Akroá-Gamella: territorial struggles and narratives of violence in the Baixada Maranhense

Abstract

The Akroá-Gamella people reside in the State of Maranhão, in the northeast region of Brazil. They began to experience broad visibility, on national and international levels, as victims of a genocidal action contrived by agribusiness sectors, following an event named “Movement for Peace” in April 2017. This article sets forth an ethnography of patterns of violence that serve to maintain power inequalities between indigenous peoples and political organisations that control work and private property in the Baixada Maranhense. The text begins with a brief historical overview of the territorialisation process set in motion by the Akroá-Gamella in the last decade, followed by an analytical description of the cartography of conflicts derived from this people’s political insurgence. The text also focuses on implicit and objective contents in practices that sustain symbolic and physical violence from the Indians’ perspective, emphasising struggles undertaken in defence of territory and the right to existence.