Vila Braba: território e parentesco em uma sociedade camponesa no Baixo Tocantins (PA)

Abstract

The present study analyzes the delimitation and territorial use by a peasant group known as Pereirada, that lived in a community called Vila Braba, located in the county of Cametá/Pará. This Amazon community was born of a long process of displacement bordering the water courses of the great Tocantins River. To achieve what was intended, a particularized approach was necessary, which was permitted by ethnography and its operational tools. To this was added the use of theoretical concepts believed to be keys to the intent, such as kinship and territory, since it was interesting to unveil nuances of production and social reproduction of the group, aspects that go through the way they make use of the territory, which in turn is shaped by kinship relations. In this use, several social units are composed and decomposed, preserving the indivisibility of the land acquired by mercantile means associated with the common use of the nature fields, the streams and the forest. A territoriality based on kinship relations, with predominance of what we call territorial inbreeding, and weakened by the continuous process of private appropriation of the lands and by the biological impoverishment of hunting and gathering areas. Threats to their territoriality, and to their territory, imply the disappearance of this specific group, since the conditions necessary for their social reproduction would no longer exist. It is necessary, therefore, to guarantee its territory in order to keep the reproduction and existence of this follow-up of the Amazonian and Tocantino peasantry.