Pirí: um estudo sobre povos tradicionais, ambiente e práticas políticas. Ilhas de Abaetetuba, Amazônia Oriental

Abstract

The islands of Abaetetuba have suffered for 30 years from disasters caused by large- scale projects in neighboring municipalities, however, since 2015 the company Cargill has sought to install a TUP in the Abaetetuba archipelago, more precisely on Xingu Island, where the Santo Afonso Community is located. In this sense, this thesis aims to understand the interrelationships between the political struggle against the installation of the TUP and the relationship that the Santo Afonso Community maintains with the environment, based on the defense of a specific environment called Pirí. This is research whose methodological basis is autoethnography combined with ethnography, since although the main fieldwork was carried out in the Santo Afonso Community, my personal experiences, as a riverside dweller, are also part of the research. The community of Santo Afonso has a unique relationship with nature, especially with a Pirí microecosystem, which in addition to unique temporalities and biodiversity, houses many enchanted people who are part of the community's cosmology. There are several sentient beings that co-inhabit the same territory with the community and have agency in the daily activities and also in the political decisions of the people living on the riverside of Santo Afonso. A fact that is even more evident in the struggles and resistance against the TUP Abaetetuba, where two lines of argument are basically presented: 1) public – based on the socio-environmental impacts that the TUP will cause, if it is installed; 2) internal – based on cosmology and the signs that the enchanted have manifested to the community. What can be seen is that in fact the riverside people and their relationship with the environment have a direct connection with their manifestations, struggles and resistance against the TUP using various arguments, from socio-environmental to cosmological, and these are evoked according to the public to whom is heading.