Migrations on the Southwestern Amazonian Frontier: a Case Study of Brasivianos and Biscateiros

Migrations on the Southwestern Amazonian frontier: a case study of “Brasivianos” and “Biscateiros”

Benedita Maria Gomes Esteves

Federal University of Acre, Sector of Land use and Global Change Studies;

Email:

Paulo Roberto Nunes Ferreira

Federal University of Acre

Student intern CNPq/Brazil Program PIBIC

Abstract:

This research investigates the trajectories of thousands of brazilian workers that migrate for the Bolivian border as “brasivianos” and return to Brazil as “biscateiros”. Such an analytical perspective allows us to think about the migrations, not as another phenomenon, but as dislocations that are explained as a part of the scarcity of land and work in a space characterized by the confluence of these countries’ respective agricultural borders. The study reconstructed the network of relations among migrant families based on their place of origin, the different working fronts and underlying expropriation to which they are submitted. Their attempts to use land and work to survive generate multiple life trajectories. These same facts reflect the worker’s displacement from his own country and his loss of identity. The forest culture does not belong in the city.

Keywords: migrations, border, identity

1. Introduction

The objective of this paper is to study the multiple trajectories of rubber tapper workers between Brazil and Bolivia, using the factors that determine the occupation of the agrarian frontier. Migration is one result of these factors. We understand migration to be not only a physical dislocation of persons, but also their social, economic, political and cultural dislocations.

According to Sayad (1991), the concept of migration should be addressed as “a complete social fact” which means perceiving migration in all its dimensions – historical and structural – and within the perspective of how societies function. Immigrants and emigrants are part of the same process. The immigrant only exists in a society that designates them as such; the society creates the immigrant. In the case of Brazilians that migrate to the Department of Pando, Bolivia (Figure 1), they are emigrants from Brazil where they are unable to reproduce socially and economically.

The field work for this article began in 1999 in the area of extractivism in the Pando, the northernmost Department of Bolivia. The Pando Department covers about 63,000 km2 and is nearly completely covered with closed canopy tropical forests. Currently about 6,000 Brazilian families live in the Pando. Several thousand families who have migrated to and from Bolivia now reside in the peripheries of local urban centers in Acre – Capixaba, Brasiléia, Plácido de Castro, and Rio Branco. We interviewed 150 individuals in these urban centers and in the Bolivian seringals (former rubber estates) along the rivers Caramano and Chipamano. During the field work, we also accompanied families expulsed from the Bolivian seringals São Francisco Gavião, Adélia, and São João do Caramano to a peripheral commuity of the Brazilian border town of Capixaba. We also accompanied workers, usually Brazilians, responsible for cutting and burning within these Bolivian seringals.

Figure 1. Map of region and study areas

2. The denomination “Brasivianos” and “Biscateiros”

Jornalists and researchers have used the category of “Brasivianos” in allusion to the term “Brasiguaios” used to describe Brazilians living in Paraguay. In Acre, Brasiviano first was used during the rural union movement of the 1980s, in condemnations of slave work conditions in Bolivian seringals. In the past two years, representatives of public institutions have appropriated this term to distinguish, pejoratively, these workers from others who are seeking land.

A comparison between brasiguaios and brasivianos shows that the names are conjunctions of two countries, an inherent ambiguity for those maintaining one nationality and living in another country. Unlike brasiguaios, many of whom have returned to Brazil, engaged in the struggle for land, and used to describe themselves, brasivianos is a name that has not been incorporated in the identity of these workers. They call themselves rubber tappers, Brazilians, and agriculturists. Bolivians call them “Patrícios”, which means foreigners.

The Brasivianos living in the Pando justify their residence by comparison with Bolivians. According to the Brasivianos, Bolivians are not capable or are too lazy to work in latex or Brazil nuts extraction or in agriculture. “They [Bolivians] like to sell door-to-door, going from one place to another, They don’t like to work. Here Brazilians are the ones that work.” (Eneias, 65 years old, Caramano River).

In interviews with Brazilians in Acre, to be Brasiviano is to be “nearly Bolivian.” When Brasivianos return to Brazil, they experience discrimination because they lived in Bolivia and because they represent a potential landless poor. In addition, the Brazilian rubber tappers that migrated to work in the forests of Bolivia come back to a changed land. The “colocacao” (The forest and agricultural plots worked by a rubber tapper family) from which he left decades ago, no longer exists. The rapid implementation of extensive cattle ranching and several large colonization projects have transformed eastern Acre State, converting many seringals into pastures. In addition, the demarcation of indigenous lands and conservation units have limited the access to land. Even extractive reserves and settlements cannot absorb the demand for land from returning Brasivianos.

On return to the periphery of cities in Acre, the situation of Brasivianos is worse than as immigrants in Bolivia. When they migrated to work in Bolivia, they planned to live as a rubber tapper, although without rights to the land. On the urban periphery they must learn to “se virar” (improvise) , as those interviewed emphasized. They live by doing short-term, menial labor.

3. Trajectories and Identities

Reconstruction of the trajectories of migrant families permits identification of a network of mutual aid between those who migrated and those who stay in Brazil. The exchange between components of these families shows that the international frontier is a territorial space being appropriated by Brazilians as a space for temporary work, a place to guarantee the survival of many. The simple constructions and cleared lands also serve as savings; typically when a Brasiviano is forced to leave, he is reimbursed for these ‘benfeitorias’ (house sheds, etc.) With these funds he is often able to buy a simple house on the urban periphery in Acre. The different generations that live in this space indicate that there are mixed histories occurring.

Of the 150 persons interviewed, 47% justified their migrations to Bolivia, to tap rubber, while 33% attributed their migration to expulsion by cattle ranchers. The age range of the heads of families interviewed was from 23 to 74 years. Fifty seven percent came from the Amazonian region, 21% from Brazil’s northeast, and 22% were born in Bolivia but are registered in Brazil.

These data and complementary field work indicate that various trajectories and time periods of residency overlap. Some families have lived for more than 40 years in Bolivia while others have recently arrived. The high percentage of “nordestinos” (those from northeastern Brazil) is explained by the migrations from the northeast in the past century and particularly during the Second World War when these nordestinos became “Soldiers of Rubber.” Many came directly to Bolivian seringals, run primarily by Brazilians.

In Bolivian seringals, the relation patron-rubber tapper was similar to those in neighboring Acrean seringals – debt-peonage. Those in Bolivia, however, had an additional cost due to the taxes levied for being foreigners as well as taxes on market products. The rubber and Brazil nut production were registered as production from Acre, according to the testimony of ex-patrons and rubber tappers.

The sons of these nordestinos that were born in Bolivia, marry Brazilian women and maintain the same cultural roots. Their children are registered in Brazil and learn Portuguese. Even those Brazilians married to Bolivians register their children in Brazil, especially if they are male in order to avoid Bolivian military service.

Another vision of this migratory process approximates that of Hall (1999) who asserts that the dislocation of identity in these post-modern times causes fragmentation of landscapes, classes, gender, sexuality, ethnicity, race, and rationality. This fragmentation sunders the solidity of these identities that characterized modern times.

Because they are in constant movement between two countries, the Brasivianos suffer transformations in social hierarchy of their various identities, depending on the region in which they live. The story of the “Mineirinho,” a worker recruited in Rondonia by Acrean loggers illustrates these transformations. After a period of work in Brasiléia, on the Acrean border with the Bolivian city of Cobija, the company that had hired him changed its activities and he became unemployed, without money to return to his home town. According to Mineirinho, finding a job for clearing the forest was easier if he was considered ‘Mineiro’ (someone from Minas Gerais State) because mineiros had the reputation of being good workers. According to the interview, he was obliged to concoct a life story and now is known only as Mineirinho.

The dubious situation of Brasivianos is a characteristic of those that live between two countries, an identity that is built upon the relation of working the land. In spite of affirming their Brazilian nationality, they realize that Bolivia represents an opportunity to fulfill their desires to tap rubber, collect Brazil nuts, a prosperous place where they could possibly save some money and return to Brazil. This dubiousness is reflected in the marriages, registering to vote in two countries, and the attempts to stay on the land. With daughters registered in Bolivia (they don’t need to do military service), “it will be easier to live more calmly with Bolivian authorities, because we will have the right to stay on the land.”

Because the extractive activities are continuous in the border region, the geographic and political limits are permeable, with few socio-environmental differences discernable. Often it is only a cement or aluminum marker in the ground that indicates that one is leaving one country and entering another. For rubber tapper immigrants, the geographic frontier disappears within a common forest ecosystem. This permeability also holds for Brazilian traders that enter the Pando to supply market products to Brasivianos, except those Brasivianos close to Bolivian cities.

The most systematic contact between Brasivianos and Bolivians occurs during tax collection. The most important of these taxes is the “estrangeria” – a tax for the right to work in Bolivia. Other taxes are placed on the production of latex and Brazil nuts and on products bought in Brazil. Brasivianos acknowledge the estrangeria as a legitimate tax, but consider the others as exploitive. This acknowledgement of the estrangeria tax implies that Brasivianos define themselves as foreigners within Bolivia.

4. From Brasivianos to Biscateiros: Foreigners in Bolivia and in Brazil

The dislocation of rubber tapper populations to Bolivia has more than one explanation, in spite of it being summarized as a question of availability of land and work. The frontier region of Pando represents a space for reducing social tensions in Brazil. One inteviewee was expulsed from different places within the County of Rio Branco six times. This repetition illustrated the desire to “begin again” on the land (Tavares 1993), a concept difficult to understand for those who have never been forced to leave their homes.

Among those interviewed, the average time of residency in Bolivia was 19 years, but many tried to return during their residency but couldn’t find a place to do so. Those returning sought out primarily two institutions: INCRA, the National Institute for Agrarian Reform; and rural workers unions, especially the one in Brasiléia, on the Bolivian border. The rural workers union in Brasiléia has denounced the oppression in Bolivia but has not been able to settle significant numbers of returning Brasivianos in extractive reserves. Likewise, INCRA has not been able to provide settlement for those Brasivianos who opt for agriculture.

The multiple trajectories of the “brasivianos” is similar to that of a rubber tapper who left the seringal, came to a urban periphery, went to a settlement project and returned to the seringal. In the Adélia Seringal in Bolivia, a rubber tapper had returned four times to the seringal, for several cited reasons, of which one reason appears fundamental: “I couldn’t adjust to any other place, my children stayed there, if my wife wants to stay there too, she can, but not me.” What was most interesting was that this rubber tapper was able to renegotiate the occupation of his ‘colocação’ several times. This last time to get his colocacao back, he traded a house on the periphery of Rio Branco, local bus tickes, and six months’of work in the seringal. Such effort can be understood as habit formation, in the sense that Bourdieu (1992:183) uses the phrase, as a formation of profound structures that define human attitudes and customs.

The return for the seringal of Bolivial can also be explained by the city and the conditions offered by INCRA, to some “brasivanos” settlements. According to the interviewees, the settlement areas are small, the soil is not suitable for planting/agriculture and the living conditions for the first years, without agricultural plots, rubber, Brazil nuts, hunting, fish or the other forms of sustenance that the forest offers, making survival impossible. A part of the patriarchs/fathers of families leave their wives and children in the settlements to return and try to maintain a family with what they plant, with extractivism of Brazil nuts and rubber. They refuse to work as day laborers on nearby farms, in actual practice returning to work “for pay” in Bolivia.

The city is perceived in different ways by the interviewees. Therefore, their position was radically altered. They do not have more personal aspirations and never encounter motivation to resist and work. They place themselves as ex-workers, because they do not have motivation and because they do not know the work of the “biscate” who gardens one day, sells popscicles the next, a job, of the same form that has no fixed job, as a watchman or servent that determines his work conditions.

The interviewees remembered their time in the seringal, through their moral values that differentiate their previous relations, and about how their role changed in the city, the part of this historical knowledge of the forest does not help the interviewees adapt to their new roles in the city: