Waters of work and waters of business: Extrativism and territorial conflicts

Abstract

This article aims to analyze the territorialization process of of extractive economic activities integrated between the coasts and hinterlands of the Northeast, in order to understand the role played by the territorial control of waters in the context of conflicts in the agrarian space. Based on bibliographical and documentary research, and on the accomplishment of field activities in productive spaces and peasant and traditional communities, we verified that the construction of an artificial lake geography of waters that forms a controlled route to the Jaguaribe River in Ceará, has repercussions on the reproduction of nature in an exceptional regime that imposes, through violence, hydro-intensive extractive circuits. The way in which the hinterlands of the Northeast are inserted into globalized circuits for the recovery of financial capital imposes an abundance and scarcity of water in a territorial dynamic marked by an intense agrarian issue. The political realization of an extractive economy reduces the articulation power of community representation instances through the incorporation of peasant or quilombola work into water confinement structures. The reduction of the waters of the Jaguaribe River in coastal regions has been the method of producing new enclosures in areas of dead mangroves, the captivity of the waters – a narrow strip surrounded by water – serves to raise shrimp in communities that had their common spaces surrounded by wind farms. The economic instability of the irrigated fruit growing market requires a permanent process of expansion of cultivation areas, which has led to the incorporation of aquifers as differential income and constant capital. Peasant and traditional communities redefined their actions to contest this logic, positioning themselves as producers of a critique of development.