The State and Land Conflicts in Amazonia, 1964–88

The lag between the intensification of land conflicts and the irregular and uneven character of State intervention has been a notable feature of agrarian structures in Amazonia during the past twenty years. The official representation of these struggles has been decidedly technocratic, as if land conflicts and violence were somehow intrinsic to agricultural modernisation and the development of the productive forces in an agricultural frontier region. Rising social tensions are thus interpreted in a natural, matter of fact way, which implicitly endorses the increasing concentration of land ownership under the dictates of brute force and coercion. Despite public statements of moral outrage, the use of violence to subjugate different segments of the peasantry, known regionally as posseiros and peões, as well as diverse indigenous groups is presented within this convoluted logic as a ‘necessary fact’, specific to the economic processes and political structures of frontier regions. Violence thus has been a constant element both in periods of outright dictatorship (1964–85) and those of ‘democratic transition’ (1985–8). In some respects, this concentrationist tendency reproduces on the frontier the cultural patterns intrinsic to the formation of latifúndia, as found in areas of early settlement. The subordination of peasants by coercion and various forms of banditry and pistolagem has historical parallel with the consolidation of this form of large landed property. That is, properties whose access to the means of production is based on the destruction of pre-existing tenure systems and mechanisms to immobilise labour, such as debt peonage, which represent extreme forms of repression of the labour force (Esterci, 1987).