The Amazon Land War in the South of Pará

Abstract

The South of Pará, located in the heart of the Brazilian Amazon, has become notorious for violent land struggle. Although land conflict has a long history in Brazil, and today impacts many parts of the country, violence is most severe and persistent here. The purpose of this article is to examine why. Specifically, we consider how a particular Amazonian place, the so-called South of Pará, has come to be known as Brazil's most dangerous badland. We begin by considering the predominant literature, which attributes land conflict to the frontier expansion process with intensified struggle emerging in the face of rising property values and demand for private property associated with capitalist development. From this discussion, we distill a concept of the frontier, based on notions of property rights evolution and locational rents. We then empirically test the persistence of place-based violence in the region, and assess the frontier movement through an analysis of transportation costs. Findings from the analyses indicate that the prevalent theorization of frontier violence in Amazônia does little to explain its persistent and pervasive nature in the South of Pará. To fill this gap in understanding, we develop an explanation based on the geographic conception of place, and we use contentious politics theory heuristically to elucidate the ways in which general processes interact with place-specific history to engender a landscape of violence. In so doing, we focus on environmental, cognitive, and relational mechanisms (and implicated structures), and attempt to deploy them in an explanatory framework that allows direct observation of the accumulating layers of the region's tragic history. We end by placing our discussion within a political ecological context, and consider the implications of the Amazon Land War for the environment.

Key Words:

• agrarian reform
• contentious politics
• deforestation
• direct action land reform (DALR)
• political ecology

Acknowledgments

The research presented in this article was supported, in part, by the National Science Foundation (Geography and Regional Science) under the project (0522062) “Brazil's Direct Action Land Reform Movement: Environmental Impacts and Socio-Spatial Dynamics,” and by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's LBA program under the project (NCC5-694) “A Basin-Scale Econometric Model for Projecting Future Amazonian Landscapes.” Any opinions, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this article are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation or the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. We would like to thank the anonymous reviewers and editor for their many useful comments made on an earlier version of this article.

Notes

^aCreated in 1994, effective 1997.

Note: Boldface indicates the State of Pará, which is the focus of investigation in this article.

Source: ISTOÉ 1993.

Note: Prices adjusted for inflation and converted from $Cruzieros to $Reais and then to U.S. dollars using July 2006 exchange rates.

1. In 1962, the PC do B, a Maoist-leaning communist faction, officially split for the Soviet-backed Brazilian Communist Party (PCB).

2. The Portuguese crown divided Brazil into twelve Capitanias and gave right of use to donatarias willing and able to settle the land. Under the Seismarias decree, large tracts were also given to the church.

3. For a detailed history of the region see Velho (1972), Ianni (1979), Foweraker (1981), Schmink and Wood (1992), and Emmi (1999).

4. Foweraker (1981, xvii) defines aviamento as a highly exploitive system of rubber collection and export that links commercial and industrial capital to the rubber collectors by a series of debt relations through the intermediary (aviador), who provides supplies to the rubber boss (seringalista), who in turn provides rubber on consignment to the aviador. The seringalista sells the goods at exorbitant prices to the rubber collector (seringueiro), who falls into debt, and must provide the seringalista with rubber collected. For further discussion see Velho (1972), Ianni (1979), Schmink and Wood (1992), and Emmi (1999).

5. For a detailed discussion of the Brazil nut economy in the South of Pará and the social structures that emerged, see Emmi (1999).

6. Extraction economies often utilize large areas with low population densities that may be reasonably referred to as a commons, as for example the Seminole trade in feathers and alligator hides in early twentieth-century South Florida (Walker and Solecki 2004). Be this as it may, a seminal statement about the formation of private property rights in land considered the extraction of fur-bearing animals (Demsetz 1967). Mineral resources are nonrenewable, however, and generate little incentive to occupy land once exhausted. The same may be said for slow-growing tropical hardwoods (Simmons, Walker, and Wood 2002).

7. In addition, Amazonian land evidently functioned as a hedge against inflation for corporate landowners during inflationary phases of the Brazilian Economy (Hecht 1985; Binswanger 1987, 1991).

8. More rainfall in the north compensates for any loss of productivity due to soils (Arima, Barreto, Brito 2006).

9. The IPEA data used the World Bank's Highway Design and Maintenance Model (HDM-III), Submodel Vehicle Operating Costs (VOC), to calculate transportation costs (see Watanatada et al. 1987).

10. These deaths represent murders that occurred as a consequence of a dispute over land. The CPT records detailed accounts of each of these deaths.

11. The numbers presented in B. A. W. Almeida (1994) are probably undercounts. Barata (1995) documents 581 land conflict homicides for the 1980s alone, using newspaper accounts. Although this was probably the most violent period in the region, it suggests the Almeida record is underreported. One possible explanation is that the CPT did not develop a systematic data collection system until 1985. In addition, the CPT had little formal presence in parts of the State until later. Nevertheless, the only quantitative information on homicides during the 1960s and 1970s is from B. A. W. Almeida (1994). We have modified and updated the B. A. W. Almeida (1994) records with more recent homicide counts from 1993 to 2004, as gleaned directly from CPT records (CPT 1995, 1996, 2002, 2003,; 2004).

12. We used the ArcView extension Weighted Mean of Points v. 1.2 to calculate the weighted mean and . The x, y coordinates of the weighted mean location of deaths in rural conflicts in Pará are given by the formula: For each município i, we assigned the number of deaths in conflicts (fi) in a given period to the município seat, with coordinates taken from IBGE digital maps.

13. For a nearly exhaustive list see Miller (2000), chapter 1, “Missing Geography: Social Movements on the Head of a Pin?”

14. Mechanisms have been defined as a “class of events that alter relations among specified sets of elements in identical or closely similar ways over a variety of situations” (McAdam, Tarrow, and Tilly 2001, 24). The concept of mechanism advanced by theorists of contentious politics was developed in order to avoid “general models” meant to “summarize whole categories of contention,” and is therefore well-suited to address specific forms of contention embedded in particular places.

15. Indeed, a key member of the region's early twentieth-century oligarchy, the Mutran family, still holds a great deal of land in the region.

16. Land Statute 601 of 18 September 1850 can be found on the INCRA website http://www.incra.gov.br/_htm/serveinf/_htm/legislacao/lei/601.htm

17. Title overlap is especially problematic in the South of Pará, and in some areas, such as São Felix do Xingu, INCRA is still working with ITERPA to rectify land claims (Regional Director of INCRA in Marabá, personal communication, May 2006).

18. The names of all key informants are withheld in order to respect their anonymity.

19. Fear of violent retaliation and retribution on the part of the large landowners is widespread, and was expressed by numerous key informants interviewed. The following are just a few: MST leader Marabá (personal communication, May 2006); President of Cooperativa Mista dos Produtores Rurais de São João do Araguaia, leader 1 de Março Settlement (personal communication, July 2006); coordinator of 17 de Abril settlement (personal communication, July 2006); small farmer and resident of Santa Maria do Pontal settlement (personal communication, August 2006); resident of Alegria settlement (personal communication, August 2006).

20. A good example is the murder of land reform lawyer, Gabriel Pimento, in 1982. After leading a successful effort to settle 100 landless families in a land occupation, the rancher desirous of the same holding, Nelito Cardosa, ordered Pimento's execution. Cardosa was apprehended at that time, but immediately released from custody. He was not jailed again until April 2006, but in May of the same year was ordered released given his age (83) and the fact the crime had been committed so long ago (Sousa 2006).

21. The idea of an armed movement to overthrow the government took form a decade earlier when the Brazilian Communist Party (PCB) split into two factions. The first one, led by the legendary Luis Carlos Prestes, aligned with the Soviets and supported democratic elections that were in fact held in Brazil in 1960 (Morais and Silva 2005, 34). The other faction, the PC do B, aligned with China and its members, and opted for an armed revolution with the support of a popular army formed by poor peasants, similar to that led by Mao Tse-Tung in the Chinese revolution. Indeed, several of the guerrilla fighters trained in China in the 1950s and 1960s. The intention to carry out an armed uprising was further strengthened after the military coup of 1964, at which time the government banned most parties, including the PCB and PC do B. The latter decided it was time to practice revolution.

22. The “Luta Posseira” was a highly localized struggle in the South of Pará, prior to the mass mobilizations of the 1980s and 1990s. This struggle was based on the tactical concept of “homem-arma-lote,” or the armed occupation of contested holdings by bands of armed men ranging up to 100 strong, intent on obtaining individual small holdings, or lots. Key informant interviews with other individuals regarding land conflict in the South of Pará supported the process described, including personal communications in May 2006 with two MST leaders from Espirito Santo and Maranhão, both founders of MST in Pará.

23. Numerous key informants confirmed this sentiment, including MST leader Marabá (personal communication, May 2006); a leader of the 1 de Março Settlement (personal communication, July 2006); a coordinator of 17 de Abril settlement (personal communication, July 2006); and a small farmer and resident of Santa Maria do Pontal settlement (personal communication, August 2006).

24. In a field trip to the region in 1995, the second author and his Brazilian companions had trouble conducting interviews with rural workers, who thought they were pistoleiros, or hired gunman in the employ of ranchers. Such a fear, while markedly off base, clearly indicates the short fuse in the perceptions of the region's inhabitants.

25. MST leaders from Espirito Santo and Maranhão, both founders of MST in Pará (personal communication, May 2006); MST leader at the National Directorate, São Paulo (personal communication, May 2006); MST leader Marabá (personal communication, May 2006); president of Cooperativa Mista dos Produtores Rurais de São João do Araguaia (personal communication, July 2006).

26. Interviews with leaders of different SMOs and with INCRA officials explicitly acknowledged that Brazilian land law, and the “social function” clause in particular, is used to justify land occupations (MST leaders from Espirito Santo and Maranhão, both founders of MST in Pará, personal communication, May 2006; MST leader at the National Directorate, São Paulo, personal communication, May 2006; MST leader Marabá, personal communication, May 2006; president of Cooperativa Mista dos Produtores Rurais de São João do Araguaia, personal communication, July 2006; Regional Director of INCRA in Marabá, personal communication, May 2006; MST leader Marabá, personal communication, May 2006).

27. The remaining 3 percent of the homicides represent victims accidentally caught in the crossfire, including children.

28. Data on deforestation can be found at http://www.obt.inpe.br/prodes/prodes_1988_2005.htm