A participação dos agricultores na construção do PROAMBIENTE: uma reflexão a partir do Pólo Transamazônica

Abstract

Smallholder representative organizations in the Transamazon highway have performed critical roles of mediation in the last two decades, and more recently became active in public policymaking. The PROAMBIENTE Program, incorporated by the federal government in 2003, reaffirms this trend. However, the construction of the program by Amazonian smallholder representative organizations and their partner technicians while provoking a reversal of public policy processes in Brazil (traditionally a government imposition to society) did not involve the subjects themselves in this process. Emerging from representative organizations, PROAMBIENTE faces strong resistance from the majority of the smallholders. The reason argued here for that is the distance between what was foreseen by the program and the aspirations of the smallholders and the leaders of the organizations that proposed the program. In the São Vicente group, particularly, even the producers who reveal affinity with PROAMBIENTE do not consistently assimilate its principles. Rather they appropriate the socioambiental rhetoric, advocated by the representative organizations in the Transamazon.