Fios de Manacá: narrativas dos juticultores da comunidade São Sebastião da Ilha do Marrecão

Abstract

This study has the purpose of verifying how the ecological practices of juticulturists in the Amazon occur based on their relationships with nature and the imaginary in the daily life of water. In the context of approaching sociocultural processes in the Amazon, this investigation is intertwined with the threads of interdisciplinarity in a dialogue between Sociology, Anthropology, Arts and Philosophy for a deeper understanding of the jute culture in the Middle Solimões River. This region is known for its history with jute production brought by the Japanese to the Amazon region. The remaining juticulturists maintain the practice of jute and mallow production as a culture and way of life. Its ecological techniques and practices have a strong connection with nature and the floodplain floor in a relationship that weaves a culture as a way of life in the intertwining of nature and culture relationships. The locus of the research, the São Sebastião community on Marrecão Island/Am, geographically located in the municipality of Manacapuru. On this island in a floodplain area, juticulturists find their lives crossed by strands of jute and mallow fiber in the labor and suffering of working in front of the waters. This latent reality of the community unites families of farmers who, on the margins of the community, weave their relationships with the place, build knowledge and have their lives and economies without generating impacts on the environment. In this scenario, we turn our attention to the Amazonian environment and the jute practices that mix with the agriculture of traditional people in processes of transculturality that formed the imaginary community of Marrecão. This research takes the orientation of qualitative approaches with an appeal to phenomenology that focused on the narratives of men and women collected in field research. Secondary sources were compared based on photographs, paintings and songs, relating to the theme under study. The main results reveal the suffering of working with jute and mallow, the challenges of harvesting jute fields under water and climate change that has strongly affected the lives and subsistence of these residents. Jute and mallow, even though they are not native to the Amazon, have been intertwined with Amazonian ways of life, building meanings and maintaining an intimate relationship with nature. The research shows that the relationships between the human and the non-human, the real and the mythical make up the worldview of juticulturists and shape their ways of living, inhabiting the world and the economic and social relationships that reveal an ecocentric vision of the world. Finally, it must be recognized that the results of this research can contribute to a deeper and closer understanding of the reality of juticulturists outside the perspective of Western ideas to give visibility to their social and ecological practices.