Targeted violence: fences and expropriations on peasant territory Margarida Alves, Rondônia, Amazônia

Abstract

The phenomenon of invasion of Protected Areas and community territories has imposed significant territorial changes in the Brazilian Amazon. The destruction of natural ecosystems affects native forests and the territories of community peoples. In this article, aspects of territorial conflicts surrounding natural resources (land, water, wood, ore, etc.) are analyzed, resulting from this process. In this case, we use as an empirical reference the complex territorial conflict over the block reserve of the Margarida Alves Settlement Project (PA), in Rondônia. Through an approach based on ethnogeography, “exploring” the daily life of conflicts over land and territory, we will try to demonstrate that, in a geopolitical complex of radicalisms, interactive causes and effects, there was a rupture with conservationist practices locally driven by the clash of forces exogenous and endogenous territorial coherences. In this sense, we explain the focus of this approach on the dimensions of the empirical reality of territorial conflicts caused by regimes of expropriation and enclosures over Protected Areas and community territories in the Amazon. It was observed that the situation of PA Margarida Alves became invisible in the face of a historical regime of expropriation and enclosures over peasant territory, which made the settled families choose to break with old conservation practices.