The Geopolitics of Amazônia in Souza's Fiction

The resuming of Brazil’s geopolitical process is part of a policy in international ascension of the country in search of affirmation to the emergence of a new world power hub in view of the current World Order context. It is still ongoing, in this sense, the repercussion of the theory of Brazilian political geographer Mario Travassos, published in 1930s, having a great impact on the South American continent, of the recovery through the formation of large territories throughout the country consists in Integration and Development (RIE), in which Amazon is highlighted by its strategic importance within what we call geographic systems. These lines will be superimposed on the formation of these large areas. On the interpretation of these facts, one has as a goal to understand spatial systems logic within Travassos and geopolitical perspectives, considering the axes of Integration and Development EIDs in Northern Frontier inside current Brazilian Geopolitics Perspectives. Therefore, understanding the Amazon key role in the geopolitical scenario correlate and interpreting the constitution of borders and territorial policies of Travassos’ EID theory with a current perspective and at the same time, demonstrate the current geopolitical framework of the northern border and the pursuit of global projections of the country and at the same time understanding geopolitical functioning of the South American subcontinent.

LIVING IN THE AMAZON STATES AND THE CONTROL AND DOMINATION STRATEGIES OF THE IMPERIAL STATE OF BRAZIL (Atena Editora), 2021

This article analyzes the discourses on the way of life of the populations that occupied the Amazonian hinterlands of the 19th century, in this case, the provinces of Pará and Amazonas, residing on the banks of rivers and streams and who worked in extractive activities and planting in small swiddens. Using government and expedition reports as Sources, we demonstrate how these values, associated with agricultural activity, required the State to perform not only in maintaining order, but as an institution promoting policies that would elevate the habits of populations in the Amazon, in dissonance with life experience of the locals.

This paper addresses the international networks of three Brazilian geographers who were exiled or variously persecuted after the establishment of a military dictatorship in Brazil in 1964 — Josué De Castro (1908-1973), Milton Santos (1926-2001) and Manuel Correia de Andrade (1922-2007) — whose works had an impact in the international field of critical scholarship in geography and development studies, which remains underplayed in present-day scholarship. Addressing for the first time their unpublished correspondence, whose inventory is ongoing in Brazilian archives, I reconstruct their international work, especially focusing on its constraints, to engage with recent debates on the geographies of internationalism and on international agencies problematizing the concepts of ‘international geographies’ and ‘internationality’ of scientific life. My main argument is that the study of informal networks of scientific sociability allows for an understanding of the constraints that institutions and states pose to the internationalization of knowledge, not only through political repression but also through the establishment of ‘national schools’. On the other hand, these sources suggest that the exile can play a creative role in stimulating exchanges of knowledge, a concept, on which further research is needed in political geography.

Geojournal, 2005

Brazil possesses a long history of violent struggle for land, and its most recent phase is occurring predominantly in the Amazon Basin. Consequently, this paper attempts to territorialize land conflict in the Brazilian Amazon, and in so doing, to illuminate the place-specific intersection of historic social, political, and economic circumstance that created a violent landscape in the so-called “South of Pará.” The paper’s premise is that such conflict can be best viewed as resulting from a dialectic between general social processes operating across spatial scales, which create necessary conditions for conflict, and place-specific historical circumstances that transform necessary into sufficient conditions. The paper presents a framework integrating the theory of contentious politics and literatures addressing violence associated with the Amazonian frontier and with resource scarcity (and abundance). The discussion and theoretical application deconstruct the environmental, cognitive, and relational mechanisms that created violence in the South of Pará, and set the stage for the Eldorado dos Carajás massacre in April of 1996.

This paper addresses the evolution of Brazilian geopolitical thought on the region, aiming to create a theoretical framework on contemporary South America. We argue that if Brazil wants to enhance its leadership in the South American regional integration process, the country would have to harmonize neighbor States interests found in two main geopolitical components: the Bolivian heartland and the Amazonian heart. In order to reach the definitions of such concepts, this article analyzes the formation and evolution of Brazilian geopolitical thought, highlighting the geographic and political variables which underlie the stability in the region and provide the integration possibilities of South American countries. This will be the first part of the article, a historical approach to contextualize South American developments in its current geopolitics and a review of the main theoretical contributions of Brazilian authors in the last century. Once the geopolitical trends are assumed, the next section presents some principal elements for a current regional integration analysis in South America and what Brazil can do in terms of geopolitics. We believe that contextualizing these elements will strengthen our argument that harmonization of interests in these two main geopolitical realms will increase Brazil´s regional leadership.

The Journal of Latin American and Caribbean Anthropology, 2015

Este artículo se basa en fuentes etnográficas dispares con la finalidad de examinar la relación entre la urbanización de la población de la Amazonía y su lucha por los derechos al territorio. En el argumento queésta dinámica contraria a la intuición, merece una mayor atención, especialmente porque recientes políticas sobre la urbanización indígena ocultan dicha posibilidad. Específicamente muestro cómo en la Amazonía: (1) las cadenas migratorias que conectan remotas ciudades con las tierras indígenas, a menudo han sido forjadas por los líderes indígenas que viajan a los lugares donde reside el poder del estado, con el fin de demandar sus derechos sobre el territorio; (2) la vida en las ciudades puede servir para politizar a los citadinos indígenas, con consecuencias a largo plazo en sus luchas por el territorio; (3) el movimiento de la población indígena entre las ciudades y sus territorios de origen puede mantener y difundir estos efectos políticos a través del espacio y del tiempo. Presto atención a estas dinámicas con el objetivo de cuestionar la posible justificación de los textos políticos de la desposesión de las tierras indígenas enmarcando la urbanización indígena como genérica, inevitable y, enúltima instancia, desempoderando las posiciones indígenas sobre el territorio. [Amazonía, migración, pueblos indígenas, territorialización, territorio, urbanización]

BRASA XVI - Brazilian Studies Association, 2022

The Brazilian geographer Milton Santos was one of the most prominent Latin American intellectuals of the 20th century. His contributions range from the study of underdeveloped countries’ urbanization, Brazilian socio-spatial formation, and globalization to the epistemology of Geography. Recently he has been recognized as a pioneer thinker of the Global South who has built a broad intellectual project aiming for a decolonized and Critical Geography. The argument I explore in this presentation highlights his contribution to understanding Brazilian socio-spatial formation by the introduction of what he named the "technical-scientific-informational milieu". Technological modernizations, as a result of "corporative uses of territory", reach the territory and places disturbing previous socio-spatial dynamics. It produces urban marginalization, and proletarianization of rural workers and reinforces spatial inequalities which express the historical lack of citizenship in the country. In spite of those corporative uses of territory, there is the "power of places", the capacity of people to resist and rebuild their everyday life by other uses of territory which confront and oppose the "verticalities" of modernization vectors. Hence the concept of socio-spatial formation works as a mediation theory of Miltonian interpretation of Brazil. Finally, we argue that Milton Santos has a strong contribution not only to the field of Geography but also to Brazilian Social Thought, being part of the critical intellectual tradition of national interpretation and reflection about other possible futures.

Mobilities, 2012

This article asks what happens when the colonial dream of a road does not materialize as intended, and becomes instead a permanent project for distant state managers and rural Amazonian settlers. Roads have featured prominently in Brazil’s development designs, and ethnography along an unpaved road demonstrates how a wide array of actors negotiate the tension between the material challenges of moving in Amazonia and the bold modernist figurations that guide highway construction and territorial planning. Over the past 40 years, the unpaved road has itself become a central but unpredictable player in the plans and practices of colonists as well as in emerging governance projects of the Brazilian state. Colonists’ arrival in the region via what they perceive to be an abandoned and impassable road repositions their prefigured relationships with the histories, narratives, and infrastructures of colonial occupation and state-making. Newly local to a frontier zone not yet ‘connected’ to the rest of Brazil, colonists leverage an intimate knowledge of roadside material conditions in an effort to anticipate and influence future state actions.

University of Pittsburgh Press, 2022

The Brazilian Northeast has long been a marginalized region with a complex relationship to national identity. It is often portrayed as impoverished, backward, and rebellious, yet traditional and culturally authentic. Brazil is known for its strong national identity, but national identities do not preclude strong regional identities. In Region Out of Place, Courtney J. Campbell examines how groups within the region have asserted their identity, relevance, and uniqueness through interactions that transcend national borders. From migration to labor mobilization, from wartime dating to beauty pageants, from literacy movements to representations of banditry in film, Campbell explores how the development of regional cultural identity is a modern, internationally embedded conversation that circulated among Brazilians of every social class. Part of a region-based nationalism that reflects the anxiety that conflicting desires for modernity, progress, and cultural authenticity provoked in the twentieth century, this identity was forged by residents who continually stepped out of their expected roles, taking their region’s concerns to an international stage.