided into four parts. The first part introduces the subject. The second part considers the social relations of land property and the selective way of privatising land to argue that seringal is private property and that there was a free labour market. The third part discusses the engagement and the forms of controlling and disciplining labour. The fourth part focuses on profitability and capital accumulation by demonstrating that (a) the local investors had their own project of economic political changes, (b) this and a converging view on the use of natural resources constitute decisive elements in their decisions of re-investments. Rubber enterprises were usually run as partnerships and they invested mainly in the production of the Fina Hard Para kind, which was considered the best quality and commanded the highest price at that time, and in the diversification of economic activities. As this thesis demonstrates, the social relations of production in seringal are capitalist due to the following features: (a) they are organised to produce commodities for profit in order to ensure capital accumulation; (b) they are characterised by the command of capitalists over subordinated forms of free labour; (c) this command is based on the private ownership of the main means of rubber production. The specific features of the relations of production in seringais are basically twofold: (a) the employment of different forms of subordinate free labour, including waged and salaried, in which seringueiros (rubber tappers paid by results instead of by work time) were predominant and (b) the geomercantile privatisation and use of natural resources, involving a converging interaction with nature

Apropriação geomercantil da terra : bases históricas do sistema de dominação na Amazônia

Bentes Rosineide. Apropriação geomercantil da terra : bases históricas do sistema de dominação na Amazônia. In: Lusotopie, n°3, 1996. L'oppression paternaliste au Brésil. pp. 163-172

Apropriação geomercantil da terra : bases históricas do sistema de dominação na Amazônia

Bentes Rosineide. Apropriação geomercantil da terra : bases históricas do sistema de dominação na Amazônia. In: Lusotopie, n°3, 1996. L'oppression paternaliste au Brésil. pp. 163-172