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Twisting the knife: Frontier violence in the central Amazon of Brazil

2006; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 33; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/03066150601062993

1743-9361

Scott William Hoefle,

Anthropological Studies and Insights

Abstract The presence or absence of high rates of violence in the Central Amazon of Brazil, one of the last great frontiers of the world, is analysed in terms of a comparative approach to the study of global frontiers. Violence is shown to be low among historical peasantries in riverine and pastoral areas of old settlement located beyond the greater frontier where less inequity and imbalance between social classes, ethnic groups, sexual groups and age sets exist. The advancing frontier of open-field agriculture presents the opposite with some of the highest rates of violence in the country and is shown to be typical of a process of polarised development in Brazil. Notes 1 See, for example, Ianni [1979 Ianni, Octávio. 1979. Colonização e Contra Reforma Agrária na Amazônia, Petrópolis: Vozes. [Google Scholar]], Foweraker [1981 Foweraker, Joe. 1981. The Struggle for Land: A Political Economy of the Pioneer Frontier in Brazil from 1930 to the Present Day, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. [Crossref] , [Google Scholar]], Leroy [1991 Leroy, Jean-Paul. 1991. Uma Chama na Amazônia, Petópolis: Fase/Vozes. [Google Scholar]], Oliveira [1999 Oliveira, Ariovaldo. 1999. A Geografia das Lutas no Campo, São Paulo: Contexto. [Google Scholar]], Schmink and Wood [1992 Schmink, Marianne and Wood, Charles H. 1992. Contested Frontiers in Amazonia, New York: Columbia University Press. [Google Scholar]], Simmons [2004 Simmons, Cynthia S. 2004. 'The Political Economy of Land Conflict in the Eastern Brazilian Amazon'. Annals of the American Association of Geographers, 94(1) [Google Scholar]], and Walker [2003 Walker, Robert. 2003. 'Mapping Process to Pattern in the Landscape Change of the Amazonian Frontier'. Annals of the American Association of Geographers, 93(2) [Google Scholar]]. Even earlier monographs, such as that by Monbeig [1952 Monbeig, Pierre. 1952. Pionniers et planteurs de São Paulo, Paris: Librarie Armand Colin. [Google Scholar]] about frontier expansion in the São Paulo region, adhere to the same pioneer/planter dichotomy, contrasting peasant economy with landlordism. 2 Good examples of the latter kind of analysis are Crosby [1986 Crosby, Alfred. 1986. Ecological Imperialism, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. [Google Scholar]], Hine and Faragher [2000 Hine, Robert V. and Faragher, Joe Mack. 2000. The American West, New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. [Google Scholar]], Turner [1983 Turner, Frederick Jackson. 1983. Beyond Geography, New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press. [Google Scholar]], White [1991 White, Richard. 1991. It's All of Your Fault and None of My Own, Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press. [Google Scholar]] and Young [1996 Young, Ann R.M. 1996. Environmental Change in Australia since 1788, Melbourne: Oxford University Press. [Google Scholar]]. 3 A number of these debates are considered in Hoefle [2003 Hoefle, Scott William. 2003. 'Beyond Cold War Pipedreams: What the West Was Not'. The Journal of Peasant Studies, 30(2) [Google Scholar]]. Among the many dichotomies generated in the case of the US frontier [Allen, 1975 Allen, John L. 1975. "'Exploration and the Creation of Geographical Images of the Great Plains: Comments on the Role of Subjectivity'". Edited by: Blouet, Brian W. and Lawson, Merlin P. [1975] [Google Scholar]: 10] are 'localism vs. nationalism, or, as the case may be, internationalism; practicality vs. theory; science vs. common sense; private interests vs. broad public policy; settlers vs soldiers, and soldiers vs. politicians; white men vs. Indians; East vs. West; and in the broadest sense a clash of contrasting images of the West vastly oversimplified – the Garden (meaning a belief in the economic potential of the West) and the Desert (meaning the belief that the West was a land of scarcity that would take centuries to develop).' 4 As Brittain [2005 Brittain, James J. 2005. 'A Theory of Accelerating Rural Violence: Lauchlin Currie's Role in Underdeveloping Colombia'. The Journal of Peasant Studies, 32(2)[Taylor & Francis Online], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]] shows, the ideology of economically 'irrational' land use by smallholders informed the influential views of Lauchlin Currie about agricultural development in Colombia. Significantly, he proposed that 'dampening' – or, less euphemistically, violence – was a necessary part of dispossession, advocating this as government policy. The irony of the latter is that he was an advocate of laissez faire. 5 It cannot be accidental that much science fiction equates 'outer space' with 'the final frontier', thereby underlining the extent to which popular culture projects the stereotype of 'empty space' on to the universe itself. 6 A discourse equating tribal populations with Nature was a staple of late nineteenth century writings about the Amazon [Bates, 1895 Bates, Henry Walter. 1895. The Naturalist on the River Amazons: A Record of Adventures, Habits of Animals, Sketches of Brazilian and Indian Life, and Aspects of Nature under the Equator, during Eleven Years of Travel, London: John Murray, Albemarle Street. [Google Scholar]; Wallace, 1889 Wallace, Alfred Russel. 1889. Travels on the Amazon and Rio Negro, with an Account of the Native Tribes, and Observations on the Climate, Geology, and Natural History of the Amazon Valley, London: Ward, Lock & Co.. [Google Scholar]. During the first half of the twentieth century, official discourse routinely described indigenous groups as the threatening 'other'. For example, the account of the 1915 Roosevelt-Rondon expedition to chart and explore the Amazon frontier candidly reveals the contrast between the innate hostility of the expedition members, who regarded tribal groups as 'dangerous', and the hospitality with which they were received in indigenous villages. Of this prejudice Rondon 1916 Rondon, Colonel Candido Mariano de Silva. 1916. Lectures Delivered on the Roosevelt-Rondon Scientific Expedition and the Telegraph Line Commission, Edited by: Reidy, R. G. and Murray, Ed. Rio de Janeiro: Commissão de Linhas Telegraficas Estrategicas de Matto-Grosso ao Amazonas. [Google Scholar]: 169, 170] wrote: 'We … got ourselves into marching order, the Nhambiquaras going on foot. Here a great difficulty turned up, perhaps due to the customs of the Indians or to the old prejudice reigning amongst us, that all Indians must necessarily be on every occasion and circumstance of life, false, disloyal and treacherous. [One expedition member], who had only decided to go to the village moved by the conviction that he would have to defend my life [stated] that his suspicions were being confirmed and peremptorily declared that he [would] watch the movements of our supposed enemies, and in case of necessity, assist us with his rifle … However, the developments were not long in allaying our suspicions, because a little ahead we found our host awaiting our arrival with a large quantity of Naru-caguinindê, a refreshing drink much used by the Nhambiquaras …'. This welcome notwithstanding, the perception of 'danger' remained [Rondon, 1916 Rondon, Colonel Candido Mariano de Silva. 1916. Lectures Delivered on the Roosevelt-Rondon Scientific Expedition and the Telegraph Line Commission, Edited by: Reidy, R. G. and Murray, Ed. Rio de Janeiro: Commissão de Linhas Telegraficas Estrategicas de Matto-Grosso ao Amazonas. [Google Scholar]: 172]: 'once again in the mind of [the same expedition member], full of false traditional notions amongst white people with regard to the character and sentiments of the indians, the suspicion arose that we were going to be betrayed and killed.' Similarly, in 1919 a government publication [Pinto, 1919 Pinto, E. Roquette. 1919. "'Ethnography'". In The United States of Brazil: Its History, People, Commerce, Industries, and Resources, Edited by: Manning, Edgar and Luso, João. London, Buenos Aires, Rio de Janeiro, and São Paulo: The South American Intelligence Co.. [Google Scholar]: 26] celebrating a unified nationhood (= the United States of Brazil) categorised the Indian population in terms of 'savage' and 'civilised'. Only 60 years ago, an analogous dichotomy – 'friendly'/' hostile' – was still being applied to tribal groups in official publications produced by the Brazilian government, thereby categorising as 'dangerous' those 'hostile' indigenous groups inhabiting the frontier. Hence the following [Ministry of Foreign Affairs, 1946 Ministry of Foreign Affairs [Brazil]. 1946. Brazil: Resource Possibilities, Rio de Janeiro: Economic and Commercial Division, Department of Information and Statistics. [Google Scholar]: 236–7, original emphasis]: 'There are still tribes of forest-dwellers in the depths of the Brazilian jungle, but the Government has always endeavoured to attract these semi-cilivilized or even savage elements … The Indian tribes may be divided into two groups – friendly and hostile, the latter actively resenting any attempt to establish contact with them. There are naturally different degrees of friendliness or hostility, some types being more readily assimilated than others. The nobility of this patriotic task is evident, for education and culture will enable the forest-dweller to live a more useful life and share in the progress and development of the country.' 7 On this process, see among others Turner [1983 Turner, Frederick Jackson. 1983. Beyond Geography, New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press. [Google Scholar]], Limerick [1987 Limerick, Patricia Nelson. 1987. The Legacy of Conquest, New York: Norton. [Google Scholar]], Wilkie [1988 Wilkie, David S. 1988. "'Hunters and Farmers of the African Forest'". In People of the Tropical Rain Forest, Edited by: Denslow, Julie Sloan and Padoch, Christine. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. [Google Scholar]], Rigg [1991 Rigg, Jonathan. 1991. Southeast Asia, London: Routledge. [Google Scholar]], Plant [1995 Plant, Roger. 1995. "'Background to Agrarian Reform: Latin America, Asia and Asia'". Edited by: Colchester, Marcus and Lohmann, Larry. [1995] [Google Scholar]], and Colchester [1995a Colchester, Marcus. 1995a. "'Colonizing the Rainforests'". Edited by: Colchester, Marcus and Lohmann, Larry. [Google Scholar]]. 8 On these points, see Hine and Faragher [2000 Hine, Robert V. and Faragher, Joe Mack. 2000. The American West, New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. [Google Scholar]], Limerack [1987 Limerick, Patricia Nelson. 1987. The Legacy of Conquest, New York: Norton. [Google Scholar]], and White [1991 White, Richard. 1991. It's All of Your Fault and None of My Own, Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press. [Google Scholar]]. 9 In the study area, the BR-319, which used to connect Porto Velho (Rondônia) with Manaus (Amazonas) along the Rio da Madeira valley, is a case in point. By 1988 the asphalt of the road had become so damaged, so many wooden bridges had collapsed and sections in wetlands had sunk that it was closed to traffic from Humaitá north. Traffic was diverted to barges along the Madeira River and the Manaus industrial zone was negatively affected. Colonisation along the highway was reversed with about 30% of the settlers abandoning their farms. Over the last few years some sections of this important highway have been repaired, and colonisation is taking place once again, but travel between Porto Velho and Manaus can still only be made using an off-road motorcycle during the dry season, a trip which takes about a week. Long stretches of the Transamazonian Highway can only be used during the dry season. The controversial Perimetral Norte West (the BR-210), from Caracaraí into the Yanomamö Reserve, is a shadow of what I saw in 1975 when it was new. The only new road system to be built is the BR-174 North, the BR-210 East and the BR-432 which connect Manaus to Venezuela via Boa Vista. The system was given priority in national road building because it links Brazil to its northern neighbours and the Caribbean. There has been the usual surge of colonisation and deforestation along these highways and recently the BR-174 and BR-210 have been completely asphalted and wooden bridges replaced by permanent concrete ones. However, only two years after completion the road was already so full of potholes the size of craters that lorry drivers organised protests demanding repairs. 10 See Hasse [1995] for the development of soybean commodification in Brazil. 11 This increase occurred after the 2000 Census. 12 See Hoefle [2004a Hoefle, Scott William. 2004a. "'Permaculture and Regional Rural Sustainability in the Amazon'". In The Regional Dimension and Contemporary Challenges to Rural Sustainability, Edited by: Bicalho, Ana Maria de Souza Mello and Hoefle, Scott William. Rio de Janeiro: LAGET-UFRJ/CSRS-IGU. [Google Scholar]; 2005 Hoefle, Scott William. 2005. "'Spatial Mobility and Socio-environmental Sustainability in the Amazon'". In Land Use and Rural Sustainability, Edited by: Mather, A. Aberdeen: University of Aberdeen Press/CSRS-IGU. [Google Scholar]] for greater details on farming systems in the Central Amazon. 13 One assemblyman from Apuí embarked on a process of capital accumulation and upward social mobility as a result of having killed and stolen gold from a prospector who was in his bar boasting about having hit it rich. If a successful prospector lives to spend his windfall, he goes to town and squanders his money in a couple of weeks. When there is nothing left, he returns once more to prospecting. For details about Amazonian prospecting, see Cleary [1990 Cleary, David. 1990. Anatomy of the Amazon Gold Rush, Basingstoke: Macmillan. [Crossref] , [Google Scholar]] and MacMillan [1995 MacMillan, Gordon. 1995. At the End of the Rainbow?, London: Earthscan. [Google Scholar]]. 14 Given that excessive drinking is a male activity, its connection with violence at forró dance parties and patron saint festivities is in a sense unremarkable. Following an incident of attempted murder, some rural communities have banned the sale of cheap cane spirits, or even discontinued certain festivities which attract a large number of outsiders. The only case of homicide detected among farmers interviewed involved the murder of a young settler by two young transient loggers at a forró dance party in Presidente Figueiredo municipality. The two killers worked in a local timber mill, and while drunk knifed the brother of a young woman they were molesting. As is usually the case, before the police could arrest the two killers they fled to another part of the Amazon. 15 One of the latter cases involved a woman killing another woman over a man, which is a reversal of traditional gender behaviour in Brazil. 16 One case of rape followed by murder was encountered in the important gateway city of Humaitá, through which travellers from all over Brazil pass and mix. In the industrial city of Itacoatiara, a surge in rapes occurred from the late 1990s onward, to the point that women became apprehensive about going out at night, particularly in the deserted streets of the outlying poor suburbs. Similarly, rape is more common in Manaus. Whereas rape in these two cities occurred less in the past, today respectively the rate runs at 10 and 28 per 100,000 inhabitants annually. 17 For details, see Survival International [2002 Survival International. 2002. Disinherited: Indians in Brazil, London: SI. [Google Scholar]]. 18 On this see Hoefle [2000 Hoefle, Scott William. 2000. 'Patronage and Empowerment in the Central Amazon'. Bulletin of Latin American Research, 19(4)[Crossref] , [Google Scholar]]. A tentative parallel might be effected in this respect, with the indigenous Maya population of Chiapas in Mexico, where the Zapatista peasant movement has managed to attract international support which has – for the time being – prevented the Mexican army from carrying out further massacres [Washbrook, 2007 Sarah, Washbrook, ed. 2007. Rural Chiapas Ten Years after the Zapatista Uprising, London: Routledge. [Google Scholar]]. 19 See Geffray [1998 Geffray, Claude. . 'Commerce de la cocaine dans le Rondônia (Brésil)'. Paper presented at the 2nd UN MOST Drugs Network Conference. Rio de Janeiro. [Google Scholar]] and Araujo [1998 Araujo, Roberto. . 'O tráfico de drogas no Acre'. Paper presented at the 2nd UN MOST Drugs Network Conference. Rio de Janeiro. [Google Scholar]]. 20 This diminished temporarily in 2003, when a particularly effective police chief suppressed all kinds of crime in Humaitá. With a black belt in karate, he would wade into barroom brawls and seriously injure those involved. However, when he killed the murderer of his brother in neighbouring Apuí, and then dragged the body behind his pickup truck through the streets, and then assaulted the pampered offspring of local political leaders, the police chief was transferred to a remote part of the state. Turf wars promptly began anew. 21 On the centrality of violence to the control of workers employed on the frontier during the nineteenth century, see among others Taussig [1984 Taussig, Michael. 1984. 'Culture of Terror – Space of Death: Roger Casement's Putumayo Report and the Explanation of Torture'. Comparative Studies in Society and History, 26(3)[Crossref] , [Google Scholar]] and Hochschild [1999 Hochschild, Adam. 1999. King Leopold's Ghost: A Story of Greed, Terror and Heroism in Colonial Africa, London: Macmillan. [Google Scholar]]. The opposing ways in which agrarian violence is interpreted, and its role in policing the rural workforce, is also a feature of the debate about 'social banditry'. Hobsbawm [1959 Hobsbawm, Eric J. 1959. Primitive Rebels, New York: W.W. Norton & Company. [Google Scholar]; 1969 Hobsbawm, Eric J. 1969. Bandits, London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson. [Google Scholar]] took the view that 'social banditry' represented a progressive form of from-below resistance by the rural poor. This interpretation was citicised by Blok [1972 Blok, Anton. 1972. 'The Peasant and the Brigand: Social Banditry Reconsidered'. Comparative Studies in Society and History, 14(4)[Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]] who, using the experience of the Sicilian mafia, argued that banditry was much rather a from-above method by which landlords kept recalcitrant tenants and labourers in line. For violence and 'social banditry' in Brazil and elsewhere in Latin America, see Singelmann [1975 Singelmann, Peter. 1975. 'Political Structure and Social Banditry in Northeast Brazil'. Journal of Latin American Studies, 7(Part I) [Google Scholar]] and Joseph [1990 Joseph, Gilbert M. 1990. 'On the Trail of Latin American Bandits: A Re-examination of Peasant Resistance'. Latin American Research Review, 25(3) [Google Scholar]]. 22 See Souza Martins [1997 Martins, José da Souza. 1997. "'The Reappearance of Slavery and the Reproduction of Capital on the Brazilian Frontier'". In Free and Unfree Labour: The Debate Continues, Edited by: Brass, Tom and van der Linden, M. Basle: Peter Lang AG. [Google Scholar]; 2003 Martins, José da Souza. 2003. "'Representing the Peasantry? Struggles for/about Land in Brazil'". In Latin American Peasants, Edited by: Brass, Tom. London and Portland, OR: Frank Cass Publishers. [Google Scholar]] and Sutton [1994] for details concerning the areas of the Amazon where bonded labour still occurs. 23 This difference in behaviour according to origin was used by the police chief responsible for eastern Roraima to explain different rates of violence in Bonfim and Cantá municipalities. Bonfim is located in a ranching zone of old settlement while the new BR-432 passes through Cantá. This highway cuts through primary forest connecting Boa Vista directly to Paraíso at the crossroads of the BR-174 and the BR-210 in southern Roraima and has attracted a number of Maranhense squatters. 24 On this settlement pattern, and its attendant conflicts, see Velho [1972 Velho, Otávio. 1972. Frentes de Expansão e Estrutura Agrária, Rio de Janeiro: Zahar. [Google Scholar]], Andrade [1973 Andrade, Manuel Correia. 1973. A Terra e o Homem no Nordeste, São Paulo: Brasiliense. [Google Scholar]] and Ianni [1979 Ianni, Octávio. 1979. Colonização e Contra Reforma Agrária na Amazônia, Petrópolis: Vozes. [Google Scholar]]. Many of the rural families interviewed in the course of my research originally came from the poor north-eastern state of Maranhão, and took part in this process over succeeding generations, arriving in the Central Amazon by way of Pará or Tocantins states. Other families, which have arrived more recently and came directly from Maranhão, confirm that it is the grinding rural poverty of this state which continues to drive out-migration to the Amazon region. Those few rural families interviewed for whom migration meant upward social mobility were able to take their children with them on a trip to visit their native Maranhão. The children were so shocked by the rural poverty they saw there that they asked their parents to never take them back again. 25 In the study area, the first land invasion occurred in 2000 in a SUFRAMA area of public domain in Rio Preto da Eva, a municipality located near Manaus. SUFRAMA, or Superintendência da Zona Franca de Manaus, are free trade zones established in Manaus during the late 1960s. However, the municipality already had a tradition of decades of spontaneous land invasions of SUFRAMA areas by individual farmers, and even by inhabitants from Manaus seeking to establish weekend homes, so that the MST action had little impact and is not even listed on the movement's website (www.mst.org.br). Additional informationNotes on contributorsScott William HoefleResearch funded by the Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico (CNPq – Brazil), Financiadora de Estudos e Projetos (FINEP – Brazil), the Institut pour la Recherche de Développement (IRD – France) and the Pilot Plan for Tropical Forests of the Group of Seven (PPG7). The author is grateful to Tom Brass for comments and suggestions.