This Plan of Action is a collective project in the context of an alliance between peoples and
academics, and its elaboration is based on the demands of the extractive community Boa Esperança,
in the town of Curralinho in the state of Pará. The objective is to create better conditions
for the commercialization of Açaí by the Cooperativa dos Productores Agroextrativistas do Rio
Pagão (COPA), eliminating middlemen and making it possible to sell the products directly to
the consumer at a fair price. The elaboration of this plan took place by way of participatory research
conducted during a period of action resarch and contributions from the discussions with
the teachers and classmates during the teaching period, with those periods being preconceived
in the Political Educational Project of the Bachelor’s degree course in Ethno-Development of
the Federal University of Pará (UFPA). Addtional sources were bibliographical surveys and
mobilizations in the community regarding its problems and potentials. Some of the collectively
constructed strategies highlight the protagonism of the community, the historical processes of
struggle and resistance, and the importance of the autonomy of the community in the management
of its territories and resources. According to the research carried out together with the
community Boa Esperança, my community of origin, the communitarian extractivism of açaí
production and its commercialization resisted during the hard years of exploitation of the local
wood resources. In the 1990s, the family income in this community was based on the predatory
removal of wood and palmtree fruits, latex exploitation and seed collection. Nowadays açaí is
our main basis of nutrition and income, but the marketing channels are restricted to the brokers
and the sale to the market fair of the town of Curralinho. The lack of alternatives for commercialization
results in low sales prices during the months of high production (July to December).
In view of the objective and the problem raised, this Plan of Action proposes to enable access
to the government-controlled Institutional Markets for purchase of rural foodstuffs (Programa
de Aquisicao de Alimentos (PAA), Programa Nacional de Alimentacao Escolar (PNAE)), the
maintenance and improvement of the açaí trading locale and the implementation of a thirteenth
salary for extractivists.
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