O Acre na "trama" da Amazônia: narrativas, discursos e representações (1940–1960)

Abstract

This study aims to understand the narratives, discourses, and representations of the Amazon from Acre during the years 1940 to 1960. It sought to identify the first formulations of discourses on the Acre Question, inserted in the symbolic constructions of nationality in the Amazon region, treating the current territory of Acre as part of a border limit of the Brazilian territorial unit. Based on a symbolic construction of “disputes,” accentuated by the economic advent of latex extraction, Acre, as a spatial section of the Amazon in Brazilian “competition,” was investigated as a reflection of the Amazonian occupations undertaken in the 20th century. In this sense, a group of intellectuals, notably the works and actions of Arthur Cezar Ferreira Reis and Araújo Lima, were highlighted as agents who contributed to the imaginary of the Amazon, thinking about integrity and identity based on scientific discourse inserted in the national context of projects that dealt with the construction of Brazilian identity. With an emphasis on the Amazon of the 1940s, narratives about the region were understood based on the construction of representation and political discourses focused on integration, occupation, and adaptation. The perspective of the “rediscovery of the Amazon” undertaken during the Vargas Era and the instruments of power that acted in the consolidation of these representations were investigated. In this historical, political, and sociocultural context of the Amazon, the specificity of the Amazon region of Acre was analyzed within this context of political and economic disputes, highlighting the continuities and ruptures that traverse the constitution of this “Brazilian Acre.” From this perspective of a particular analysis of the Amazon based on Acre, an understanding was developed that made it possible to explore the specificities that make up the “places” of Acre in Brazilian historiography, highlighting how the narratives and representations of this state reverberated in the country's political structures, as well as in the regional particularities used as part of the statements about the Amazon during the period investigated. To identify these statements, with an emphasis on Acre, different research sources were used, including newspapers from different regions of the country that produced narratives about Acre and the Amazon, articles and essays published by the Revista Brasileira de Geografia – IBGE (Brazilian Geography Magazine – IBGE), Revista Cultura Política (Political Culture Magazine), as well as political statements, legislation, and media productions produced by the governments of the time. As a theoretical and methodological reference, the study drew on the contributions of Michel Foucault, Paul Ricoeur, Reinhart Koselleck, Walter Benjamin, and Roger Chartier, among other intellectuals, whose works contributed to the understanding and appropriation of the concepts of culture, language, representations, power, narratives, and temporality.