Produção do espaço ribeirinho na Amazônia: uma análise a partir do contexto espacial em comunidades das ilhas de Abaetetuba-PA

Abstract

The analysis undertaken here aims to emphasize the riverside dimension of space in the Amazon region of Tocantins in Pará, taking as its starting point the insular portion of the municipality of Abaetetuba, Northeastern Pará State, locally known as the ―Abaetetuba islands‖. We defend as a guiding thesis the existence of a riparian space production process in the Amazon, with regard to the study area, which is not an ―isolated‖ process, but integrates the broader movement of production in the regional space. The research is structured in four moments or analysis axes, preceded by the final considerations. At first, dissolved in the first chapter, we describe general aspects about the empirical spatial context from which we are proposing the construction of the research, that is, the Amazon region of Tocantins and particularly the islands of Abaetetuba. This is a preliminary characterization of the empirical reality to be studied, where aspects referring to both the territorial configuration and the riverside social dynamics will be considered. In the second and third moments (understood in the second and third chapters), we propose an exercise of regression, that is, of reconstituting some historical-spatial processes that had important correlations with the production of riverine space in the region, especially in the islands of Abaetetuba, such as the creation of the villages commanded by the missionaries during the first phase of Portuguese colonization in the region; the creation of captaincies and land grants; the establishment of Indian directories; the introduction of black slaves in the region; as well as the more systematic development of the sugarcane mills economy already in a post-colonial situation. In the fourth moment, we propose a return to the riverside spatial context in the present time, seeking to understand it in a more enlightened, resignified way. At this point, we take as a starting point the political organization strategies, especially those linked to land use, in view of their correlations with the dynamics of production in the riverside space. In line with the purposes of the research, we chose the (social) production of space as the guiding theory, placing the debates in the horizons opened by the dialectical perspective raised mainly in the writings of the philosopher Henri Lefebvre, whose foundations proved to be pertinent and adaptable to the development of the analysis proposed here. We start from the principle that the social practices projected in a given space also translate into space production practices. This production, however, does not refer strictly to the production of things, objects, or goods, but refers its understanding to the existence of social relations, which includes the production of objects and the production of space in a broad sense. It is from this perspective that we raise this analysis with the islands of Abaetetuba as the empirical locus of the research.