Abstract
This chapter is the result of a collective effort by a group of geographers in which we propose a territorialized reading of certain complex questions related to water, land, socioterritorial movements, capital, and labour in contemporary Brazil. Our starting point is that an understanding of territorial issues is fundamental as part of an integrated approach to sectoral issues, and that we need to understand territory as being something more than just the ground surface of an area of land. Territory is more than surface; people are also territories. We make reference to actions that produce social relations and, in that sense, create territories. People create territories as much as territories create people. Territories and people are therefore inseparable. We emphasize the complexity of socioterritorial relations, and argue that a territorialized understanding is essential when analysing disputes over natural resources and the processes that produce new territories. Territorial disputes are key when considering power relations through a typology of territories, meaning that a multidimensional analysis is required; in a one-dimensional examination of a territory as simply an area of land, these realities are likely to be overlooked.
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Notes
- 1.
Itaparica is located between the States of Bahia and Pernambuco in the São Francisco basin.
- 2.
The Middle San Francisco Trade Union Hub was the main inter-union organization that arranged rural workers of many municipalities of the Meddle São Francisco and the Land Pastoral Commission (CPT) in the 1970s and 1980s.
- 3.
According to A Enchente do Uruguai [The Flood of Uruguay], the Congress was attended by over 200 participants from different entities, including representatives of the Brazilian Social Democracy Party (PSDB), Workers’ Party (PT), Brazilian Socialist Party (PSB), Communist Party of Brazil (PC do B), and Democratic Labour Party (PDT). The Brazilian Democratic Movement Party (PMDB) sent a letter of solidarity.
- 4.
It was also decided that the 14th of March would be marked annually as the National Day of Action Against Dams.
- 5.
On socioterritorial movements, see Sobreiro Filho (2013).
- 6.
This region is characterized by low rainfall rates, which, together with intensive land and water management, contribute to high levels of labour exploitation and expropriation of the poor groups in the area. This process of socionatural exploitation was established centuries ago through political alliances between the state apparatus and large landholders. These relationships have been reconfigured in recent decades, with the high levels of capital injection from the export of tropical fruits and the building of public dams and irrigation canals.
- 7.
States (or provinces) that will be beneficiaries of the water transfer from the São Francisco River.
- 8.
According to Brandão (2010), the appropriation and expropriation of abundant territorial resources and permanent primitive accumulation are fundamental elements in Brazilian history. The fact that Brazil’s national territory is both vast and heterogeneous has allowed the national elites who control it to subordinate the general population. The country’s territory has been turned into a mere operational base and platform for capital circulation, as well as a locus of human and environmental predation.
- 9.
Through these channels, the transfer of water could feed irrigation perimeters (14 in the States of Ceará, 5 in Rio Grande do Norte, 3 Paraíba, and 4 in Pernambuco), which is likely to merely (re)produce social inequalities, poisoning/killing workers (see note 11, below) and affecting their living conditions, while facilitating the expansion of capitalist relations.
- 10.
The Urucuia aquifer, located in the middle portion of the basin, is considered the “lungs of the São Francisco River”, especially during the dry season (from April to September) and is the source of a large portion of the river’s flow. However, the doctoral research project entitled “From Hidden to Visible: Earth-Water-Work and Agro-hydro-business Territorial Conglomerates in Western Bahia” (Cunha 2013), identified about 1000 central pivots and 2.5 million hectares of cultivated land in aquifer recharge areas. This means that the production structure based on large-scale agribusiness has contributed significantly to reducing the flow in the São Francisco River.
- 11.
The ten largest agribusiness corporations in operation in Brazil are: JBS, Raízen (Cosan e Shell), Cosan, Bunge, BRF, Cargill, Marfrig, Nestlé, Copersucar, and Louis Dreyfuss.
- 12.
Raquel Rigotto, medicine professor at the Federal University of Ceará, has conducted research in the State of Ceará on irrigation perimeters that receive water from the São Francisco water transfer project that has detected significant poisoning of workers by chemical fertilizers and pesticides. The researcher identifies severe threats to the health and life of these workers, including carcinoma, genetic disorders, and acute contamination, among others.
- 13.
There are circumstances that, according to the Brazilian Penal Code, bear a resemblance to slavery situations, given serious human degradation, violation of basic rights, unacceptable health and live risks, long working days, forced work due to debts, and so on.
- 14.
According to the CPT, the main organization in charge of collecting conflict data, there has been a growing number of incidents over the last decade, especially in the territories of primary commodity exports, including agribusiness, hydropower sites, roads and railways, mining, and so on.
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Filho, J.S., Fernandes, B.M., Cunha, T.B. (2016). Water, Land, Socioterritorial Movements, Labour, and Capital: Territorial Disputes and Conflictuality in Brazil. In: Ioris, A. (eds) Agriculture, Environment and Development. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-32255-1_5
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