Entre a várzea e terra firme: estudo de espaços de assentamentos tradicionais urbanos rurais na região do Baixo Tocantins

Abstract

The administrative region of Baixo Tocantins was one of the first to receive European colonization in the State of Pará, underwent a typically Amazonian occupation initially established in the estuary of smaller rivers and streams, which advanced to the mainland after the transformations resulting from the integration of the Amazon to the rest of Brazil by land (through highways) and the Tocantins River dam by the Tucuruí Hydroelectric Plant. Road access has assumed an increasing importance in the establishment and expansion of settlements and towns and in the reconfiguration of cities. Although the region is home to the largest industrial district and the largest export port in the state, it has intense economic activity linked to extractivism, with emphasis on the pressure for an economic revitalization of the floodplain areas through the expansion of açaí management. Given this context, this dissertation aims to analyze the spatial arrangements of settlements of traditional populations located in the floodplain and on dry land in the municipalities of Cametá, Mocajuba and Baião, based on the methodologies of Lefebvre (2006) and Soja (1993) , on the trialetic nature of space (decomposed into spaces conceived, perceived and lived). The space of the study area was investigated based on these three dimensions, articulating territorial scales and ways of life, which seek to understand the historical context, the policies directed to the region and its socioeconomic formation, the form of appropriation of its spaces by communities that are heirs to and enslaved indigenous and African peoples, and the very morphology (spatial arrangements) of these communities that is organized in an increasingly complementary way to the city and urban structures and services. It was concluded that the peasant way of life is heir to innumerable political, cultural and social processes and actions, and adapts to the new; that spatial reorganization occurs through the transfer of areas of residences to the community center and the subdivision of work areas affected by public policies (eg, housing production or credit access framework), which has modified spatial arrangements both in the floodplain and on the mainland, and favoring the conversion of extractive use to others less adapted to the Amazon biome; and that the identification and registration of the processes of spatial transformations, in this type of study area, is a fundamental resource for the generation of a spatial repertoire more suited to urban, municipal and territorial policies destined to the Amazon.