Countercolonial autonomies against the Capitalocene in Amazonia: the Lower Tapajós Indigenous movement

Abstract

We understand the lower Tapajós indigenous movement as “countercolonial autonomy” against the Capitalocene, focusing in particular on the Tupinambá people. The Capitalocene in the Amazon began with mercantile capitalism in the colonial period, and intensified during the military dictatorship with the consolidation of the modern capitalist state. We conceive of countercolonial autonomy in terms of manioc cultivation, cosmovision and political self-organisation. Conflicts between indigenous and non-indigenous people jeopardize countercolonial autonomies. We explore four possibilities to address this problematic: a new universal approach to recognition; the idea of insurgent universality; the idea of traditionally occupied lands, and common-use territories. In the case of the Tupinambá territory, we argue that all forest peoples who have inhabited the territory ancestrally should have the right to remain, even if demarcated by the state as an Indigenous Land. A future Tupinambá territory should be a space where all forest peoples can continue living their own way, even those who don’t self-recognise as indigenous.