Socioenvironmental conflicts between environmental preservation and the peasant reproduction in the National Park of Lençóis Maranhenses

Abstract

Discussions about conflict permeate several fields of knowledge, and it involves two parts that diverge ideologically within a context in which one of the parts feels somehow threaten by the other, which causes it to activate defense modes. In the multiplicity of conflicts, socioenvironmental conflicts refer to the use of natural resources and, at the same time, to the appropriation and control of the territory by different social agents. We resort to a dialectical analysis of the socioenvironmental conflicts that arise in the National Park of Lençóis Maranhenses and involve, on one side, the peasants who inhabit within the park and seek to maintain the peasant territoriality and, on the other side, the managers of Chico Mendes Institute of Conservation and Biodiversity, who seek to follow the environmental legislation referring to an Integral Protection Unit. Three communities were chosen as empirical base – Buriti Amarelo, Bracinho e Tucuns – identified by the inhabitants as communities from the “sand region”; and three others were also chosen – Canto dos Antis, Ponta do Mangue e Santo Inácio – identified as “beach region”.