Uma etnografia do projeto agrícola da lavoura mecanizada dos Haliti (Paresi)

Abstract

The Haliti (Paresi) indigenous people have maintained contact with non-indigenous society, according to historical records, since the beginning of the 18th century. Since then, several expansion frontiers have entered its territory, located in the center-west of the state of Mato Grosso, a Cerrado region called Chapada dos Parecis, which includes the municipalities of Campo Novo do Parecis, Tangará da Serra, Sapezal, Campos de Júlio, Barra do Bugres, Diamantino, Nova Maringá and Conquista D'Oeste. Some of them are among the largest producers of soy and other commodities in the state, cultivated in large-scale monocultures. Since the 1960s, the State has implemented colonization and infrastructure projects, such as the construction of BR-364, encouraging migration and the sale of land to individuals, to whom it provided financing and technical assistance for agricultural production, aiming at the economic development of the region. In this historical process, the relationship between the Haliti and various agents on these expansion frontiers became more and more intense. Some Haliti worked on farms and strengthened ties with businesspeople and politicians in the region, who have long had interest in the inclusion of Indigenous Lands in the agricultural market. The Haliti demanded access to goods and services, since they realized that, this way, they would be treated with more dignity which many of them perceived as an issue of financial conditions. The Haliti, together with Funai and the Federal Public Ministry, has begun a long negotiation process with private and public partners in the region for the installation of mechanized plantations in Indigenous Lands, which at the time they called agricultural partnerships. This process is described in this dissertation. Currently, the Haliti cultivate around eighteen thousand hectares of grains within the Indigenous Lands, entering the international commodities market, in the same system implemented in the surrounding areas. In this research I carry out an ethnography of the process of establishing the Haliti Mechanized Farming Agricultural Project, which is currently organized into cooperatives commanded by themselves. The reflection I propose is to think about this project within a market economy, but also within a logic of social organization of the Haliti people. The objective of this research is to analyze the Haliti Project as a social process, seeking elements to understand their motivations and interests and the context of public, indigenous and development policies carried out by the Brazilian State, which have changed over time, but which have elements of continuity that will be highlighted in this work.