O poder na fronteira : hegemonia, conflitos e cultura no norte de Mato Grosso

Abstract

The Brazilian state from the 1970 has fostered the occupation of northern Mato-Grosso, based on the concession of public tax incentives, mainly to the private companies of settling, who had attracted thousands of people to that region as an alternative to the social conflicts that had occurred in the South and Southeast Brazil. The policy that guided the economic border advancement in Mato Grosso, had been structured to enable its integration with the domestic market and productive structures of accumulation of capital. The private colonization process expanded the expropriation and domination of northern Mato Grosso, with maintenance of capitalist relations of production on a fast track, through the exploitation of natural resources and the social control of workers. With the advancement of the agricultural frontier, some entrepreneurs favored by public tax incentives have accumulated capital in activities such as timber and agricultural sector by this directing politically the northern Mato Grosso. Through this thesis we have sustained the argument that the mechanisms governing the relations of power in the region of border, had been built in the inter-relationship between agencies and officials from a network of relationships and alliances with regional elite, trading systems and reciprocities, using the symbolic power as a strategy of social control and domination. The dominant regional class has built a hegemony based on values, practices and ideology of class or fraction of class, which organize themselves through organic intellectuals, forms of consensus among other fractions, disseminating the myth of progress, civilization, modern and developed agriculture, 'naturalizing' social conflicts and the struggle for land in the State. We have studied the question of the border in northern Mato Grosso-axis of Federal Highway (BR-163) with emphasis on Sinop, the main city in the region. We have reflected about political issues, social and economic changes. We have drawn these relations within civil and political society, highlighting the role of social agencies and staff, reviewed by the prospect of Social History.