TERRITORY, LABOR, AND CONTRADICTION: THE AMAZONIAN PEASANT IN THE CANUMÃ SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT RESERVE

Abstract

This article analyzes the contradictions between Amazonian peasant labor and the expansion of capitalist relations in the Canumã Sustainable Development Reserve (RDS), located in the municipality of Borba, Amazonas State. Our analyses were based on historical-dialectical materialism, combined with bibliographic review, document analysis, systematic field observation conducted between 2022 and 2026, and records produced with the communities of the RDS. The results indicated that, even within capitalist economic dynamics, there are productive practices developed by Amazonian peasants that preserve elements of reciprocity, cooperation, and collective use of natural resources, presenting forms of resistance to the complete subordination of social life to the logic of capital. We conclude that the Canumã RDS constitutes a territory marked by the contradictory coexistence between processes of capitalist expansion and social practices that reaffirm peasant territorialities, traditional knowledge, and historically constructed relationships between labor, nature, and community.