Questioning common conceptualizations of the “Amazonian frontier”
10.13125/americacritica/3944
L’ipotesi sostenuta in questo articolo è che negli studi urbani e sociali l’immagine comune dell'A-mazzonia come ‘frontiera’ dovrebbe essere radicalmente messa in discussione. Questa regione fa parte del sistema di scambi capitalistico da oltre cinque secoli e può essere meglio interpretata come una composizione di più ambienti, economie ed ecologie, le cui relazioni con poteri politici e socio-economici esterni sono molto meno fragili di quanto l'uso del concetto di frontiera implica. Metodologicamente, il discorso è costruito a partire da una rilettura critica degli studi socio-territoriali amazzonici ragionando su quei particolari elementi che insistono sull’utilizzo del concetto di frontiera. I risultati principali sono legati alla costruzione di una critica al senso alla fertilità del concetto frontiera nelle pratiche di governo e pianificazione territoriale nei territori amazzonici contemporanei.
Parole chave: frontiera; Amazzonia; coesistenza; processi socio-spaziali; colonialità
application/pdf
2532-6724
3944
1
en
urn:nbn:it:unica-25987
Antonio di Campli
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0
América Crítica
Questioning common conceptualizations of the “Amazonian frontier”
Text.Serial.Journal
https://ojs.unica.it/index.php/cisap
4
Articoli
2020-07-02
2019-12-14
2020-07-02
2020-07-02
53-58
1
Antonio di Campli
2020/07/02
10.13125/americacritica/3944
53
Politecnico di Torino, Italy
2532-6724
1
en
58
urn:nbn:it:unica-25987
Questioning common conceptualizations of the “Amazonian frontier”
https://ojs.unica.it/index.php/cisap/article/download/3944/pdf
4
                                        América Crítica 4(1), 53–58, 2020, ISSN: 2532-6724, doi: 10.13125/americacritica/3944




                          Questioning common conceptualizations
                                of the “Amazonian frontier”
                                                              Antonio di Campli1
                                                          1   Politecnico di Torino, Italy

                                                                Received: 14/12/2019
                                                                Accepted: 24/04/2020




 Abstract —The hypothesis supported by this paper is, in regional studies, that the common characterization of
Amazonia as a frontier should be deeply revised. This territory has been part of the capitalist world system form
more than five centuries and may be better be conceived and interpreted as a composition of enclave environments,
economies and ecologies, whose relationships to external political and socio-economic powers is deep-rooted and far
less fragile than the frontier usage implies. Methodologically, the analysis focuses on socio-territorial literature about
Amazonia and about Amazonian territorial constructions highlighting those many factors that seem to contribute to
the continued plausibility of the frontier notion. Principal results are related to the construction of a critique to the
sense and fertility of the concept of ‘frontier’ in territorial planning and administration practices in contemporary
Amazonian territories — frontier; Amazonia; coexistence; socio-spatial processes; coloniality.
 Resumen—L’ipotesi sostenuta in questo articolo è che negli studi urbani e sociali l’immagine comune dell’A-
mazzonia come ‘frontiera’ dovrebbe essere radicalmente messa in discussione. Questa regione fa parte del sistema di
scambi capitalistico da oltre cinque secoli e può essere meglio interpretata come una composizione di più ambienti,
economie ed ecologie, le cui relazioni con poteri politici e socio-economici esterni sono molto meno fragili di quanto
l’uso del concetto di frontiera implica. Metodologicamente, il discorso è costruito a partire da una rilettura critica
degli studi socio-territoriali amazzonici ragionando su quei particolari elementi che insistono sull’utilizzo del concetto
di frontiera. I risultati principali sono legati alla costruzione di una critica al senso alla fertilità del concetto frontiera
nelle pratiche di governo e pianificazione territoriale nei territori amazzonici contemporanei — frontiera; Amazzonia;
coesistenza; processi socio-spaziali; colonialità.


                                                                              ripheral geographic areas compared to the political-economic
                                                                              centers in which demographic or accelerated technological
I NTRODUCTION TO THE FRONTIER CONCEPT                                         processes are manifested. From a socio-economic point of
                                                                              view, a frontier is an area of abundant natural resources and
      his text is an attempt to question common conceptualiza-
T      tions of the “Amazonian frontier” in regional studies.
The Amazonian discourse is marked by many tensions, con-
                                                                              land relative to labour and capital, but such abundance relies
                                                                              on distinct place constructions, political economies or devel-
                                                                              opment ideologies (Tsing 2005). Schmink and Wood (1992:
flicts and rhetorics. In this complex field some pivotal ideas                14) define frontiers as a power field characterized by resis-
emerge that are specifically created and designed to shape                    tance and resource contestation. Frontiers have been char-
socio-spatial as well as spatial policies. In many Amazonian                  acterized as “pioneer fringe” (Bowman 1931) and the first
studies the notion of frontier seems to be the organizing theme               wave of modernity that penetrate the coast of unexplored land.
of environmental history, while the ecological-political ap-                  Amazonia, in any case, does not fall within this definition.
proach is usually applied to the analysis of territorial disputes             Modernity has reached its shores for centuries, and Amazo-
(Turner 1921; Ribeiro 1971; Anderson and O’Dowd 1999;                         nians have reacted in so many ways that Amazonian space
Brunet-Jailly 2005; Pullan 2011).                                             and society is a fragmented skirt of time frames. The defini-
     Frontiers are generally defined as sparsely populated pe-                tions of frontiers in the Amazon have been linked to colonial,
                                                                              imperial forces and capitalist economies. All have caused the
 Contact data: Antonio di Campli, antoniodicampli@gmail.com                   arrival and formation of several social groups that, as a whole,
54                                                                                                  América Crítica 4(1): 53–58


have defined the long-term globalization process.                 better interpreted as an assemblage or composition of differ-
    The Amazonian frontier first presented before expansion-      ent socio-spatial enclave environments, whose relationships
ary European societies in the 16th century looks similar to       to external political powers are more deep-rooted than the
what Wallerstein (1974) has referred to as an external arena,     frontier usage implies. The history of the Amazon is full
or perhaps more accurately a low-value external arena. Ama-       of examples of moving subjects: nomadism, group migra-
zonia represented a frontier, but one whose integration into      tion, long-distance trade, explorations, forced displacement,
the dynamics of expropriation was marginal. It was not a          colonization and labor migration (Hecht 2013, 2014; Nugent
frontier that particularly mattered. It was the World system,     2004).
but did not present itself that way. It had little role to play        In Amazonia several spatial production competing pro-
either in terms of labour or in terms of highly desirable ex-     cesses are superimposed and many social groups are involved
tractive resources, but it has periodically been inserted / re-   in a constitution / reconstitution process, as well as in nego-
inserted into the global trade since its Conquest (Hecht 2013;    tiations in a poorly-known biophysical context. The constant
2014). As other sources of key extractive / primary resources     flow of subjects and resources inside and outside the border
have disappeared (such as timber from previously cheaper          generates unstable dynamics, making the field of powers un-
sources in Southeast Asia and central Africa, or bauxite and      predictable and even chaotic. In regional studies, the equation
iron ore located close to fluvial transport), Amazonia has been   of frontier and Amazonia has some of the obsessive qualities
re-introduced as an alternative supplier (Browder and God-        of a fixed idea (Schmink and Wood 1984, 1992; Little 2001;
frey 1997). Earlier, in the same way, the Amazonian rubber        Pullan 2011). Its repeated invocation, at different scales, in
industry, abandoned in the face of Southeast Asian planta-        many branches of academic inquiry on this territory reflects
tion competition, was revived (somehow) during World War II       as much as an attitude towards a long marginalized territory
when Allied access to Asian supplies was restricted. The de-      (and its inhabitants) as a carefully thought-out model of re-
mographic collapse haphazard development of the Portuguese        gional disparity and uneven development. Amazonia and its
colony produced a fragmented social landscape. A condition        inhabitants (especially indígenas) carry a particular symbolic
easy to be interpreted as an institutional purpose by an out-     weight that is paradoxically both central to on-going nation-
sider. But in view of the fact that the cardinal frontier was     building projects and, at the same time, suggestive of a re-
more a product of Conquest than an original condition, the        mote exoticism. There is an expanded frontier metaphor that,
unknown qualities of the region and its peoples – those el-       while having real content, also contributes to a counterpro-
ements that in part justify the frontier characterization – are   ductive mythologizing that ignores socio-spatial changes in
too highly variable to sustain the adequacy of the term (Nu-      colonial and post-colonial Amazonia. It is possible to affirm
gent 1990; Schmink and Charles Wood 1992).                        that this term works as a familiar device for distancing Ama-
    In Amazonia there was not a single frontier similar to        zonia from particular ‘development processes’ characterizing
that of the USA but a plethora of ‘crystal frontiers’ (Fuentes    this region. In regional studies, dominated by developmental-
1995), developed through centuries linked to the extraction       ist or ecological protection issues, where attention is typically
of different types of raw materials. Each ‘wave’ was based        focused on highly circumscribed object of analysis (a river or
on new desires, knowledge, systems, technologies, forms of        forest with high ecological values or a set of dispersed urban
social organization and incorporation of new actors that inter-   settlements or mining areas), the notion of frontier continues
acted with groups that were already there (Pullan 2011; Little    to maintain significant utility because of the seemingly sharp
2001). Each group had its own space and ecological produc-        demarcation of discrete socio-spatial worlds and the conse-
tion strategies. Flows and flows back are common phenomena        quent absence of unifying or different conceptual framework
in Amazonia. It is a sea more than a land. In these movements     for Amazonian territories and societies (Jackson 1975; Over-
some social groups have disappeared, others have affirmed,        ing 1981; Viveiros de Castro 1996). From this perspective
fallen, fled. In Amazonia frontiers were not only open and        as well, the continuous accommodation of what is regularly
closed, but they were constantly reopened and closed again.       portrayed as an inexorable and sparsely provisioned natural
This is a perennial phenomenon marked by the arrival of new       realm is a constant reminder of the presence of an implaca-
actors in search of new resources and with the consequent re-     ble frontier. From a socio-spatial perspective, frontiers have
territorialization. A secular phenomenon which is more in-        come and gone, and the degree to which the frontier concept
tense than ever nowadays (Schmink and Wood 1984; Little           is perspective-dependent in an ontological sense is overtaken
2001).                                                            by a more prosaic cui bono / material interest-group sense.
                                                                       In terms of the extraction of primary resources, for in-
T HE FREQUENT NOTION OF A MAZONIA AS A                            stance, Amazonian frontiers have appeared, disappeared and
PRISTINE SPACE AND THE EXPANSION OF THE                           reinvented over hundreds of years in response to shifts in
                                                                  global availability of prosaic resources. These kind of fron-
“ FRONTIER ”                                                      tiers are less a matter of local cultures construction, although
In regional studies, the common characterization of the whole     they no doubt impinge on many different cultural perspec-
hydrographic basin of the Amazon river as a frontier should       tives, than stipulations of global economic interests for which
be deeply questioned. This territory has been part of the cap-    Amazonia provides certain strategic possibilities. Yet the
italist world system for more than five centuries and may be      widespread usage of the frontier metaphor in regional stud-
Antonio di Campli, Question common conceptualizations                                                                                            55


ies tends to enforce a generic notion of the term. One con-                      Finally, the ideological maintenance of a permanent Ama-
sequence of that usage is that the same term in reference to                     zonian frontier has been useful for the point of view of a
diverse phenomena obscures what has actually taken place                         predatory state’s offers of free land and resources to in-
in Amazonia in favor of fragmented perspectivism. Nev-                           terests willing to ‘colonize’ on behalf of the nation (Fow-
ertheless many Amazonian existing indigenous populations                         eraker 1981; Velho 1972; De Souza Martins 2002)(Brown et
may reflect diverse socio-cultural realities and, therefore, live                al. 1994). Bunker’s (1985) analysis of extractive activities de-
within their own histories. There has been a transformative                      scribes the seeming functionality of the frontier concept as
colonial history that has shaped, in still poorly understood                     the expression of a dysfunctional state, and the more recent
ways, their contemporary conditions of existence. Yet the per-                   book by Balick and Posey (2006) illustrates that the ubiquity
sistent frontier notion grants priority to spatial arrangements                  of the frontier concept offers little in terms of illustrating the
and dispositions as though these provided adequate mapping                       trajectories within the intensified research climate of the past
(Bryan 2012; Pinedo 2019).                                                       thirty years from the vantage point of a number of disciplines.
    A clear illustration of how the frontier/spatial perspec-                    These various frontier associations are well represented in lit-
tive occludes the temporal one is provided in the grow-                          erature, many seen as expressions of an overarching geophys-
ing literature on anthropogenic in Amazonian pre-history                         ical rationale in a region in which even the territorial referent
(Balée 1994). The continued force/plausibility of the frontier                   is complicated by the uncertain relationships between water
metaphor, however, is undeniable. Even in the recent past,                       and land. An example is the contrast between varzea, a sea-
since the inception of the Manta-Manaus corridor, for exam-                      sonal floodplain forest inundated by whitewater rivers, and
ple, and with the extensively documented radical transforma-                     terra firme or ‘firm earth’, i.e., a kind of rainforest that is not
tion of social and biological landscapes in the region, there                    inundated by flooded rivers. These notions or connotations
has hardly been a lessening of the overall characterization of                   of frontier seem to take priority over more precise historical
the “frontier green hell” (Martínez-Pinzón and Uriarte 2019;                     contextualization, but at the same time they harbor the impli-
Slater 2002).1                                                                   cation of impeding, final defeat or breaching of the frontier
    This misalignment of a politically key notion of fron-                       boundaries. The arena in which that apocalyptic take is most
tier (which underscores the importance of a spatial frontier                     realistic is with respect to indigenous people. Yet adherence
to the viability of indigenous societies), and a methodolog-                     to a deferred notion of the final breaching of the insulating
ical frontier (that is one that signifies the particular features                frontier obscures the extent to which that frontier has already
of the dominant spatial mode of discourse), is reflected in                      been breached. It is in this respect that the notion of enclave
the marginal position that non-indigenous, rural Amazonians                      maintains the explanatory force of frontier, but also draws at-
(campesinos, mestizos, kinds of typological status rather than                   tention to the sequence of selective incorporations of the re-
‘cultures’) maintain (Gruzinski 2007; Stolcke 2008). They                        gion. This is most marked in relation to some specific activ-
are not seen as being on the frontier, but as literally constitut-               ities associated with particular Amazonian products, mainly
ing the frontier, i.e., eroding the barriers between ‘intact’, at-               extractive, but also agricultural and pastoral. A case in point
omized forest societies and a set of encroaching urban actors,                   would be the ‘gold rush’ in the 1980s (Cleary 1990), widely
forces and imageries (Larsen 2005). An analysis of the lit-                      depicted as highly reminiscent of the frontier of California a
erature concerning Amazonian territorial constructions high-                     century earlier, but with very specific localized efforts.
lights many factors that seem to contribute to the continued                         The conceptual, cultural frontiers that have been seen in
plausibility of the frontier notion, although the major one is                   Ecuador or Brazil from both the green hell (inferno verde)
the insistent portrayal of Amazonia as a passive natural space                   and piranhalandia of Amazonia have been repeatedly cloned.
acted upon, brought to life by non-Amazonians: conquista-                        The late twentieth century has also seen such cloned frontiers
dores, missionaries, the state, foreign capital, NGOs. This                      in the successive appearance of the foodstuff frontier (Velho
active/passive contrast is concordant with modernization im-                     1972), the cattle frontier (Foweraker 1981; Hecht and Cock-
petuses according to which Amazonia was to be ‘integrated’.                      burn 1989), and the soya frontier not to mention timber, iron,
    The naturalistic associations of Amazonia, widely famil-                     bauxite, gold, etc. These are ‘commodity frontiers’ that have
iar since the Victorian era, when, for example, Arthur Co-                       arisen not because they represent newly discovered frontier-
nan Doyle’s Lost World (1912) defined the image of the neo-                      resources, but because they have achieved prominence be-
tropical frontier, for popular consumptions, have long offered                   cause of the decline or exhaustion of analogous resources
self-serving opportunities for bringing culture and civilization                 elsewhere in the tropical or semi-tropical world (e.g. declin-
to the benighted. Within Ecuador and Peru in particular, the                     ing timber resources in Central Africa and Southeast Asia).
ambition for political hegemony in the Amazonian region has                          The frontier discourse misrepresents the vulnerability of
exploited the threat of other nations’ assault in ‘the frontier’.                Amazonia by portraying these resources as intrinsic to dis-
                                                                                 covery in the region as opposed to their availability as a func-
1   Green Hell and Eldorado have constructed Amazonia as the place of the        tion of comparative advantage and weak-non-existent regu-
    exceptional. The term Green Hell has been popularized by the the Brazilian   lation. If any frontier term is correct it is ‘frontier of legal
    writer Alberto Rangel, who described to the Amazon as a hostile jungle in    non-enforcement’.
    a 1908 collection of stories entitled Inferno Verde. This image reappeared
    in a book on conservation by Goodland and Irwin titled Amazon Jungle:
    Green Hell to Red Desert published in 1975.
56                                                                                                    América Crítica 4(1): 53–58


C RITIQUE OF ROMANTICIST                  /   NATURALISTIC           (Lisansky 1990). But the frontier in all such work co-exists
USE                                                                  with another kind of peasant society that shares little of that
                                                                     frontier characterization or orientation (see Harris 2000; Nu-
There is a strong association between the Amazonian frontier         gent 1993) where instead a historical rather than spatial dy-
orthodoxy and arguments expressed in Meggers’ Amazonia:              namic seems to prevail.
Man and Culture in a Counterfeit Paradise (1971). In the first
instance there is a similarity in regional characterization. Sec-    C ONCLUSION
ondly, there is the implication of permanence of the frontier
state of affairs. Thirdly, there is the implication that the char-   Among the consequences of an overly generous metaphorical
acterization, whether frontier or false paradise, is an original     reading of the frontier notion in Amazonia there is a system-
condition. These three elements have been substantially mod-         atic detracting of Amazonian societies (Nugent 2009; Hecht
ified since the publication of that book, but there is an impla-     and Cockburn 1989). Indigenous peoples are often portrayed
cability in the position strongly expressed in replies to various    as hidden by the frontier, when maybe, it is possible to say
revisionist suggestions. From within the cultural ecological         they are hiding from the frontier in the sense that adjacency
strand within which Meggers herself is strongly positioned,          to white society strongly correlates with conflicts (Hess and
there is much greater insight into the diversity of Amazonia         Da Matta 1995). The frontier metaphor has aided in deny-
subregions. In general, a strong case for greater heterogene-        ing the historical depth of non-indigenous peoples and the in-
ity and differentiation within the ‘humid neo-tropical forest’       tegrity of the various mestizo societies of the area. Whereas
designation 1993 can be made.                                        indigenous are typically represented as, in principle, in har-
    The permanence of the rigidities of ‘counterfeit paradise’       mony with the great Amazonian biosphere, peasants are typi-
and its long tenure have both been queried by diverse kinds of       cally regarded as invaders. Another untoward consequence of
work (demography, historiography, archaeology) on the re-            the overwhelming frontier characterization is the seemingly
gion (e.g. Denevan 1972; Lathrap 1970; Heckenberger 2005;            affinity Amazonia is projected as having for extractivist ac-
Porro 1996; Roosevelt 1989). One major topic to which at-            tivities. Some examples are the advance of the soya industry
tention is drawn in this work is the fact that many of the fron-     as the most recent, and by many reckonings lethal, addition
tier aspects of the region are not natural givens, but are social    to extensive agro-pastoral, timber-felling, fishing and mining
products. Not least among these is the demographic collapse          activities (Schmink et al. 2019; Espinosa 2013). The widely
that took place in the very early phases of the construction of      recorded and acknowledged illegality of much Amazonian in-
colonial society, such that the frontier aspects long assumed to     dustry is seen as a typical and hard to mitigate consequence of
be manifestations of an original condition in Amazonia may           the region’s frontier status. The active space of deregulation
better reflect the thoroughness of the social and biological         and weak legal enforcement is not intrinsic to Amazonia, but
assault on the region and its peoples. In keeping with the           that impression is certainly reinforced by the regular invoca-
frontier motif that dominates Amazonian historiography, the          tion of frontier.
rubber industry is typically depicted as ‘boom’, an episodic             The dominance of frontier metaphors in part represents
event, yet while toward the end of the 19th century there was        the success of some selective naturalistic readings of tropi-
an intensification of the rubber trade (monumentalized in the        cal socio-spatial realities. The contingencies of many aspects
Opera House in Manaus). The rubber industry actually lasted          of social existence may become self-reproducing pathologies
for about one hundred years. It brought the development of           when territorial planning policies are premised on the notion
extensive commercial and transport links within the region           that the role of the state is to ‘tame’ the frontier. Conditions
with it significant urbanization and integration into advanced       – as in the case of the Manta-Manaus corridor program – that
technological sectors of global economy, all this enabling the       create frontiers often emerge when none existed beforehand.
dispersion of many immigrants from other regions of Brazil           What has happened since has been the creation of many new
(Becker 2013; Risério 2012).                                         forms of frontier, but these are far less the spatial interface
    What these and other examples illustrate is the frailty of       of a marginal regional and encroaching state than specific en-
an attempted pan-regional, adequate frontier characterization.       clave developments which, in their aftermath, produce resid-
Instead, they draw attention to the long-standing existence of       ual frontiers, degraded bio-social spaces. A tradition of repre-
a non-uniform social topography in which various kinds of so-        senting Amazonian peoples as frontier-occupiers or definers
cieties are dominated in number and type by disenfranchised          has the effect of defining them as contingent and largely sub-
peasantries, much more identifiable with post-frontier soci-         ject to the backdrop against which they are cast. While there
eties although unrecognized as such in terms of innovation.          can be little disputing over the effects of various kinds of ex-
Amazonia was already articulated as a frontier regardless of         ternalities in shaping the lives of modern Amazonians, the
how it was perceived on the ground by ‘frontier Amazoni-             contingency of the frontier characterization is contradicted by
ans’. In, particular, in the social studies literature focused on    the sistematicity of the forces that have acted upon them since
the analysis of non-indigenous Amazonians there has been an          the colonial era. The relationship between colonizer and col-
undeniable frontier aspect. This is well illustrated in the early    onized has not been just a spatial one, and to summarize it as
work of Moran 1981, for example, and is also found in a lit-         such – on the frontier – distorts what is actually known from
erature derived from a sort of ‘peasant strategies’ approach         the historical and ethnographic record.
Antonio di Campli, Question common conceptualizations                                                                        57


ACKNOWLEDGMENT                                                    Foweraker, Joe. 1981. Struggle for the land. Cambridge:
                                                                      Cambridge University Press.
None.
                                                                  Fuentes, Carlos. 1995. La frontera de cristal. Madrid:
R EFERENCES                                                           Alfaguara.
                                                                  Goodland, Robert, and Howard Irwin. 1975. Amazon jungle:
Anderson, James, and Liam O’Dowd. 1999. “Borders, bor-
                                                                      Green Hell to Red Desert. Amsterdam: Elsevier Scien-
    der regions and territoriality: Contradictory meanings,
                                                                      tific Publishing.
    changing significance.” Regional Studies 33 (7): 593–
    604. doi:10.1080/00343409950078648.                           Gruzinski, Serge. 2007. El pensamiento mestizo. Cultura
                                                                      amerindia y civilización del Renacimiento. Barcelona:
Balée, William. 1994. Footprints of the forest: Ka’apor eth-
                                                                      Paidós.
    nobotany - The historical ecology of plant utilization by
    an Amazonian people. New York: Columbia University            Harris, Mark. 2000. Life on the Amazon: The anthropology of
    Press.                                                             a Brazilian peasant village. Oxford: Oxford University
                                                                       Press.
Balick, Malick, and Darrell Posey, eds. 2006. Human impacts
     on the Amazon. New York: Columbia University Press.          Hecht, Susanna B. 2013. The scramble for the Amazon and
                                                                      the “Lost Paradise” of Euclides Da Cunha. Chicago:
Becker, Berta. 2013. A urbe Amazônida: Entre a flo-resta e a
                                                                      Chicago University Press.
    cidade. Rio de Janeiro: Garamond.
                                                                  Hecht, Susanna B. 2014. The social lives of forests: Past,
Bowman, Isaiah. 1931. The pioneer fringe. New York: Amer-
                                                                      present, and future of woodland resurgence. Edited by
   ican Geographical Society.
                                                                      Susanna B. Hecht. Chicago: Chicago University Press.
Browder, John O., and Brian J. Godfrey. 1997. Rainforest
                                                                  Hecht, Susanna B., and Alexander Cockburn. 1989. Fate of
    cities: Urbanization, development and globalization of
                                                                      the forest: Developers, destroyers and defenders of the
    the Brazilian Amazon. New York: Columbia University
                                                                      Amazon. London: Verso.
    Press.
                                                                  Heckenberger, Michael. 2005. The Ecology of power: Cul-
Brown, Larry, Scott Digiacinto, Randy Smith, and Rodrigo
                                                                      ture, place and personhood in the Southern Amazon. AD
    Sierra. 1994. “Frameworks of urban system evolu-tion in
                                                                      1000-2000. London: Routledge.
    frontier settings and the Ecuador Amazon.” Geography
    Research Forum, no. 14: 72–96.                                Hess, Davis, and Roberto Da Matta, eds. 1995. The Brazilian
                                                                      puzzle: Culture on the borderlands of the Western world.
Brunet-Jailly, Emmanuel. 2005. “Theorizing borders: An in-
                                                                      New York: Columbia University Press.
    terdisciplinary perspective.” Geopolitics 10 (4): 633–
    649. doi:10.1080/14650040500318449.                           Jackson, Jean. 1975. “Recent ethnography of indigenous
                                                                       northern lowland South America.” Annual Review of An-
Bryan, Joe. 2012. “Rethinking territory: Social justice and ne-
                                                                       thropology 4 (1): 307–340. doi:10.1146/annurev.an.04.
    oliberalism in Latin America’s territorial turn.” Geog-
                                                                       100175.001515.
    raphy Compass 6 (4): 215–226. doi:10 . 1111 / j . 1749 -
    8198.2012.00480.x.                                            Larsen, Peter. 2005. Post-frontier resource governance. In-
                                                                       digenous rights, extraction and conservation in the Pe-
Bunker, Stephen. 1985. Underdeveloping the Amazon. Ex-
                                                                       ruvian Amazon. London: Palgrave Macmillan.
    traction, unequal exchange, and the failure of the mod-
    ern state. Chicago: University of Illinois Press.             Lathrap, Donald. 1970. The upper Amazon. New York:
                                                                       Preaeger.
Cleary, David. 1990. Anatomy of the Amazon Gold Rush.
     London: Macmillan.                                           Lisansky, Judith. 1990. Migrants to Amazonia: Spontaneous
                                                                       colonization in the Brazilian frontier. Boulder: Westview
De Souza Martins, José. 2002. “Representing the peasantry?
                                                                       Press.
    Struggles for/about land in Brazil.” Journal of Peasant
    Studies 29 (3-4): 300–335. doi:10.1080/0306615041233          Little, Paul. 2001. Amazonia: Territorial struggles on peren-
    1311099.                                                            nial frontiers. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University
                                                                        Press.
Denevan, William. 1972. The native populations of America,
    1492. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press.                 Martínez-Pinzón, Felipe, and Javier Uriarte, eds. 2019. Inti-
                                                                      mate frontiers: A literary geography of the Amazon. Liv-
Doyle, Arthur Conan. 1912. The lost world. London: Hodder /
                                                                      erpool: Liverpool University Press.
    Staughton.
                                                                  Meggers, Betty. 1971. Amazonia: Man and culture in a coun-
Espinosa, Cristina. 2013. “The riddle of leaving the oil in
                                                                     terfeit paradise. Chicago: Aldine.
    the soil-ecuador’s yasuní-ITT project from a discourse
    perspective.” Forest Policy and Economics 36:27–36.           Moran, Emilio. 1981. Developing the Amazon. Bloomington:
    doi:10.1016/j.forpol.2012.07.012.                                 University of Indiana Press.
58                                                                                              América Crítica 4(1): 53–58


Moran, Emilio. 1993. Through Amazonian eyes. Iowa City:              ‘green’ frontiers in the Amazon? A long-term analysis
    University of Iowa Press.                                        of São Félix do Xingu, Brazil.” The Journal of Peasant
Nugent, Stephen. 1990. Big mouth. The Amazon speaks. Lon-            Studies 46 (2): 377–399. doi:10.1080/03066150.2017.
    don: Fourth Estate.                                              1381841.

Nugent, Stephen. 1993. Amazonian caboclo society: An essay      Schmink, Marianne, and Charles Wood. 1992. Contested
    on invisibility and peasant economy. Oxford: Berg.              frontiers in Amazonia. New York: Columbia University
                                                                    Press.
Nugent, Stephen. 2009. Indigenism and cultural authenticity
    in Brazilian Amazonia. London: Goldsmiths College.          Schmink, Marianne, and Charles. Wood. 1984. Frontier ex-
                                                                    pansion in Amazonia. Gainesville: University of Florida
Nugent, Stephen, and Mark Harris, eds. 2004. Some other             Press.
    Amazonians: Perspectives on modern Amazonia. Lon-
    don: Institute for the Study of the Americas.               Slater, Candace. 2002. Entangled edens: Visions of the Ama-
                                                                     zon. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Overing, Joanna. 1981. “Amazonian Anthropology.” Journal
    of Latin American Studies 13 (1): 151–164. doi:10.1017/     Stolcke, Verena. 2008. “Los mestizos no nacen, se hacen.”
    S0022216X00006209.                                               In Identidades ambivalentes en América Latina (Sig-
                                                                     los XVI–XXI), edited by Verena Stolcke and Alexandre
Pinedo, Danny. 2019. “Trazando fronteras: La producción de           Coello de la Rosa, 14–51. Barcelona: Ediciones Bel-
    territorios en la Amazonía peruana.” Bulletin de l ’In-          laterra.
    stitut Français d’Études Andines 48 (1): 21–37. doi:10.     Tsing, Anna Lowenhaupt. 2005. Friction: An Ethnography
    4000/bifea.10360.                                                of Global Connection. Princeton: Princeton University
Porro, Antonio. 1996. O povo das águas: Ensaios de etno-             Press.
     história amazônica. Petrópolis: Vozes.                     Turner, Frederick Jackson. 1921. The significance of the fron-
Pullan, Wendy. 2011. “Frontier urbanism: The periphery at           tier in American history. New York: Henry Holt.
     the centre of contested cities.” Journal of Architecture   Velho, Otávio Guilherme. 1972. Frentes de expansão e estru-
     16 (1): 15–35. doi:10.1080/13602365.2011.546999.               tura agrária. Rio de Janeiro: Zahar.
Ribeiro, Darcy. 1971. Fronteras indígenas de la civilización.   Viveiros de Castro, Eduardo. 1996. “Images of nature and
    México: Siglo Veintiuno Editores.                                society in Amazonian Ethnology.” Annual Review of
Risério, Antonio. 2012. A cidade no Brasil. São Paulo: Edi-          Anthropology 25 (1): 179–200. doi:10 . 1146 / annurev .
     tora 34.                                                        anthro.25.1.179.
Roosevelt, Anna. 1989. “Resource management on Amazo-           Wallerstein, Immanuel. 1974. The modern World System, vol.
    nia before conquest: Beyond ethnographic projection.”           1. New York: Academic Press.
    Advances in Economic Botany, no. 7: 30–62.
Schmink, Marianne, Jeffrey Hoelle, Carlos Valério A. Gomes,
    and Gregory M. Thaler. 2019. “From contested to
