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Brazil: Amazon Resource Management and Human Ecology
Program Excursions
These are the type of excursions undertaken by students in the Brazil: AmazonResource Management and Human Ecology program. Do note that excursion arrangements vary semester to semester.
Barcarena:
This visit is composed of two parts. The objective of this excursion, which serves as an introduction to Amazonian issues, is to reveal the conflictive social, economic, and political processes at work, the actors involved, and their differing perspectives.
Students visit the Albras industrial complex, one of the largest alumina and aluminum production plants in the world that produces most of Brazil's aluminum exports with the bauxite it receives from Mineração Rio do Norte (also visited in another excursion - see Rio Trombetas below).
Students go to a community of small agricultural producers displaced by the Albras project, which is engaged in political activity to reclaim what they lost and in social projects to improve their precarious situation.
Zona Bragantina:
The first visit to this region takes place during orientation and introduces students to coastal mangroves. This ecosystem is the site of the MADAM and Novos Curupiras research projects.
In the second visit, students spend time in a Terra Firme primary forest fragment and Museu Paraense Emílio Goeldi (MPEG) forest succession study areas in São Fransisco do Pará. They also learn about the Tiptamba project on agriculture, conducted by EMBRAPA in partnership with a German institution. This project, carried out in Igarapé Açú, investigates the use of new technology to enrich soils and reduce soil degradation, thereby reducing deforestation of primary forest. These research initiatives are particularly interesting here as the region is the oldest agricultural frontier in Amazonia, which shows what the expanding frontier may leave behind and how the corresponding problems can be dealt with in the future.
Manaus:
At the geographic heart of the Amazon Basin, the city of Manaus hosts the famous "meeting of the waters," where the Rio Solimões (white water) meets the Rio Negro (black water) to form the Amazon River.
- In Manaus, students visit the INPA center (National Institute for Amazon Research -- one of the largest federal research institutions in Brazil) and the INPA ecological park. Open to the public, this park displays many of INPA's on-going research projects in botany and animal ecology.
- Just north of Manaus, students learn about different experiments of the LBA (Large Biosphere-Atmosphere experiment in the Amazon) at INPA's forest reserves. In the process, they have the opportunity to climb experimental towers to the forest canopy and to descend almost 40 feet below the forest.
- At the Balbina Hydroelectric Dam, the structural components, such as the turbine rooms and the control room, are visited. Also shown are some museums and environmental projects sponsored by the energy company.
- In the Presidente Figuereido region, an area rich in caves, waterfalls, and an increasing number of ecotourism projects, students debate the differences between conventional tourism and ecotourism.
Rio Trombetas:
At Porto Trombetas, Mineração Rio do Norte conducts mining operations on one of the largest aluminum bauxite deposits in the world (10% of total known deposits). In the excursion, students are shown the different stages of the mining process. They are also shown extensive and high resource-use environmental and ecological work that this private enterprise carries out in its attempts to comply with environmental regulations.
Further down the Trombetas River, in a small town called Oriximiná, students have a lecture with ARQMO, an Association of Quilombola Communities (descendents of run-away slaves). ARQMO presents a very different perspective on development, conservation, and the history of the region than the mining corporation, allowing students to develop a critical analysis of conflicting interests.
Santarém:
Located where the admired clear-water Tapajos River (the "Caribbean of Amazonia") joins the Amazon, Santarém is the base town for PSA, or the "Health and Happiness Project."
PSA, which has been working with poor riverine communities in the Tapajós River Basin for many years, believes they follow a unique approach to participatory community development by combining local popular knowledge with low-resource technical assistance. After attending a lecture by PSA in Santarém, students visit a rural community that the organization works with. Here, they meet community members and discuss the social projects taking place.
Monte Alegre - located at the northern margins of the Amazon River about 100 miles northeast of Santarém - is one of the richest archeological sites in the Amazon and in South America. Here students have the opportunity to study and debate about the archeological evidence that prompted Ann Roosevelt to question existing theories of the colonization of the Americas. The sites visited are located in a recently created archeological and ecological state park, in which new research projects and community management plans have been initiated.
Marajó Island:
Students here have the opportunity to learn about açai and palm heart production - both considered types of non-timber forest products (NTFPs) - as well as the process of traditional logging carried out by local Caboclos. Also on Marajó Island, the rural homestay takes place in local riverside communities.
Caxiuanã:
The Ferreira Penna Scientific Station is located in the Caxiuanã National Forest.
Jacundá:
This small town in southern Pará state was displaced by the construction of the Tucurui Dam and relocated to its current site. Students will study the history of the displacement and its social consequences. They meet with the vice-mayor of the town, a woman who made history in the region by risking her life fighting for social justice from within a violent and conservative political system.
The other aspect of the visit involves Sr. Pacinho's Ranch, where students are shown the life of colonos who came from northeastern Brazil between two and three decades ago in search of a better life. Students here conduct socio-economic profiles of the family and the larger community, gaining an understanding of the small-scale, family-based systems of rural economic production.
Marabá and Parauapebas:
This city is located on the Transamazon Highway, where the government once tried to promote development by offering land plots to landless farmers. Marabá was one of the most violent cities in the country during the 1970s and 80s, when land conflicts resulted in the assassination of hundreds of rural workers.
In Marabá, students attend lectures at the Federation of the Farmers of the Tocantins and Araguaia (FATA), the Landless People's Movement (MST), and the Pastoral Land Commission (CPT). Among the topics discussed are: the region's history of development; current efforts to implement agrarian reform and improve agricultural systems; the social, economic, and political implications of the Landless People's Movement in Brazil and southern Pará state.
Students also have the opportunity to visit MST's land settlements at different stages of occupation. At the end of Marabá visit, the students have the opportunity to visit different initiatives of FATA and MST at Jacundá and Nova Ipixuna do Pará on the way back to Belém.