Conservação em território tradicional: uma longa história até a conciliação via Termo de Compromisso

Abstract

: I intend to discuss the process of creating the Term of Commitment in the Serra do Cipó National Park (MG). By presenting the conflicts and negotiations that were made between researchers, managers and residents, this work proposes an anthropological analysis of the State, integrating reflections on environmental conservation and ethnic rights in Brazil. The Term, signed in 2018, involves just over 10 nuclear families that lived in a small area inside the Park, created in 1984, about 100 kilometers from the capital of Minas Gerais. The case analyzed shows that legislative changes that came into force and guaranteed rights to traditional peoples in Brazil, especially from the beginning of the 21st century, still face resistance to implementation within the environmental agency. I argue that this inertia is a reflection of a colonialist perspective on the part of the agents responsible for implementing public policies of the State, which are revealed through the naturalization of the sacrifice of certain lives, in a certain idea of ​​sovereignty in relation to the territory, and a certain intransigence as to ways of conserving nature. The diversity of civil servants that make up the body responsible for the management of the territory, however, allowed a window of opportunities to guarantee a minimum of rights to the traditional peoples of the territory, even after almost 40 years of spoliation, uncertainty and criminalization of their ways. of life.