Cultura, trabalho e meio ambiente: disputas trabalhistas e a luta por modos de vida na Amazônia brasileira (Itacoatiara-AM, 1973/1988)

Abstract

This research analyzes the historical process of deforestation of the Amazon forest and the social formation of property in the Brazilian Amazon in the 1970s and 1980s. Through the problematization of the documentary set of individual disputes, press periodicals, photographs, yearbooks and reports from various institutions , we discussed the themes of culture, work and the environment from a dialectical perspective. Reading the documentation against the grain reveals labor disputes and the struggle for ways of life in Itacoatiara, a municipality in the interior of the state of Amazonas, in cases of deforestation and timber trade, contemporary slavery and land conflicts. In this sense, we revalue experiences and ways of life of men and women, children and the elderly, who experienced the process of advance of capital in the Amazon forest, highlighting strategies invented in movements fighting for ways of life, the right to work and the right to Earth. Starting mainly from the analysis of the labor processes of the Itacoatiara Conciliation and Judgment Board (JCJ-ITA), we understand the historical construction of perspectives and practices of culture and resistance of working subjects, through relationships between themselves and the environment. This analysis also reveals the role of the Labor Court and the civil-military dictatorship of 1964 in the process of property formation in the Amazon and the precariousness of labor relations.