Trabalhadores e impacto ecológico

Os portos de lenha e o uso dos recursos naturais pela navegação a vapor na Amazônia (da segunda metade do século XIX ao início do século XX)

Abstract

This text addresses the workers' experience and the ecological impact of steam navigation in the Amazon region, from its advent to the decline of the business. We have as sources the press, traveler reports, novels, studies and official documents. We focus on the creation and daily life of the “firewood ports”: riverside nuclei, present on the rivers that drained the main export products of the time, responsible for the supply of steamers. In the Amazon, these ships were almost exclusively powered by firewood taken from the forests. The central objective is to problematize the implications of this in the natural world and in the consolidation of work processes on the banks of rivers. In the end, we demonstrate that the capitalist advances in the region, dependent on the steamships, are inseparable from the collateral damage in the environment and in the social context of the riverside populations.