Uma análise do papel do Estado no processo de expansão do agronegócio no Cerrado brasileiro e suas consequências socioambientais: um estudo de caso na Bacia Hidrográfica do Araguaia, trecho da Ilha do Bananal – TO

Abstract

The present research aims to analyze the role of the State in the territorial expansion process of the main capitalist productive activities in the Brazilian Cerrado and their socio-environmental consequences since the 1980s, focusing on the Araguaia River Basin in the stretch of Ilha do Bananal as the study area, with the key reading being accumulation by dispossession. The Marxist dialectical approach is used as the methodological approach, allowing the evaluation of the historical-material dimension of social organization, understanding that matter is dialectically related to the psychological and the social mediated by the historical process. Thus, a quantitative-qualitative perspective is assumed, and the following methodological procedures are used: a) literature review, through which the aim is to understand the investigated reality from the theory and to delimit the main concepts of the research, including territory, dispossession, neo-extractivism, and looting; b) fieldwork along Ilha do Bananal, which enables understanding the reality through direct contact with the object of study to verify, reinterpret, and reformulate the theory; c) semi-structured interviews/questionnaires with popular leaders and local public sector agents, which will enable the analysis of how these individuals perceive the various realities that constitute the territories in which they operate; d) finally, an analysis of all the material and data produced will be conducted to appreciate the proposed hypothesis. As partial results, it was observed that the State favors hegemonic agents of capital both through direct action and inaction, affecting the existence of traditional peoples who (re)exist in the Cerrado, whether in the material aspect by having their lands invaded and degraded, or in the immaterial aspect by establishing cultural bonds that challenge their ancestral identities. Far from exhausting the theme, it is hoped that this thesis can contribute, even if in an introductory manner, to the understanding that the State and capital are not antagonistic but complementary, and that popular resistance against capital necessarily means resistance against the State itself.