Cartografia social e conflitos territoriais no assentamento Sabiaguaba, Ceará, Brasil

Abstract

Traditional communities have an intrinsic relationship with the environment that they live for they do activities related to environmental resources as a way of life and add symbolic values to it. Then, the Sabiaguaba settlement that’s located in the east of the citty of Amontada, west coast of Ceará, and is made up of three communities: Caetanos de Cima, Matilha and Pixaim. Since 2009 its territory has been involved in disputes over the implementation of large public-private projects like the construction of a tourist complex and wind farms. In this context, the present research there was how objective the analyzing the territorial conflicts of the Sabiaguaba settlement through the construction of social and conflict maps; and elaboration of the participative diagnosis of the settlement. In this way, social cartography was used as a methodological approach, a participatory mapping tool that allows an analysis of the local reality together with the studied communities, as well as the cartographic representation of the analyzed territor. Monthly fields were done in the study área (2017 – 2018) where happened the steps of map construction, participatory diagnosis, interviews and conversation wheels were carried out. In this way, seven potentialities and problems of the territory were found and discussed, as well as three areas of conflict in the settlement were identified and analyzed, creating a settlement conflict map. In addition, it was possible to verify that the construction of the map mobilized young people and adults of the communities due to the symbolic value of the map as an instrument of struggle against the territorial challenges of which it is inserted. It’s concluded that the territorial conflicts that the settlement possesses are composed of agents internal and external to its territory, which consequently mobilizes groups in response and resistance to them. Finally, social cartography is becoming an empowering instrument of community order contributing to territorial management at various levels of performance.