The chestnut forests within the Tocantina Amazon

social experiences, conflicts, alliances and resistance

Abstract

This work discusses the intertwined relationship between ancestral populations from the Amazon forest and their chestnut groves (Bertholletia excelsa), also demonstrating the social experiences, alliances, conflicts and relationships with places within these territories, in the period (1930-1991). To enter the Amazon Biome and its webs of social concerns, I listed and analyzed various sources, among which I highlight: the processes of leasing and tenure at the Pará Land Institute, the land titling books, the memoirs of residents of the region, the reports of meetings of rural workers from lower Tocantins between (1980-1990), pamphlets, periodicals and booklets from the Diocese of Cametá and the Federation of Social and Educational Assistance (FASE), as well as collections from the Superintendence for the Development of the Amazon (SUDAM) and the Indigenous Protection Service (SPI) and personal collections of social subjects who experienced the struggle for land ownership in the Amazon. The comparison of these collections demonstrates that this tropical broadleaf forest was intensely inhabited, it's people understand that it is alive and that it has its logic, its networks of sociability, conflicts and resistance. Therefore, the Amazon forest is not an amorphous and meaningless space.