Individuais x coletivos: disputas territoriais e identitárias em repartimentos dos pilões, Vale do Jari

Abstract

This essay aimed to understand social processes that have contributed to the agravation of agrarian and socioenvironmental conflicts that, in the last few years, have anguished several agricultural-extractive communities in the Jari valley, at Almeirim, Pará. The research conducted between 2017 and 2019, at Repartimento dos Pilões – the local community chosen for this ethnographic experience about conflict – gave birth to descriptions and further support of anthropological reflections intended to unveil strategies through which two quarreling groups build their differences, in both discourse plan and social practices, to legitimize certain ways to use the land and its natural resources. The residents of Repartimento dos Pilões are divided into two opposing groups, self-proclaimed as the “Individuals” and “Collectives”. The results of this research suggest that, in the most immediate ways, the difference between the groups is based in their differing expectations on how rights to this land should be handled: while the “Individuals” hope to seize private ownership of the land they occupy for living and agriculture, the “Collectives” demand control over extensions of land that correlate to areas set for residential and collective use, mainly forests in the vicinity of the community. It becomes very clear that, aside from rights to own the land and the natural resources contained within this land, each group is represented as an individual way of life. Establishing themselves as individuals with differing rights over land that was shared until then, leading a conflict that is a symbol of environmental and agrarian disputes in the Amazonian territory.