The People of the River: Nature and Identity in Black Amazonia, 1835-1945
In this history of the black peasants of Amazonia, Oscar de la Torre focuses on the experience of African-descended people navigating the transition from slavery to freedom. He draws on social and environmental history to connect them intimately to the natural landscape and to Indigenous peoples. Relying on this world as a repository for traditions, discourses, and strategies that they retrieved especially in moments of conflict, Afro-Brazilians fought for autonomous communities and developed a vibrant ethnic identity that supported their struggles over labor, land, and citizenship.

Prior to abolition, enslaved and escaped blacks found in the tropical forest a source for tools, weapons, and trade--but it was also a cultural storehouse within which they shaped their stories and records of confrontations with slaveowners and state authorities. After abolition, the black peasants' knowledge of local environments continued to be key to their aspirations, allowing them to maintain relationships with powerful patrons and to participate in the protest cycle that led Getulio Vargas to the presidency of Brazil in 1930. In commonly referring to themselves by such names as "sons of the river," black Amazonians melded their agro-ecological traditions with their emergent identity as political stakeholders.
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The People of the River: Nature and Identity in Black Amazonia, 1835-1945
In this history of the black peasants of Amazonia, Oscar de la Torre focuses on the experience of African-descended people navigating the transition from slavery to freedom. He draws on social and environmental history to connect them intimately to the natural landscape and to Indigenous peoples. Relying on this world as a repository for traditions, discourses, and strategies that they retrieved especially in moments of conflict, Afro-Brazilians fought for autonomous communities and developed a vibrant ethnic identity that supported their struggles over labor, land, and citizenship.

Prior to abolition, enslaved and escaped blacks found in the tropical forest a source for tools, weapons, and trade--but it was also a cultural storehouse within which they shaped their stories and records of confrontations with slaveowners and state authorities. After abolition, the black peasants' knowledge of local environments continued to be key to their aspirations, allowing them to maintain relationships with powerful patrons and to participate in the protest cycle that led Getulio Vargas to the presidency of Brazil in 1930. In commonly referring to themselves by such names as "sons of the river," black Amazonians melded their agro-ecological traditions with their emergent identity as political stakeholders.
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The People of the River: Nature and Identity in Black Amazonia, 1835-1945

The People of the River: Nature and Identity in Black Amazonia, 1835-1945

by Oscar de la Torre
The People of the River: Nature and Identity in Black Amazonia, 1835-1945

The People of the River: Nature and Identity in Black Amazonia, 1835-1945

by Oscar de la Torre

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Overview

In this history of the black peasants of Amazonia, Oscar de la Torre focuses on the experience of African-descended people navigating the transition from slavery to freedom. He draws on social and environmental history to connect them intimately to the natural landscape and to Indigenous peoples. Relying on this world as a repository for traditions, discourses, and strategies that they retrieved especially in moments of conflict, Afro-Brazilians fought for autonomous communities and developed a vibrant ethnic identity that supported their struggles over labor, land, and citizenship.

Prior to abolition, enslaved and escaped blacks found in the tropical forest a source for tools, weapons, and trade--but it was also a cultural storehouse within which they shaped their stories and records of confrontations with slaveowners and state authorities. After abolition, the black peasants' knowledge of local environments continued to be key to their aspirations, allowing them to maintain relationships with powerful patrons and to participate in the protest cycle that led Getulio Vargas to the presidency of Brazil in 1930. In commonly referring to themselves by such names as "sons of the river," black Amazonians melded their agro-ecological traditions with their emergent identity as political stakeholders.

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9781469643250
Publisher: The University of North Carolina Press
Publication date: 08/17/2018
Sold by: Barnes & Noble
Format: eBook
Pages: 242
File size: 11 MB
Note: This product may take a few minutes to download.

About the Author

Oscar de la Torre is associate professor of Africana and Latin American studies at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte.
Oscar de la Torre is associate professor of history and Africana and Latin American studies at University of North Carolina at Charlotte.

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

Offering important theoretical interventions and a compelling narrative, de la Torre demonstrates the fascinating range of ways that black Amazonians related to their environments at both physical and discursive levels. This book reveals how their gradual acquisition of prized environmental knowledge played into economic relationships and served a key role in their search of autonomy, identity, and citizenship."—Thomas D. Rogers, Emory University

This book provides a nuanced description and analysis of the roles played by the enslaved and their descendants in 'humanizing' Brazil's Amazon region long before the wave of immigrants and government-sponsored infrastructure projects of the 1960s and 1970s. De la Torre sheds light on the vexing question of the relationship between material and natural environments and socio-cultural identities."—John Soluri, Carnegie Mellon University

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