"Once upon a time in the West": considerations on power relations in the Agrarian And Land Conflict Treatment Chamber of western Pará
Agrarian, land, and socio-environmental conflicts. Peacebuilding. Amazon.
The Chamber for the Treatment of Agrarian and Land Conflicts in the Persecutor's Office of Pará (CTCAF) has become an integral part of the self-composition system of conflicts in Pará and has the proposal to draw up works with hard cases related to agrarian, land and socio-environmental issues. This research was carried out in order to answer to what extent the CTCAF installation process in Santarém allows us to understand the relations of power between the social actors who participated in it. This study was carried out using participant observation and extensive analysis of records made in the form of an ethnography of documents, as well as the peacebuilding theoretical framework. The research is justified by the importance of observing the impacts of self-composition practices in agreement and conflict of interests in the Amazon region. Studying about the installation process presents a stratum of the performance of these practices and was an alternative in view of the suspension of CTCAF activities due to the advent of the Covid 19 pandemic. Sociopolitical territory by human groups present and conflicts over the use of land and natural resources have shown a range of overlapping interests. By analyzing the power relations between the various actors present in this space, their clash of interests and defense and argumentation strategies around these own interests, it was possible to observe the training and multiplication strategies of leaders in grassroots communities as the main strategy of the Chamber until now. And yet how the actors at the regional level, in particular the Persecutor's Office of the State of Pará, in the figure of the Agrarian Justice Prosecutor, and the Federal University of Western Pará (UFOPA), in the figure of the Amazon Restorative Justice Clinic (CJUÁ), played strategic roles in ensuring a plurality of voices in the installation of the CTCAF.