Political Mediation on the Pioneer Frontier: The Role of Law, Bureaucracy and Violence on the Amazon Region of Brazil

The principal objective of this thesis was to analyse the intervention of State institutions to prevent the occurrence of potential conflicts or to contain and resolve actual disputes in the contemporary frontier in Amazonia, more precisely, in the River Peixoto de Azevedo Valley in northern Mato Grosso. Both secondary and primary sources have been used, the bulk of the empirical case-material having been gathered during a field trip to Brazil in 1986. This study was organised in two distinct but interrelated parts. While the first was more concerned with an historical analysis of the role of the State bureaucracy in the expansion of the pioneer frontier in Brazil after 1930, the second dealt with characteristic forms of the military regime's mediation in northern Mato Grosso. By uncovering the specific contents of particular forms of State mediation and disclosing conflicting actions of the principal federal agencies operating in northern Mato Grosso, namely, INCRA and DNPM, the contradictory nature of the non-monolithic State in Brazil was demonstrated. The large-scale deployment of State institutions and the spectacular incidence of social conflicts on the frontier have been analysed as indicating that State promotion of economic accumulation and mediation of land disputes do occur in the very context of resistance to expropriation and eviction of Indians, squatters, colonists, small holders and prospectors. Finally, a brief analysis of the agrarian reform issue suggested that the contents of characteristic forms of State mediation under the civilian government of the Nova República have not changed substantially, a comparative analysis of which offers a potential field of research. The de-obstruction of existing channels of mediation and the institution of new ones with a marked democratic character are a matter not to be left to State institutions, it was suggested, as these are instead the achievements of political struggle. Political mediation has been used as a central analytical concept throughout this thesis, and actual forms of State mediation were explained historically in the context of the advancement of the contemporary frontier. As such, mediation is conceptualised as a three-cornered relationship involving the dominant classes, the subordinated classes, and the State; mediation is thus essentially political in the sense of achieving political domination.