O contraespaço ribeirinho amazônico: as contradições da Usina Hidrelétrica de Belo Monte no espaço da Comunidade Boa Esperança

Abstract

This study contributes to the discussions about the impacts generated by the damming of the Xingu River for the construction of the Belo Monte Hydroelectric Plant UHEBM, in the Brazilian Amazon, which generated impacts on the conditions of use of the i slands, channels, holes and lakes of the Boa riverside community. Esperança , located in the backwater area of the UHEBM reservoir in the municipality of Altamira PA. In this context, the research aims to identify the conditions of material reproduction o f riverside work through changes in the river environments of the islands, after the damming of the Xingu River for the purpose of producing hydroelectric energy. The study has as its theoretical methodological basis the concept of space, production of spa ce and counterspace in the Amazon, carried out, however, through the analysis of three variables: Capital, Technique and Work based on materialism, history and dialectics in the contradictory process of agrarian space in the Amazon, starting from the under standing of space as an inseparable set of systems of objects and systems of action that generates contradictions in space from the materialization of counterspace. Counterspace is the manifestation in space of the consequences of the forms of resistance o f excluded and marginalized populations in the process of technicalization of agrarian space, a product of man's relations in geographic space. The research presents as main results the condition of the material work of the riverside fisherman, a concept u sed in this research to identify the social subjects who occupy the islands of the community and have their identity dissociated from their work relationships, fishing. Therefore, the research contributes not only to paradigmatic discussions in the field o f geographic science, but also to the process of recognizing areas impacted by the damming of the Xingu River, through observations and data obtained in the field in the researched community. These changes affect the river's flow level, increase in water t emperature, sediment load, water level during floods and droughts, directly impacting the conditions of use of riverside fishermen through the deadly changes in working conditions, resulting in by changes in the natural behavior of the hydrological regime environment. Therefore, the changes caused to the Xingu River contributed to the instability of the hydrological regime of the channels and boreholes, which impacted the subsistence conditions of the families occupying these islands. In effect, directly in the natural behavior of the river environment that interferes in the material expression of the riverside fisherman, that is, in his work, which is carried out through the daily practice of life. The work, therefore, is carried out via the techniques of m aking the essence of the riverside being, which coexist in its form and content in the intermediation between man and nature when defining the spatial practices and materials of what is perceived, conceived and experienced in production. of surplus value, that is, as a material part of the international division of labor. In this way, however, it is under the condition of exchange value that the monopoly of space comes to be disputed, with the emergence of counterspace relations questioning the hegemonic po wer that rationalizes the spaces of primary nature, in the insurgency of the riverside fisherman as the protagonist of relations of abstract and material production of the agrarian space of Altamira PA.