A Amazônia na estrutura espacial do Brasil

Resumo

In the face of the rhythm of its industrialization and its continental dimension, the spatial structure of Brazil presents pronounced regional inequalities of development simultaneously to the formation of the metropolitan regions. In this work the spatial structure is approached under the view of the regional unbalances, in this case, Amazon.

Due to the conceptual feebleness of the poetical geography, which should offer a better approach to the case, one utilizes, as a theoretic basis, the Polarized Development Theory which identifies the spatial development process with the diffusion of values of the modern society. The development reached through a cyclic pattern of positive feedback - spatial unbalances - and of negative feedback - represented by corrective actions to move back the system to balance - in which the spatial system maintain its balance at a higher development levels. Two unsatisfactory arise in relation to the theory: one is concerned to the "Center", seen as an organism without its economic and political components be distinguished; the other, more important, is related to minimization of the periphery role in the development process, which is not considered in its realities and needs, resulting in a waste of forces and being a source of tenseness in the system. The alternative hypothesis to Brazil would be therefore, due to the insufficient corrective actions, in which the pressure of social tenseness could become accumulated in a such intensity that would break off the process of modernization and the balance of the system.

A serious study of this hypothesis seems to be important in the moment in which one thinks to integrate the vast patrimony represented by the Amazon, whose history shows that the less the predatory action is the more preserved the region remains.

Due to its territorial extent and its location, Amazon is the last "island" of the Brazilian "economic archipelago" to be incorporated to the national spatial system and has been integrated through a process of decision essentially political, result of the extra-regional perceptions which valorized it as a "resource boundary".

The motivations of these perceptions are of internal and external geopolitical order. In the internal plan, it constitutes a corrective action which aims the geopolitical balance. The industrialization, engendering a center-periphery structure highly unbalanced, has induced to a corrective action represented by the foundation cf the SUDENE (Superintendência do Desenvolvimento do Nordeste) and Brasilia; since SUDENE didn't entirely solve the problem of the regional tenseness and that the amount of the decision power of the "Center" reinforced the polarized structure, the Amazon integration is to be perceived as a solution to absorb the people surplus from the Northeast, to amplify the home market for the manufactured products and investment from the "Center", besides to make the empty spaces productive.

In the external plan, although the preoccupation with revolutionary focus and boundary safety, its integration seems to be fundamental to assure the exploitation of the natural resources of the South American Amazon, via Atlantic Ocean, with the Brazilian participation as well as to favor the prominence of the country on the continent, whether by the intensification of the relationships with the neighbor countries, or by a Pan-American Integrated Development Program, leaded by Brazil.

As a consequence of these motivation and decisions Amazon has become an attraction field of forces. The most important is the policy force, represented by the government, which acts in the implantation of the preparatory substructure to the introduction of the modern society, under three main forms: physical integration; psycho-social integration; and direct capitation of resource. The physical integration represented by the highway network and bringing in new and fast means of communication, which contrasts with the slow rhythm of the region, causes violent impact, promoting strong disarticulation in the regional economy and society. The psycho-social integration regarding to the power on the public opinion is represented by the modern means of communication, by MOBRAL (Movimento Brasileiro de Alfabetização) that, however efficient in the alphabetization and diffusion of values from the "Center", didn't offer an operational information, becoming perhaps a factor of failure and tenseness, and yet by the Rondon Project that aimed primarily to integrate the Amazon and universitarians, has today an increasing role in the basic research in order to favor the penetration of the modem society by means of universities. The direct capitation of resources is represented by tax exemptions and by the people that moves attracted by employees on road construction or to INCRA settlement nucleus.

The economic force is less intense. Its more important component is yet the government, followed by the foreign investment, represented by floating and by mineral and timber exploitation. The less acting national undertakers are over all interested in cattle raising developed in large tract of land; this expansion by the "southerners" is carried out with prejudice to the regional ecologic and socioeconomic balance. Other components of the economic force are the experts coming not only from the Southeast but also from the Northeast and laborers, comprising small farmers and sharecroppers which are those that answer to the appeal of integration. Attracted by the propaganda that labor force, which has left its lands either in Northeast and South, in searching for new places in Amazon region, are employed first in cleaning the forest for pastures and after for farming. Due to the isolation and unfamiliarity of the region, and to the lack of financial and technical aid that migration tend to continue moving.

In referring to the spatial incidence of the integration process, some changes are observed as urban population growth, extracting and manufacturing industries development, and the high increase of the state capitals. These changes, however, didn't modify the relations among the large cities and the space under its command. Only on the borders of the region an area of expansion are recorded, permitting to identify along with the Eastern and Western Amazon, a Southern Amazon commanded by São Paulo.

As for the national spatial structure, although the high urban growth on the Center-West reveals a hinterland population, the expansion of São Paulo, Belo Horizonte and Northeast capitals denotes a continuity in the increase of the "Center and the coastal front of the country".

The weak increase of the state average incomes and the decrease of its participation on the total income of the country, except for the state of São Paulo, denote that it persists and stresses the concentration of the economic development, and that the main production activities didn't suffer great spatial redistribution, as it was expected.

What is infered from the attempt of integration is that it has not been carried on in a way to favor the self-sustained growth of the region. This process developed from out to inside, don't valorize the local needs and even nullifying the regional forces, whether in an ecological or in a socioeconomic and political sense, which may bring forth new focus of tenseness. This kind of actuation is not consistent with the purposes desired.