Regional dynamics of the brazilian amazon: Between modernization and land conflicts

Abstract

The Brazilian Amazon has undergone intense transformations resulting from geopolitical and ideological valuations in the service of productive-competitive integration of its territory in the national and international economy. State and capital affirm an appropriating rationality of nature projected in two vectors of occupation/ modernization: techno-industrial and techno-ecological. The undergone problem is inscribed in spatial injustice as counterpart of capitalist expansion regarding land conflicts. The methodology is based on the theoretical-conceptual division of social injustices versus ideology of capitalist modernization of the Amazonian territory. The empirical treatment of the collected datasets unveils land conflicts through information obtained by the Comissão Pastoral da Terra (cpt), the dataluta Project, and the Instituto Brasileiro de Geografia e Estatística (ibge). Thus, theory and empirical practices are unified in a regional dynamic analysis of the Brazilian Amazon in the last 20 years. The study emphasizes that the territorial policies of the State and capitalist forces (multinationals, agribusiness, mining, and logging) promote deforestation, violent conflicts over land and water, slave labor, rural redevelopment, demographic depletion of the affected rural areas, and accelerated precarious urbanization. The expansion of land conflicts and spatial injustices in the Brazilian Amazon results from the modernization of the territory.