Antes a gente tinha um rio, agora a gente tem um lago: a construção do território ribeirinho às margens do reservatório do CHE Belo Monte

Abstract

The construction of hydroelectric power plants causes a process of deterritorialization and reterritorialization of traditional communities. This work aims to analyse the construction of the riverside territory, i.e., the ways used to reconstruct living in a destroying environment, post-installation of CHE Belo Monte. Therefore, a case study was carried out in the locality of Palhal, on the banks of the main reservoir, in the municipality of Altamira, in Pará, using participant observation and interviews. Riverside families have been through a violent process of compulsory displacement, full of human rights violations. Thus, the families were looking for ways to denounce and to recover the traditional way of life and that starts a movement which culminated in the creation of the riverside territory. The beginning of construction of the new territory has been marked, mainly, by the new attribution of meanings to the space; by the updates of traditional knowledge to appropriate the new environment; by the for the reconstruction of parentage networks and reciprocity; and by the use of moral values to regulate access to the scarce natural resources.