Pesca e agricultura na Amazônia: a integração de uma comunidade rural ao modo de produção capitalista

Abstract

The authors seek to characterize the economy of a coastal community in Pará, Itapuá, in the municipality of Vigia, whose inhabitants are dedicated to artisanal fishing and subsistence agriculture, where social differentiation is marked based on gender, which also translates into the division of labor prevailing in the place: fishing is a male activity par excellence, while agriculture is conceived as an activity that falls to women. The non-capitalist relations of production within the community—whose population is composed primarily of peasants (small landowners and tenants), independent fishermen, and partners—are linked to the market economy in force in the municipal headquarters and other parts of the state, establishing a chain of dependent relations that, at the regional level, has its final link in the city of Belém, the place where some of the fish caught by the fishermen arrive, from where the inhabitants of Itapuá also receive a large portion of the consumer goods they do not produce locally, and where many of them go when attempting to carry out social advancement projects.