Racionalidade camponesa no uso da terra na Pan-Amazônia (Brasil e Colômbia)

Abstract

This research aimed to analyze the relationship between peasant rationality in their form of (re)production and the sustainability of their land use systems practiced in the Pan-Amazon, taking as reference the agricultural colony of Matapi, located in the municipality of Porto Grande, State of Amapá, Brazil, and the El Pato-Balsillas Peasant Reserve Zone, located in the municipality of San Vicente del Caguán, department of Caquetá, Colombia (due to security reasons and the pandemic situation, it was not possible to carry out the work of field in El Pato-Balsillas), in analyzes that take place in the period from the second half of the 20th century (the arrival of the subjects at the research site) to the present day. The postulated thesis was based on the understanding that peasant rationality provides the sustainability of land use systems in the Amazon, which maintains the maintenance and reproduction of families in their productive spaces and land use over the years, promoting nature conservation and differentiating the degree of sustainability of land use systems by different forms of occupation and different historical trajectories of the subjects who arrived in the rural spaces of the region in the analyzed period. The methodological procedures were characterized by a deepening in dialectical analysis along with quantitative and qualitative assessments, and for the collection of primary data, observation, interviews, application of forms, surveys and life history were used. For the assessment of the sustainability of land use systems, indicators were used that included a set of analyzes on social, economic, environmental, political and cultural issues, with variables that had as reference the MESMIS framework and elements of the principles of agroecology, thus as there was the proposal to build sustainability indices for the purposes of comparison between systems in the places where the investigation would take place. Overall, considering the multidimensional assessment, it was identified that the land use systems practiced in the agricultural colony of Matapi present a precariousness of sustainability or weak sustainability (index 0.47). As a research advance, the contribution to the improvement of a methodology that aims to analyze the sustainability of land use systems in the Amazon region, which can be adapted to the specifics of a given context, as well as advances in the analysis of the formation, structuring and consolidation of what we call a new peasantry in the Amazon, which has its origins around the mid-nineteenth century. In view of such contributions and research results, it is expected that these will be configured as subsidies for decision-making in public policies for the region, as well as assisting in the reading of situations beyond the Pan-Amazon, as they present fundamentals to discuss the peasant production.