Coloniality in the Appropriation of Nature: Agrofuel Production, Dependency, and Constant Primitive Accumulation in the Periphery of Capitalism

• Published date: 01 September 2018
• Author: Sérgio H. Rocha Franco,Wendell Ficher Teixeira Assis
• Date: 01 September 2018
• DOI: 10.1177/0094582X17707924
• Subject Matter: Articles

LATIN AMERICAN PERSPECTIVES, Issue 222, Vol. 45 No. 5, September 2018, 35–51

DOI: 10.1177/0094582X17707924

© 2017 Latin American Perspectives

35

Coloniality in the Appropriation of Nature

Agrofuel Production, Dependency, and Constant Primitive

Accumulation in the Periphery of Capitalism

by

Wendell Ficher Teixeira Assis and Sérgio H. Rocha Franco

The expansion of sugarcane monoculture for the production of agrofuels since the early

2000s has caused territorial reconfigurations in the Brazilian countryside. This territorial

reordering represents both a lucrative way of employing idle capital and the geographical

expansion of capital domains. In the process, new markets are created and leveraged by

discourses of environmental conservation while air, soil, and water are depredated and

indigenous people, peasants, and quilombolas are dispossessed and dragged into new

circuits of accumulation. Linked to the continuous search for new fronts of accumulation

and the increasing commodification of nature, Brazilian agrofuel production may be

understood as an expression of the logic of coloniality.

A expansão da monocultura açucareira com vistas a produção de agro combustíveis tem

causado reconfigurações territoriais na área rural brasileira. Implementada desde o princípio

dos anos 2000, essa reordenação territorial apresenta ao mesmo tempo o emprego lucrativo

do capital ocioso e a expansão geográfica do domínio do capital. Nesse processo, novos mer-

cados são criados e alavancados por discursos ambientalistas, enquanto ar, solo e água são

devastados. Demais, a população indígena, os campesinos e os quilombolas sofrem destitu-

ição e são forçados a integrar novos circuitos de acumulação. Relacionados à busca de novas

frentes de acumulação e à comercialização da natureza, a produção brasileira de agro com-

bustível pode ser compreendida como expressão da lógica da colonialidade.

Keywords: Environmental conflicts, Dependency, Modernity/coloniality, Foreign direct

investment, Primitive accumulation

The steady advance of sugarcane monoculture from the 2000s on has recon-

figured forms of territorial appropriation in several Brazilian regions. This

article aims to articulate theoretical knowledge and empirical data regarding

concrete territorial changes in such a way that some aspects of social reality are

turned into the spiral that connects conceptual abstraction and praxis (Bourdieu,

Chamboredon, and Passeron, 2007: 48, 51, 72). The expansion of sugarcane

monoculture for agrofuel production has been legitimated by hegemonic

Wendell Ficher Teixeira Assis holds a Ph.D. in urban and regional planning and is a professor at

the Institute of Social Sciences at the Federal University of Alagoas in Brazil and a researcher at

the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro’s State, Labor, Land, and Nature Laboratory. Sérgio H.

Rocha Franco holds Master’s degrees in political science and sociology and is currently a Ph.D.

candidate in sociology at the University of Barcelona and a junior researcher in the “Trajectories

of Modernity” project.

707924LAPXXX10.1177/0094582X17707924Latin American PerspectivesAssis and Franco / Coloniality In The Appropriation Of Nature

research-article2017

36 LATIN AMERICAN PERSPECTIVES

discourses in a context of scant research about the environmental and territorial

conflicts underlying the asymmetrical appropriation of nature and their inter-

relations with current power dispositions in the colonial/modern world sys-

tem (Quijano and Wallerstein, 1992). One main concern of this article is precisely

to help fill this gap by discussing how agrofuel production contributes to main-

taining a kind of modernity sustained by the exploitation of territories inhab-

ited by indigenous people, riverside communities, peasants, and quilombolas,1

among others.

To achieve this goal, the paper is structured around two interlocking parts.

The first part focuses on analyses of the amount and origin of foreign direct

investment in ethanol production to point out that agrofuel production has been

a profitable way to avoid overaccumulated capital devaluation in centralized

economies. Thus the territorial reordering that accompanies sugarcane mono-

culture represents both a lucrative way of employing idle capital and the geo-

graphical expansion of capital domains. Furthermore, there is a connection

between financial and climate crisis through which new markets are created and

leveraged by discourses of environmental conservation. In the process, air, soil,

and water are depredated and social groups such as indigenous people, river-

side communities, and peasants are dragged into new circuits of accumulation.

The second part relies on the findings of two fieldwork visits in areas of

sugarcane monoculture expansion in which members of social movements,

trade unions, and rural dwellers were interviewed. The first fieldwork took

place in November and December 2006 and the second in May 2010. Taken

together, the visits covered regions of three Brazilian states: Triângulo Mineiro

in Minas Gerais, Oeste Paulista in São Paulo, and southwestern Mato Grosso

do Sul. Structured and semistructured interviews conducted with representa-

tives of rural labor unions, governmental entities, rural technical assistance

staff, members of indigenous organizations, small farmers, members of the

Pastoral Land Commission, cane cutters, representatives of the Indigenous

Missionary Center, local merchants, prostitutes, agrarian reform settlers, land

tenants, politicians, and representatives of rural cooperatives were supple-

mented with field notes.

Following writers such as Luxemburg (1970), De Angelis (2001), Oliveira

(2003), and Harvey (2004), our argument relies on the contention that primitive

accumulation is an ongoing process. This understanding relates to classical

debates about the accumulation process under capitalism. Though these

debates are not discussed in depth here, we assume that the process of primi-

tive accumulation is structural and is always being updated and reemerging. It

then follows that territorial expansion is crucial for capital accumulation and

must be considered in a comprehensive way; to use surplus value more pro-

ductively, it is of the utmost importance for capital to acquire increasing

amounts of land to support an unlimited quantitative and qualitative selection

of its means of production (Luxemburg, 1970).

Therefore, we argue that sugarcane monocultures for agrofuel production

represent an increase of capital accumulation through the control and exploita-

tion of new territories and at the same time nurture practices of dependency

such as the subordination of small producers, the pillage of rural populations,

the commodification of nature, and subservience to capital mobility. Following