Frontier Urbanization in the Brazilian Amazon: Implications for Regional Development Author(s): Brian J. Godfrey and John O.

Browder Source: Luso-Brazilian Review, Vol. 27, No. 2 (Winter, 1990), pp. 127-129 Published by: University of Wisconsin Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3513358 . Accessed: 30/03/2011 07:40
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Conference Report
Frontier Braziliarl for Regional Urbanization Amazon: in the Implications

Development

Brian J. Godbey and John 0. Browder

The Amazon Basin, particularly the Brazilian portion, constitutes one of the world's last great settlement frontiers. The dramatic changes now occurring in the vast region have attracted widespread attention, both from the popular press and from scholars concerned with tropical ecology and regional development. The main sources of preoccupation have been the Amazon's rapid rate of deforestation and the intense social conflict between native peoples, agricultural migrants, cattle ranchers, miners, and large firms. The region's rapid urbanization, though has received only scant attention. While the Brazilian government has massive investment in land development schemes like the Transamazon Highway, cattle ranches, hydroelectric projects, and timber and mining projects, the Amazon's inland settlement frontier has become steadily more urbanized. In 1980, for the first time, over half of the population in the Brazilian Amazon lived in urban areas (defined as settlements with more than 2,000 inhabitants). While still substantially below the urban proportion of the total Brazilian population, 67 percent in 1980, urbanization has been proceeding at a much faster pace in Amazonia--nearly 11 percent per year. The rapid growth of scores of large Amazonian "boom towns," often peopled by tens of thousands of migrants in the course of a few years, raises vexing problems for conventional urban and regional development theory. Because this important contemporary phenomenon had not yet been systematically analyzed, Brian J. Godfrey of Vassar College and John 0. Browder of Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University organized a session on it at the last Annual Meeting of the Association of American Geographers (M G), held in Baltimore, Maryland, March 19-22, 1989. This session, entitled '|Frontier Urbanization in the Brazilian Amazon: Implications for Regional Development," was jointly sponsored by the Urban Geography and Latin Americanist Geographers specialty groups of the AAG. Papers were presented by Godfrey and Browder, as well as by Jacquelyn Chase of the University of California, Los Angeles, and by Marianne Schmink and Charles H. Wood of the University of Florida, Gainesville. Stephen Bunker of the University of Wisconsin served as discussant for the session papers. Godfrey's paper focused on "Frontier Settlement and the Emerging Urban Hierarchy of Eastern Amazonia," evaluating the
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Para, town in southeastern frontier evolution of Xinguara--a resource-rich the into leading roads of located at the juncture system of towns light of links to the regional Xinguregion--in complexes of production the on concentrated Godfrey andcities. part of the large a employ which and cattle, timber, agriculture, for local basis the of much provide and town's population proletarianizasteady a noted Within the town, Godfrey services. Although most of the small timber tion of the local labor force. dominated the local economy have departed, mills that initially several more highly nearby mahogany stocks, of depletion with the years, in recent opened have plywood operations capitalized was which Xinguara, afield. depending on timber from farther is now on a 1970s, late the in frontier" situated on a "resource of rural depopulation the beginnings experiencing "relic frontier" (countya municipio become has town the as and urban primacy, economically tied increasingly also center and is level) service location Although the town's strategic centers. to more distant growth future survival, its ensures road network in the regional are activities economic new will depend in large part on whether that have activities resource-extractive the found to replace dominated the local economy up to now. of the Road: Changes The paper by Schmink and Wood, "The End examined the 1978-1984," Xingua, do in Life and Work in Sao Felix in a river changes study of social results of their longitudinal noticeably been has Xingu do Felix Sao town in southern ParA. since the activities economic new and in-migration by affected The links. road new of establishment the late 1970s, following and class by differentiation social study documented increasing wage overall, setting; traditional gender in this once cohesive, activities in subsistence earners fared better than those engaged Prospects for the town. of economy monetized increasingly in the in new neighborhoods with few concentrated the poorer migrants, appeared bleak. urban services, and of Labor, Migration "Household Divisions Chase's paper, of issues on focused Amazon," in the Brazilian Urban Settlement Her research frontier. the on strategies survival gender and with women of in-depth interviews techniques employed qualitative the river of section poorer in the neighborhood of Vila Nova, a The Para. southeastern in again Araguaia, do town of Conceigao decided had who migrants rural mainly of here consists population This inland on the expanding frontier. not to proceed farther a part large in was hypothesized, tendency to stay put, Chase itself; migration of the impetus for frontier "backwash" effect served both to "anchor" more firmly women and family households family income in essential the mobile male migrants and to provide while men were sector" "informal the of activities multiple of resource forms reliable but less engaged in more lucrative, in which ways the to pointed Chase frontier. on the extraction of context the into put be to migration has Amazonian frontier strategies. reproduction and household labor Structure of a New Browder's paper analyzed "The Socio-economic Rolim de Moura, of The Case Town in the Amazon Frontier:

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Rondonia." This case contrasts with those discussed earlier from the state of Para, where large landholders are most influential, in that Rondonia's frontier is dominated by smaller land-holders. Browder contended that Rondonia has seen a proliferation of small landholdings in recent years, and that much of the urban" population retains strong ties to surrounding rural areas in the frontier, either through property ownership or intermittent work arrangements. Browder also found a petty bourgeoisie of townspeople to be predominant in rural land tenure. Important questions linger concerning social mobility, class formation, and structural economic change in Amazon boom towns. Are such towns dominated by well-heeled national elites that have merely extended their influence onto the frontier, or are new frontier elites emerging without direct links to national capital? Do dynamic small settlements offer migrants greater opportunities for accumulation than the large regional metropolitan centers? Under what conditions does the structure of the frontier urban economy change either toward greater diversity of production, or, as so often has been the case, into structural decomposition and economic decline? These and other interesting questions await further research. In his final comments Bunker put the papers into the context of rapid regional change and emphasized several theoretical challenges to development theory. The combinations of land speculation and natural resource extraction driving the Amazonian frontier create different patterns of social stratification, migration, proletarianization, and inter-urban commerce and communication. Analyses of Amazonian urbanization will realize their theoretical potential only if they tske the peculiarities of the regional economy into account.