To fight together against the government: Alliances and disputes in the implementation of a sustainable development plan

Abstract

This paper analyses how different social subjects, who are even hostile to each other, mobilized themselves in a highway blockade in the Southwest of Pará, Brazil. Through this specific manner of struggle against the government, they demanded changes in the delimitations of a rural settlement and a conservation unit created by the BR-163 Sustainable Plan, which has "changed the rules" of access to land and natural resources. Debating theoretical issues regarding ethics, sociability andsocial conflicts, we base ourselves on the narratives of rural workers, rural producers, gold prospectors, timber merchants and traders about their life stories and the protestin order to argue that they share values and reflect ethically on the relations of domination with the government and between themselves. Thus, we demonstrate that not only the flexibilization of environmental and land regulations are at stake, but also disputes concerning ways of governing natural resources, subjects, mobilizations and public policies.