Scans of page 1-255
Introduction
Chapter 1 "Invading Indigenous Homelands"
Chapter 2 "Taming the Jungle"
Abstract:Paul Little chronicles centuries of territorial disputes in Amazonia. Examining a wide variety of social groups from an environmental and anthropological perspective, Little describes the factors that have created two unique biophysical and political environments at opposite ends of the Amazon River basin's rain forest.
Little makes a comparative study of the Aguarico region in eastern Ecuador (at the western upper edge of the rain forest) and the Jari region of Brazil (at its eastern lowland end) using four time frames to examine early European invasions of indigenous homelands, fortune-building attempts in Amazonia, conservation concerns in the tropical ecosystems; and disputes over territorial claims that arose during the 1990s. By interweaving his examination between the two regions within each time frame, Little effectively highlights how similar globalizing forces were locally appropriated to produce widely divergent environmental and political histories.
A large part of the study is given to the period beginning in the 1950s. Little outlines the contemporary struggles -- social, political, economic, and ecological -- arising in Amazonia. He also examines the frontier processes of ethnocide and ethnogenesis whereby the indigenous communities of the upper Amazon have retained some control over their lands, while in the lower Amazon traditional riverine communities strive for existence against increasing industrialization.
Thoroughly researched and examining issues ranging from resource exploitation and conservation to colonization, urbanization, and industrialization, Amazonia will appeal to students and scholars in environmental studies, geography, ecology and conservation, cultural anthropology, and Latin American studies and history as well as anyone interested in Amazonia.
Original Title
Amazonia : Territorial struggles on perennial frontiers. Little, P.E. 2001.
Scans of page 1-255
Introduction
Chapter 1 "Invading Indigenous Homelands"
Chapter 2 "Taming the Jungle"
Abstract:Paul Little chronicles centuries of territorial disputes in Amazonia. Examining a wide variety of social groups from an environmental and anthropological perspective, Little describes the factors that have created two unique biophysical and political environments at opposite ends of the Amazon River basin's rain forest.
Little makes a comparative study of the Aguarico region in eastern Ecuador (at the western upper edge of the rain forest) and the Jari region of Brazil (at its eastern lowland end) using four time frames to examine early European invasions of indigenous homelands, fortune-building attempts in Amazonia, conservation concerns in the tropical ecosystems; and disputes over territorial claims that arose during the 1990s. By interweaving his examination between the two regions within each time frame, Little effectively highlights how similar globalizing forces were locally appropriated to produce widely divergent environmental and political histories.
A large part of the study is given to the period beginning in the 1950s. Little outlines the contemporary struggles -- social, political, economic, and ecological -- arising in Amazonia. He also examines the frontier processes of ethnocide and ethnogenesis whereby the indigenous communities of the upper Amazon have retained some control over their lands, while in the lower Amazon traditional riverine communities strive for existence against increasing industrialization.
Thoroughly researched and examining issues ranging from resource exploitation and conservation to colonization, urbanization, and industrialization, Amazonia will appeal to students and scholars in environmental studies, geography, ecology and conservation, cultural anthropology, and Latin American studies and history as well as anyone interested in Amazonia.
Scans of page 1-255
Introduction
Chapter 1 "Invading Indigenous Homelands"
Chapter 2 "Taming the Jungle"
Abstract:Paul Little chronicles centuries of territorial disputes in Amazonia. Examining a wide variety of social groups from an environmental and anthropological perspective, Little describes the factors that have created two unique biophysical and political environments at opposite ends of the Amazon River basin's rain forest.
Little makes a comparative study of the Aguarico region in eastern Ecuador (at the western upper edge of the rain forest) and the Jari region of Brazil (at its eastern lowland end) using four time frames to examine early European invasions of indigenous homelands, fortune-building attempts in Amazonia, conservation concerns in the tropical ecosystems; and disputes over territorial claims that arose during the 1990s. By interweaving his examination between the two regions within each time frame, Little effectively highlights how similar globalizing forces were locally appropriated to produce widely divergent environmental and political histories.
A large part of the study is given to the period beginning in the 1950s. Little outlines the contemporary struggles -- social, political, economic, and ecological -- arising in Amazonia. He also examines the frontier processes of ethnocide and ethnogenesis whereby the indigenous communities of the upper Amazon have retained some control over their lands, while in the lower Amazon traditional riverine communities strive for existence against increasing industrialization.
Thoroughly researched and examining issues ranging from resource exploitation and conservation to colonization, urbanization, and industrialization, Amazonia will appeal to students and scholars in environmental studies, geography, ecology and conservation, cultural anthropology, and Latin American studies and history as well as anyone interested in Amazonia.
INTRODUCTION
Approaching Amazonian Frontiers
This book chronicles, from the perspective of environmental anthro-
pology, centuries of territorial disputes among a wide variety of social
groups in Amazonia. Natural and social factors in Amazonia are so inex-
orably intertwined that writing a social history of the region requires the
recounting of some natural history, and vice versa. The growing fields of
environmental history and political ecology will serve as guideposts for
this study (see Little 1999). The notion of frontiers will be the organizing
motif for the environmental history, whereas a political ecology ap-
proach will be applied to territorial disputes. Before entering directly into
the history of these disputes in chapter 1, some brief theoretical and
methodological considerations are in order.
Amazonian Frontiers in Time and Space
Frontiers are commonly defined as sparsely populated geographical areas
peripheral to political and economic centers of power that experience
accelerated rates of demographic, agricultural, or technological change.
In analyzing frontiers within a framework of environmental history, we
must give special attention to the multiple ongoing interrelationships
between humans and nature over time, as well as to the often conflictive
relations among different human groups." In the literature on the fron-
tier, the diverse relationships among geographical space, the forces of
modernity, and the expansion of the nation-state are crucial.
Frontiers have been characterized as “the first wave of modernity to
break onto the shores of an uncharted heartland” (Watts 1992, 116).
Amazonia, however, does not fit well into this mold. Modernity has
broken onto its shores for centuries, and Amazonian peoples have re-
sponded in so many ways that Amazonian social history is a fragmented
quilt of time frames.? Frontier expansion in Amazonia is clearly tied to2 AMAZONIA
the forces of colonialism, imperialism, and mercantile capitalism; the
arrival of new social groups from diverse parts of the planet over many
centuries has generated a unique, long-term globalization process (Wolf
1982). While these processes have long been worldwide in scope, each
region of the world “globalizes” according to the specific mix of forces
that enter the region, the moment and rate at which they enter, and the
way they are locally absorbed or resisted (Mintz 1998).
Latin American writers have been keenly sensitive to the meanderings
and weavings of historical time on this subcontinent and offer an excel-
lent guide to deciphering the temporal dimension of Latin America. In
his short story “The Garden of Forking Paths,” Jorge Luis Borges evokes
n “infinite series of times, in a dizzily growing, ever spreading network
of divergent, convergent, and parallel times” (1962, 100), while Alejo
Carpentier’s novel The Lost Steps (1967) likewise conjures up the plurality
of times that exist side by side throughout Latin America. The social
sciences are finally beginning to incorporate these insights into their
analyses. Rowe and Schelling, in their study of the popular culture of
Latin America, affirm that “old, new and hybrid forms coexist, thus in-
validating those approaches which assume that there has been an evolu-
tion in which the old is superseded by the new. Latin America is charac-
terized by the co-existence of different histories” (1991, 18).3
The study of frontiers is often approached as a variant of Frederick
Jackson Turner's famous thesis (1920). While Turner’s notion of the U.S.
western frontier as a specific historical process that served as a founda-
tion for nation building is important, Latin American frontiers, and es
pecially Amazonian ones, offer so many historical, cultural, and geo-
graphical particularities that they must be understood in their own right
and not as yet another variation on the Turner theme. Long before the
Amazonian biome was divided up among nation-states, social groups
struggled to establish human territories in this vast rain forest in accor
dance with their own ways of appropriating geographical space. When
nation-building efforts did emerge in the nineteenth and twentieth cen-
turles, Amazonia was assaulted by seven different nation-states, each
with its own national policies and interests,
oc a nota single “tidal” frontier as in the U.S. West
surges or wave, Me EA spanning centuries and coming if
(Hennessy 197s i a “ to “cyclical booms in different commodities
srienie uate - 7 wave was based! in the new desires, knowledge
y , gies, and forms of social organization brought by so-Introduction 3
cial actors into Amazonia and was marked by the resources they ex-
tracted, the markets where they traded, and the biophysical effects they
produced. These social groups interacted with groups already there,
provoking changes in both, and continue to participate in ongoing his-
torical changes at local, regional, national, and world levels, thereby
generating a new frontier dynamic,
Each social group establishes its own demographic and spatial mo-
mentum, the force of which is greatly responsible for the degree of politi-
cal power achieved and the magnitude of environmental effects pro-
duced in the region. The notion of momentum implies floods and ebbs
in flow, a phenomenon common on Amazonian frontiers (Sawyer 1984).
On these frontiers social groups wax and wane: some groups simply dis-
appear (e.g., indigenous societies pushed into extinction); other groups
reach high peaks of power only to disappear as a social force later (e.g.,
the Jesuit missions, the rubber barons); still other groups experience vio-
lent transformations yet retain elements of their core character (e.g.,
caboclo and maroon societies); finally, some groups are able to maintain a
certain constancy over time (e.g., small, isolated indigenous societies).
Thus, in Amazonia, frontiers have not only been opened and closed
but reopened and reclosed again and again. The existence of frontiers in
the region is not a one-time occurrence, a definitive arrival of modernity,
but rather a perennial phenomenon spurred by the constant arrival of
ever-new social groups seeking ever-new resources and their subsequent
reterritorialization based upon differential ways of appropriating geo-
graphical space. This phenomenon has been going on for centuries, and
in recent decades it seems to be accelerating.
Spatially, the arrival of new groups in Amazonia has occurred in a
highly fragmented manner because of the vast size of this biome, the
widely dispersed locations of its multiple resources, and the limited
communication and transportation technologies used by many social
groups. Frontiers have often been established in distinct watersheds of
Amazonia where they have little direct contact with each other. Thus, I
do not speak of the Amazon frontier (cf. Hemming 1978) but rather of
regional Amazonian frontiers to signal the different locales and interrela-
tions generated by each frontier site. While regional frontier interactions
form partially structured systems, their volatile dynamic is constantly
modifying, and sometimes destroying, these established systems, caus-
ing regional boundaries to oscillate over time.
Regional analysis offers an alternative way of dividing up geograph-