The influence area of the Santarém-Cuiabá road, in the Brazilian Amazon, since the
seventies has been going through a disorganized process of occupation and illegal
violation of the natural reserves in the region. In this century, economically active
groups dealing with agriculture, animal husbandry and wood exploitation started
pushing federal government into asphalt paving great extension of the road, with the
perspective of encouraging new economic flux and more profitable access of the
products to the consumer markets, including international destinations. To this
troublesome demand, other problems were added: increasing deforestation, intense
conflict for land, illegal economic activities, ineffectiveness of the State. Considering
this situation, the federal government elaborated the Sustainable BR-163 Plan,
between 2004 and 2005, as experimental application of a policy for the development
of the area, consolidated in the Sustainable Amazon Plan. Among the purposes of
that plan, are the sustainable development, the reduction of social inequality, and a
new model of democratic management and integration of public policies. This
research is to understand, starting from western Pará, in which way are interrelated
the dynamic of important social actors, after the first interventions according to the
Plan. The actors included in this research were State representatives, in the three
levels of management, wood executives, farmers, and rural workers. The analysis is
based on what the actors say in order to evaluate if the federal government reached
the purpose of bringing the conflicts into an institutional environment and getting
external political recognition. The results obtained confirm the hypothesis that the
conditions for the success of the measures are still not given, as consequence of
organizational problems of the State, lack of political cohesion among the purposes
of the Plan and among the federal institutions, and also lack of new institutional
procedures of management to help managing the conflicts and to make more
probable the compliance with the new measures. The weak political power of the
federal government, in the field of intense disputation, is still a barrier for the
reduction of severe social inequality for the legal recovery, which is important not
only because of the law enforcement, but mainly to legitimate the new dynamic and
the State itself.
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