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After the Frontier: Problems with Political Economy in the Modern Brazilian Amazon

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 February 2009

David Cleary
David Cleary
Affiliation:
Research Officer at the Centre of Latin American Studies, University of Cambridge.
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Extract

The theoretical interpretation of social and economic change in the Brazilian Amazon has been dominated by a political economy in which the notion of the frontier, variously defined, has been central. Brazil is of course not the only country where a fuzzily defined idea of frontier development has been important, and we can think, as Turner did for the United States, of a Brazilian frontier thesis. It can be boiled down to a simple contention, although the arguments are often complicated: the frontier, now restricted to Amazonia, is the absorption of peripheral regions by an expanding capitalism. This perspective, fundamental to numerous studies of Amazonia, sees a tendency towards homogeneity in economic structure and social relations in the cycle of frontier development, with capitalism ending up as the dominant force. It regards the key subjects in the dynamic of the frontier as the peasantry, who are acted upon by the bourgeoisie and the state, and argues that the dynamic of events within the frontier is determined outside it, in the forms of capital accumulation in the national economy and the way regional economies are articulated to it. Although first formulated in the 1970s, it remains overwhelmingly the most influential theoretical approach to explaining Amazonia's modern history, irrespective, one is sometimes tempted to think, of the direction that history has actually taken.

Type
Articles
Information
Journal of Latin American Studies , Volume 25 , Issue 2 , May 1993 , pp. 331 - 349
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1993

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References

1 Caboclo is the term used for the indigenous peasantries of the Brazilian Amazon: see below in this article.

2 See de Souza Martins, J., Capitalismo e Tradicionalismo: Estudos sobre as Contradicçõs da Sociedade Agrária no Brasil (São Paulo, 1975), pp. 43–50Google Scholar.

3 For a more extended discussion of the work of Velho, Martins and Foweraker, together with a consideration of their relationship to Turner's theories of frontier development in the United States, see Pereira, Alberto Carlos Lourenço, Garimpo e fronteira amazôica: as transformações dos anos So, unpubl. master's thesis, CEDEPLAR – UFMG [Centro de Desenvolvimento e Planejamento Regional da Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais], Belo Horizonte 1990, pp. 1–64Google Scholar.

4 See, for example, Lisansky, J., Migrants to Amazonia: Spontaneous Colonization in the Brazilian Frontier (Boulder, 1990)Google Scholar, and Wesche, R. and Bruneau, T., Integration and Change in Brazil's Middle Amazon (Ottawa, 1990)Google Scholar.

5 Martins, Capitalismo e Tradicionalismo, pp. 45–7.

6 Foweraker, The Struggle for Land, p. 5.

7 Ibid., pp. 27–57.

8 The most widely available summary of Sawyer's thinking in English is ‘Frontier Expansion and Retraction in Brazil’, in Schmink, Marianne and Wood, Charles (eds.), Frontier Expansion in Amazonia (Gainesville, 1984), pp. 180–203Google Scholar.

9 See Pereira, Garimpo e Fronteira Amazônica.

10 See Torres, C. A., ‘Migração e o migrante de origem urbana na Amazônia’, in Lena, P. and de Oliveira, A., Amazônia: A Fronteira Agrícola Vinte Anos Depois (Belém, 1991), pp. 291–302Google Scholar.

11 See, for example, Cleary, D., Anatomy of the Amazon Gold Rush (London, 1990)CrossRefGoogle Scholar and Schmink, M. and Wood, C., Contested Frontiers in Amazonia (New York, 1992)Google Scholar.

12 Velho, O., ‘Campesinatos e Política’, Anuário antropolósgico 77 (Rio de Janeiro, 1978), pp. 277–300Google Scholar.

13 The fullest description of caboclo kinship and economy in English is Ayres, D. de M. Lima, ‘The Social Category Caboclo: History, Social Organisation, Identity and Outsider's Social Classification of the Rural Population of an Amazonian Region (Middle Solimões)’, unpubl. PhD diss., Univ. of Cambridge, 1992Google Scholar, chs. 4–7. See also Wagley's, Charles classic monograph Amazon Town: A Study of Man in the Tropics (New York, 1953)Google Scholar, chs. 2–4. Aviamento is the general term used to describe the great variety of economic systems in Amazonia which revolve around debt-credit relationships.

14 For monographs of caboclo fishing villages, see Loureiro, V. R., Os Parceiros do Mar: Natureza e Conflito Social na Pesca da Amazônia (Belém, 1985)Google Scholar and Furtado, L. G., Curralistas e Kedeiros de Marudá: Pescadores do Litoral do Pará (Belém, 1982)Google Scholar; for Acre and rubbertapping see Bakx, K., ‘Peasant Formation and Capitalist Development: The Case of Acre’, unpubl. PhD diss., Univ. of Liverpool, 1986Google Scholar; for ranching in Roraima see Rivière, P., The Forgotten Frontier: Ranchers and Ranching in Northern Brazil (New York, 1972)Google Scholar.

15 Loureiro, V., Miséria da Ascensão Social: Capitalismo e Pequena Produçãeo na Amazōnia (SãoPaulo, 1987)Google Scholar.

16 S. D. Anderson, ‘Engenhos na Várzea: Uma Análise do Declínio de um Sistema de Produção Tradicional na Amazônia’, in Lena and de Oliveira (eds.), A Fronteira Agrícola Vinte Anos Depois, pp. 101–24.

17 Loureiro, Os Parceiros do Mar, and Furtado, Pescadores do Litoral do Pará.

18 Mitschein, T. A., Miranda, H. R. and Paraense, M. C., Urbanização Selvagem e Proletarização Passiva na Amazônia: O Caso de Belém (Belém, 1989)Google Scholar.

19 Otávio Velho's work is a partial exception to this generalisation.

20 Sawyer, D., ‘Population Growth and Migration in the Amazon’, An Analysis of Environmental Problems in the Amazon, World Bank Report no. 9104–BR, vol. 2, Annex 1, p. 2 (Washington 1990: unpubl.)Google Scholar. Inter-regional migration data are much easier to obtain for western Amazonia, where there is only one important entry route, compared to several for eastern Amazonia. Yet it seems certain eastern Amazonia has experienced a similar decline, which probably began earlier.

21 For caboclo mobility see Ayres, ‘The Social Category Caboclo’, chs. 6 and 7; for the movement patterns of agricultural migrants see Lisansky, Migrants to Amazonia, pp. 107–12 and 135–8; for movements made by a range of social groups linked to gold mining see Cleary, Anatomy of the Amazon Gold Rush, pp. 73–96 and 211–22; for urban populations see Torres, ‘Migração e o migrante de origem urbana’, and Godfrey, B., ‘Boom Towns of the Amazon’, The Geographical Review, vol. 80, no. 2 (1990), pp. 103–17CrossRefGoogle Scholar; for movement of extractivists between urban and rural areas, see Schwartzman, S., ‘Land Distribution and the Social Costs of Frontier Development in Brazil: Social and Historical Context of Extractive Reserves’, in Nepstad, D. and Schwartzman, S. (eds.), Non-Timber Products from Tropical Forests: Evaluation of a Conservation and Development Strategy, Advances in Economic Botany no. 9 (New York, 1992), pp. 51–66Google Scholar.

22 A regatão is a river trader. Trading in Amazonia is another important area which has not received the attention it deserves. See McGrath, D., ‘The Paraense Traders: Small-Scale, Long-distance Trade in the Brazilian Amazon’, unpubl. PhD diss., Univ. of Wisconsin-Madison, 1989Google Scholar. There is as yet not even a thesis on regatões in the middle or upper Amazon.

23 See Martine, G., ‘Rondônia and the Fate of Small Producers’, in Goodman, D. and Hall, A. (eds.), The Future of Amazonia: Destruction or Sustainable Development (London, 1990), pp. 23–48CrossRefGoogle Scholar, for a detailed analysis of this process in western Amazonia; also Lisansky, Migrants to Amazonia, for a more ethnographic community-level study of the same process in Mato Grosso.

24 See Wallace, A. R., Travels on the Amazon and Rio Negro (London, 1890), pp. 260–4Google Scholar, for a memorable description of small trading and aviamento, for example.

25 Schwartzman, ‘Land Distribution and Social Costs of Frontier Development’, p. 61.

26 Macmillan, G., ‘Contemporary Land Use and Development in Roraima: A Brief Overview’, in Furley, P. (ed.), The Forest Frontier: Settlement and Change in Brazilian Roraima (London, 1993 [in press]), p. 6Google Scholar.

27 Sawyer, 'Population Growth and Migration in the Brazilian Amazon', p. 15.

28 Energia, Ministério das Minas e, Anuário Mineral (Brasília 1990)Google Scholar. Figures on value of exports from Economist Intelligence Unit, Brazil: Country Profile 1990–91, p. 42.

29 The limitations of official statistics in the Brazilian Amazon are extreme, and often understressed by researchers, especially economists. Agricultural and land tenure statistics are complicated by credit regulations and financial incentives leading to fraudulent reporting, the fact that many have no official title to their land, mixed cropping, and the difficulty of quantifying subsistence production. There are very long delays between the gathering and publication of data: at least five years in the case of the quinquennial agricultural census. There are only approximate estimates available for such critical activities as gold mining. An ethnography of official statistics would be an important contribution to the Amazonian literature.

30 See Browder, J., ‘Lumber Production and Economic Development in the Brazilian Amazon: Regional Trends and a Case Study’, Journal of World Forest Resource Management, vol. 4 (1989), pp. 1–19Google Scholar.

31 Abers, R. and Pereira, A., ‘Gold, Geopolitics and Hyperurbanisation in the Brazilian Amazon: The Case of Boa Vista, Roraima’, in Fadda, G. (ed.), La Urbe Latinoamericana Ante el Nuevo Milenario (Caracas, 1992)Google Scholar.

32 D. Sawyer, ‘Population Growth and Migration in the Brazilian Amazon’, pp. 6–13.

33 For bureaucracy and the state in Amazonia, see Bunker, S., Underdeveloping the Amazon: Extraction, Unequal Exchange and the Failure of the Modern State (Chicago, 1985)Google Scholar, chs. 3–6; also Schmink and Wood, Contested Frontiers in Amazonia, pp. 10–20.

34 Shah, A., The New Fiscal Federalism in Brazil, World Bank Discussion Paper no. 124 (Washington, 1991), p. 17Google Scholar.

35 Ibid., p. 23 for detailed figures.

36 Martins, Capitalismo e Traditionalismo, pp. 49–50.

37 As even Sawyer does, in ‘Frontier Expansion and Retraction in Brazil’.

38 This summary of events in Jacareacanga is based on fieldwork carried out there in November 1990.

39 Sawyer, ‘Population Growth and Migration in the Brazilian Amazon’, p. 15.

40 Cleary, Anatomy of the Amazon Gold Rush, p. 218.

41 For a discussion of posse and an anthropological reading of Brazilian land law see Holston, J., ‘The Misrule of Law: Land and Usurpation in Brazil’, Comparative Studies in Society and History, vol. 33, no. 4 (10 1991), pp. 695–725CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

42 Allegretti, M., ‘Extractive Reserves: An Alternative for Reconciling Development and Environmental Conservation in Amazonia’, in Anderson, A. (ed.), Alternatives to Deforestation: Steps Towards Sustainable Use of the Amazon Rain Forest (New York, 1990), pp. 252–62Google Scholar.

43 Cleary, Anatomy of the Amazon Gold Rush, pp. 59–72.