Conjuring Property: Speculation and Environmental Futures in the Brazilian Amazon

124 Pages·2015·54.96 MB·English

by  Jeremy M. Campbell

CULTURE, PLACE, AND NATURE
Centered in anthropology, the Culture, Place, and Nature series encompasses new interdis-
ciplinary social Science research on environmental issues, focusing on the intersection of
culture, ecology, and politics in global, national, and local contexts. Contributors to the series
view environmental knowledge and issues from the multiple and often conflicting perspec-
tives of various cultural systems.
The Kuhls of Kangra: Community-Managed Nature Protests: The End of Ecology
Irrigation in the Western Himalaya, in Slovakia, by Edward Snajdr
by Mark Baker
Wild Sardinia: Indigeneity and the Global
The Earth’s Blanket: Traditional Teachings Dreamtimes of Environmentzlism,
for Sustainable Living, by Nancy Turner by Tracey Heatherington
Property and Politics in Sabah, Malaysia: Tahiti Beyond the Postcard: Power, Place,
Native Struggles over Land Rights, and Everyday Life, by Miriam Kahn
byAmityADoolittle
Forests ofldentity: Society, Ethnicity,
Border Landscapes: The Politics of Akha and Stereotypes in the Conga River Basin,
Land Use in China and Thailand, by Stephanie Rupp
THE BRAZILIAN AMAZON
,, by Janet C. Sturgeon
Enclosed: Conservation, Cattle,
From Enslavement to Environmentalism: and Commerce amongthe Q’eqchi’
Jeremy M. Campbell
Politics on a Southern African Frontier, Maya Lowlanders, by Liza Grandia
by David McDermott Hughes
Puer Tea:Ancient Caravans and
Ecological Nationalisms: Nature, Livelihood, Urban Chic, by Jinghong Zhang
and Identities in South Asia,
edited by Gunnel Cederlof Andean Waterways: Resource Politics in
and K. Sivaramakrishnan Highland Peru, by Mattias Borg Rasmussen
Tropics and the Traveling Gaze: India, Land- Conjuring Property: Speculation and Envi­
scape, and Science, 1800-1856, ronmental Futures in the Brazilian Amazon,
UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON PRESS
by David Arnold by Jeremy M. Campbell
Being and Place among the Tlingit, Forests Are Gold: Trees, People, and Environ­ Seattle & London
by Thomas F. Thornton mental Rule in Vietnam,
WsHtÊÊrk by Pamela D. Mc Elwee
Forest Guardians, Forest Destroyers:
The Politics of Environmental Knowledge
in Northern Thailand, by Tim Forsyth
and Andrew Walker
Printed and bound in the United States of America
Composed in Warnock Pro, a typeface designed by Robert Slimbach
19 18 17 16 15 S 4 3 2 1
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or
transmitted in any form or by any means, eiectronic or mechanical,
including photocopy, recording, or any Information storage or retrieval A critical knowledge of the evolution of the idea of
system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
property would embody, in some respects, the most remarkable
portion of the mental history of mankind.
UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON PRESS
www.washington.edu/uwpress Lewis H. Morgan, Ancient Society (1877)
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBUCATION DATA
Campbell, Jeremy M.
Conjuring property: speculation and environmental futures in the
Brazilian Amazon / Jeremy M. Campbell.
pages cm. — (Culture, place, and nature : studies in anthropology and
environment)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
isbn 978-0-295-99505-2 (hardback: alk. paper) —
ISBN 978-0-295-99529-8 (pbk.: alk. paper) 1. Land tenure—Amazon River
Region. 2. Land tenure—Brazil. 3. Land settlement—Amazon River Region.
4. Land settlement—Brazil. 5. Rural development—Amazon River Region. 1
6. Rural development—Brazil. 7. Environmental policy—Amazon River
Region. 8. Amazon River Region—Enivornmental conditions. I. Title.
HD499.A44C36 2015
333-3i8ii—dc23
2015021584
Unless otherwise noted, all photographs are by the author.
The paper used in this publication is acid-free and meets the minimum
requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences—
Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ansi Z39.48-1984.°°
1 CONTENTS
Ifi
Foreword by IC Sivaramakrishnan ix
I
Preface xi
Acknowledgments xv
Abbreviations xix
INTRODUCTION:
Real Estate in Wild Country 3
1 Frontier Capitalism and Figuring the State 25
2 The Labors.of Grilagem 59
3 Speculative Accumulation 93
4 Living Proleptically in the Environmental Era 125
5 Regularization and the Land Question 157
conclusion: On Property and Devastation 189
Notes 199
Glossary 211
Bibliography 213
Index 223
FOREWORD
The importance of this book is to be found both in its novel theoretical
contributions to the anthropology of futures, and in the ethnographic study
of land futures in Brazilian Amazonia. Land, broadly conceived, and the
property in it more specifically, is a topic of great contemporary interest;
internationally due to land grabs by sovereign wealth funds and powerful'
transnational corporations, the crisis in agriculture and the world food sys-
tem, and the rapid increase in land conversion for nonagricultural uses to
generate energy, build infrastructure, provide housing, and support service
industries.
At the risk of being somewhat dramatic, it is possible to suggest, though,
that much of the recently burgeoning scholarship on land grabs around
the world, especially in sub-Saharan Africa, Asia, and Latin America, pays
little attention to actual and imagined property rights. Scholars have rïgRfly”
caütioned from a variety of perspectives that the use of and profit from land
may have little to do with the exercise of property rights in any orderly sense.
But struggles over land, nevertheless, are also always struggles over property.
Jeremy Campbell is at pains to clarify that property in his usage is not merelyt
something held by record of ownership or right to use, but is crucïaliy an
idea, a connection between present struggje and future visjons oÊweÜness,
success, prosperity, and identification with communities of aspiration. It is
this essential set of points that animates a fine ethnographic examination of
the imagination, establishment, trade, and inventipn of property rights—and
property futures—provided in the pages of this.bo.ok.
^'^aTnpbT;ll^fgüësTHafasT^on|st.s,,big and small, rich or poor, juggle:
the definition and claiming of property, they actually produce the state; )Jl\
and market relations that in turn'shape the future of landed prop_erty\in! f
the Brazilian Amazon. It follows that these practices provide important
Windows into land deals, but much more as well—not least the making^
of identities, communities, government programs, and commercial activi-|
ties—and therefore merit an examination that does not end with dubbing
them odious, speculative, the nefarious working of frontier societies.
IX
preface • xm
XÜ • PEEFACE
account of the habits and frames of mind that colonists share as they carve
and rights to create projects they believe will be equally fair and attractive
villages out of the forest. Self-described as living on the frontier of civiliza-
to native peoples, migratory colonists, and far-off investors.
tion, colonists seem to pursue a "mongrel existence ... clustered around
A key element in the new development orthodoxy in Amazonia is
temporary landing strips and edging newly cut roads, [in towns] that each
property: specifically, itsjdeployment as a means to manage territorv and
day put out new tentacles” (Descola 1996,1). Improvised and makeshift,
incentivize rational behavior. In the fundamental debate over how natural
the lives colonists lead nevertheless incline toward permanence. Indeed,
resources should be managed or developed, Brazilian policy has turned
as property stabilizes in Amazonia, the implications for the forests and the
decisively toward privatization and away from collective (i.e., state) super-
traditional inhabitants of the region are dire. In colonists’ hands, property
vision of resources. This shift—which has been repeated on other resource
frontiers globally—figures private property as the intervention that will devastates habitats and occludes histories.
What follows is an ethnography of political economy in formation. In
stanch disputes over territory and runaway deforestation. The contem-
Amazonia, the land market to come is more important than the market as it
; porary development imaginary proposes an ownership society, in which
exists today, and the focus here is on how colonists prepare for the develop-
11 individuals trust in the integrity of property and are able to realize returns
ment intervention that emphasizes property regulariz_ation and Pfjvatiza.-
|} önthêir inivestments in environmental.g'oods and services. Property's use-
tion. Rather than a study of the land trade as such, this book follows how
: j fulness lies, in part, in how it can address the chronic (and utterly local)
colonists trade techniques for making the illicit acquisition ofland appear
|| problem of tenure ambiguity while also linking Amazonian territories to
legitimate to one another and to Brazilian authorities. Just as important,
broader (global)..streams_of investment and Systems of government.
colonists are participating in a robust trade in agrarian identities, shifting
The problem with the ownership model, however, is that property already
from “peasant” to “producer” or “environmentalist” and back again, depend-
exists in the Brazilian Amazon; a surfeit of it, in fact. Since the 1970S, waves
ing on the advantage gained. These improvised and illicit transactiqnsare
of colonists to the region have staked out positions on public lands, often one
shaping the property market to come, while also encouraging deforestation! |
on top of the other, resulting in a thicket of overlapping claims and counter-
and the greater concentration of wealth. This is not an optimistic story;*1!
claims. What’s more, colonists have devised their property claims largely in
however, describing how local actors anticipate and manipulate official plansl
the absence of the state agencies that would definitively recognize them. As a
might yet inform the crafting of more nimble socioeconomic policy. 1
i- result, throughout much of rural Amazonia, peasants and large landholders
| have improvised a vernacular System for holding, claiming, and selling lands
(jthat operates largely beyond official sanction. Highly volatile and prone
to outbursts of violence, this vernacular property system nevertheless fol-
lows a certain logic: through forging papers, grooming trails, squatting on
lands, leveraging debts, or working with confederates, colonists turn land
into a protocommodity awaiting recognition by the state and incorpora-
tion into the market. The state’s turn toward privatization thus converges
with the positions many colonists have adopted over the past forty years
with their speculative properties-in-wait. Not every claim is destined to be
honored, however, so colonists jockey for best position. Though Amazonia
represents the hope of agrarian reform for landless migrants in the region,
crafty speculators and rich land grabbers are busily subdividing lands in
anticipation of future regulations.
The culture of colonial settlements in Amazonia has received little atten-
tion in the anthropological literature. However, there is much value in an
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Despite the "lone wolf” reputation of the discipline, no anthropologist works
alone. As I researched this book, I was the benefïciary of the kind sup­
port of many colleagues and strangers. Since 2000, on my first visit to the
sleepy riverboat town of Santarém, I have spent over forty months learning
about territorial dynamics in western Para. The research that forms the
core of this study was conducted from 2006 through 2008 with support
from the Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research and the
Fulbright-Hays Research Abroad Program of the US Department of Educa-
tion. Additional support for fieldwork was provided by the Department of
Anthropology and the Center for Tropical Research in Ecology, Agriculture,
and Development (CenTREAD) at the University of California, Santa Cruz.
Continuing research from 2010 through 2014 was made possible through
the Foundation for the Promotion of Scholarship and Teaching at Roger
Williams University and the National Geographic Society’s Committee for
Research and Exploration. Fieldwork was conducted entirely in Portuguese,
and all translations of quoted conversations and common idioms are my
own.
I am grateful to have had many conversations over the years with a bril-
liant set of colleagues and friends at the University of California, Roger Wil­
liams University, and many other institutions. Each of these colleagues has
had a hand in shaping this volume, and I appreciate their generous support:
Ryan Adams, Renato Athias, Brenda Baletti, Christopher Ball, Eve Bratman,
Marisol de la Cadena, Andrew Canessa, Mike Cepek, Janet Chernela, James
Clifford, Rosé Cohen, Beth Conklin, Jonathan Echeverri, Juliet Erazo, Bill
Fisher, Susan Harding, Penelope Harvey, Adam Henne, Jeffrey Hoelle, Alf
Homborg, Jason Jacobs, Nick Kawa, Chris Kortright, Doreen Lee, Alejandro
Leguizamo, Dan Linger, Carlos Londono Sulkin, Patrick Lundh, Kristina
Lyons, Marybeth MacPhee, David McGrath, Cristina Mehrtens, Felipe
Milanez, Brent Millikan, Sean Mitchell, Tim Murphy, Jessica O’Reilly, Ben
Orlove, Jason Patch, Daniela Peluso, Autumn Quezada-Grant, Richard Reed,
Peter Richards, Dan Rosengren, Teal Rothschild, Steven Rubenstein, Carlos
XV
ABRREVIATIONS
BASA Banco da Amazönia, SA (Bank of Amazonia)
BNDES Banco Nacional do Desenvolvimento (Brazilian National Development
Bank)
CAR Cadastro Ambiental Rural (Rural Environmental Registry)
CNJ Conselho Nacional de Justi<;a (National Council of Justice)
CPT Comissao Pastoral da Terra (Pastoral Land Commission)
EMBRAPA Empresa Brasileira de Pesquisa Agropecudria (Brazilian Agricultural
Research Corporation)
FLONA Floresta Nacional (National Forest)
GTA Grupo de Trabalho Amazönico (Amazonian Working Group NetWork)
IBAMA Instituto Brasileiro do Meio Ambiente e dos Recursos Naturais Renoviveis
(Brazilian Institute of Environment and Renewable Natural Resources)
ICBS Instituto Cultural Boanerges Sena (Boanerges Sena Cultural Institute)
ICMBio Instituto Chico Mendes de Conservaqao da Biodiversidade (Chico Mendes
Institute of Biodiversity Conservation)
IMAZON Instituto do Homem e Meio Ambiente da Amazonia (Amazon Institute of
People and the Environment)
INCRA Instituto Nacional de Colonizapao e Reforma AgrSria (National Institute
of Colonization and Agrarian Reform)
IPAM Instituto de Pesquisa Ambiental da Amazónia (Amazon Environmental
Research Institute)
ISA Instituto Socioambiental (Socioenvironmental Institute)
ITERPA Instituto de Terras do Para (Pard Land Institute)
MDA Ministério do Desenvolvimento Agrdrio (Ministry of Agrarian
Development)
MMA Ministério do Meioambiente (Ministry of the Environment)
MP Medida Provisória (Provisional Measure)
MPF Ministério Püblico Federal (Federal Public Ministry) ■
MST Movimento dos Trabalhadores Sem Terra (Landless Werkers’ Movement)
xix
XX • ABBREVIATIONS
NAEA Nüdeo de Altos Estudos Amazönicos (Nucleus of Advanced
Amazonian Studies)
PAC Plano da Acelera?ao do Crescimento (Accelerated Growth Plan)
PARNA Parque Nacional (National Park)
PDS Projeto de Desenvolvimento Sustentével (Sustainable
Development Project)
PIN Plano de Integraqao Nacional (National Integration Plan) Conjuring Property
PT Partido dos Trabalhadores (Werkers’ Party)
R$ Reais, Brazü’s currency
REBIO Reserva Bioldgica (Biological Reserve)
RESEX Reserva Extrativista (Extractive Reserve)
SPR Sindicato dos Produtores Rurale (Rural Producers’ Association)
STR Sindicato dos Trabalhadores Rurais (Rural Workers' Union)
SUDAM Superintendência do Desenvolvimento da Amazönia
(Superintendency of Amazonian Development)
ZEE Zoneamento Ecológico-Económico (Ecological-Economic Zoning)
Introduction
Real Estate in Wild Country
To the best of his knowledge, the land that Zé currently occupies
along a dusty secondary road in the Brazilian Amazon has been bought
and sold five, maybe sixtimes. Most of these transactions have been between
parties who have never seen the parcel, using documents with incomplete
or inaccurate coordinates. Strictly speaking, all of these dealings have been
illegal, as definitive title to the lot has never been issued; in fact even the
size and shape of the parcel on which Zé (a pseudonym) resides are indefi-
nite. Furthermore, at least two additional property claims overlap portions
of Zé’s land. For his part, Zé did not purchase the lot when he migrated to
Amazonia from northeastern Brazil in the late 1990S. From the perspective
of the land’s distant "owners”—the investors in Sao Paulo or Rio de Janeiro
who paid for the lot despite its legal uncertainty—Zé is a squatter with no
claim to the property. However, it is unlikely that these owners are aware of
Zé, and it is very probable that they plan to sell the lot as soon as a profit can
be turned. Zé’s claim to the place, where he has built a clapboard farmhouse
and planted manioc and fruit trees, is effectively an act of homesteading,
protected by the Brazilian constitution.
So long as definitive title is elusive, these two worlds can cqexist: a world
of dodgy but lucrative transactions among absentee “owners.” and a world
in which a landless migrant stakes and defends a claim on the ground, amid
counterclaims and qtfïer tenure ambiguities. If, however, the question of
ownership were ever raised—as an increasing chorus of elites, peasants, and
government officials in Amazonia are demanding—this improvised system of
multiple, overlapping, and legally vague territorial claims would be replaced
by a singular and definitive tenure regime. The shape that regime would take,
and the kinds of claims that would ultimately win out, are anyone’s guess.
What is clear is that, as the Brazilian state embraces new development rheto-
rics of environmental sustainability and social empowerment in Amazonia,
property has emerged as a premiersitejor government intervention.
3