Castanheiros, agricultores e índios: conflitos pelos usos da terra em castanhais do médio Tocantins (1948-1980)

Abstract

This paper pays attention for the symbolisms that the grows of chestnut trees from the Medium Tocantins acquired during more than a half century of occupation since, at least, 1892, mainly on the limits from the towns of Marabá and Itupiranga/Pará. For someones, the groves of chestnut trees lands were only sources of income, important way to profit. Those were the motives because the land and the forest products were succesfully appropriated, mainly by ranchers, sellers of chest nuts and municipal representatives. Fore others they constituted inerent spaces for life and which natural environment revelated an essence of a cultural production as the case of the familiar farmers tradicionally installed on little villages and isolated localities. Those adequated traditions on the occupied spaces and developed small agricultures taking as a base forest products as a complement for their subsistences. Embased by written resources and analyzing the memory about the grows of chestnut trees from the medium Tocantins detached the period between 1948 and 1980, with the purpose to visualize the causes and consequences from this antagonism of ideas and points of view relating them with the ways of dealing with the soil and the resources got available by them.