Amazonia: Territorial Struggles on Perennial Frontiers (review)

This study analyzes the divergent claims competing groups have placed on two watersheds located at opposite ends of the Amazon Basin, the Aguarico in Ecuador and the Jari in Brazil. Since the sixteenth century, outsiders have periodically invaded both regions to extract human and natural resources. Thus, Little describes them as "perennial frontiers." Each wave of exploitation caused profound social and demographic transformation.

Both an environmental history and a study in political ecology, this book focuses on post-1945 territorial disputes. Little outlines the human impact on the environment and the problematic social construction of nature and place, but he is more interested in exploring claims on land. To structure his analysis, Little uses the concept of cosmography, which he defines as "the collective, historically contingent identities, ideologies, and environmental knowledge systems developed by a social group to establish and maintain human territory" (p. 5). While a number of scholars have used political ecology to study Amazonia, Little's comparative approach highlights the diversity of local responses to global forces.

Two central chapters exploring "development cosmographies" from 1945 to 1995 and "environmental cosmographies" from 1970 to 1999 form the core of this study. The temporal overlap of these two essentialist attitudes, one privileging economic benefits for national elites or global investors, the other motivated to preserve the environment, mirrors their intersecting claims on territory. These cosmographies helped shape policymaking on the national and global levels, but generally ignored the interests of the inhabitants.

Beginning in the 1960s, two capital-intensive projects transformed the regions: petroleum exploration and extraction in Ecuador and in Brazil, Daniel Keith Ludwig's Jari Project to export wood pulp, which diversified to cattle ranching, kaolin mining, and rice production. In both countries, national governments later took over these operations to counter perceived threats to national sovereignty. While Little documents the environmental devastation resulting from these projects, he presents a more complete view of the tremendous, yet varied, changes these projects engendered. For example, Little shows how the flood of migrants, attracted by jobs in the new industries, resulted in the creation of agrarian colonies in Ecuador and urbanization in Brazil. In both countries, growing environmental concerns at the national level challenged this exploitation and successfully created forest reserves, but with little concern for the rights of pre-existing occupants.

In response, locals organized politically and formed a variety of alliances with national and international NGOs, government agencies, and church groups. These alliances led to the demarcation of sustainable use areas: the Cuyabeno Wildlife Production Reserve in Ecuador and the Cajari, Maracá, and Iratapuru Extractive Settlement Projects in Brazil. New disputes emerged with the surge of 1990s neoliberalism, as illegal logging and commercial fishing and harvesting invaded the reserves in Brazil, and petroleum operations moved into those in Ecuador. The controversy generated by the construction of roads is symbolic of recent clashes between colonists who are settled along the new roads and locals who remain attached to waterways.

While grassroots organizing has often been seen as the solution to problems associated with development, Little demonstrates how inequalities in education, expertise, and access to information place locals at a disadvantage in negotiations. Issues such as biotechnology and intellectual rights over genetic alteration, for example, simply do not translate easily.

Short selections from Little's field notes punctuate the text and function as editorial comment. Especially effective is the section on arrangements between tour companies and indigenous groups in Aguarico. Little describes an obnoxious tour operator who barks out orders to her native employees and then retreats to her canoe, "specially fitted with a large cushioned chair, set in the middle of the launch much like a throne" (p. 174). First-hand experience and nearly fifty interviews conducted during fieldwork from 1991 to 2000 inform the study, although much of the book, especially the long first chapter on the history of the basin prior to 1950...