O livre pastejo do gado bovino na via pública de áreas urbanas: considerações a partir do caso dos pecuaristas urbanos do Município de Castanhal (Pará, Brasil, Amazônia Oriental)

Abstract

The work focuses on some life aspects related to an urban cattle ranching family that herds its animals within the urban area of Castanhal Municipality (Pará, Brazil, Eastern Amazonia). It aims to describe and analyze the specific sequence of events that marked the progressively conflicting relationship between the family and its social environment, emphasizing the motivations, mindsets, arguments and points of view underlying the actions performed by the actors involved in the process over time. The method used was the case study, associated mainly with participant observation, semistructured interviews, debates and guided tours to representative spaces to the interlocutors’ history, which were applied in field from June 2013 until February 2014. The first aspect on focus was the social conflict itself, the rough argument performed by the family members and various sectors of society (neighbors, fellow citizens, legislators, government and other authorities) in different moments of their trajectory. The second aspect detailed was the socialization process developed in the children’s upbringing within the family environment and the shifts in its orientation, due to the social pressure against the maintenance of cattle grazing in the urban seat. The third aspect analyzed referred to the contextualization of how the cattle grazing points gradually shifted along the land and how it influenced the formation of new working groups compositions within the family under discussion over specific moments in time.