Neoliberal use of territory and condemned people of the earth: permanence of injustice and inequality situation in Brazilian time-space

Abstract

The main purpose of this writing is to discuss the neoliberal use – a trend reactivated by the current capitalism dynamics – of Brazilian territory, not only expanding, but, at the same time, aggravating the condition of land’s condemned to people belonging to indigenous peoples, enslaved Africans, riverside dwellers and their descendants. Under the critical approach to geography, which studies society through the category of territory used permanently within the scope of the global historical process, we notably use the methodological procedures of literature review and the superposition of maps designed to represent the phenomena discussed here, in its transversality relationships. This choice was made due to its relevance to understanding space as a complex totality in permanent historical movement. The continuity of the coloniality of power and knowledge, based on Eurocentrism, has contributed to the maintenance of injustices and social inequalities in Brazilian time-space, condemning these people to the condition of sub-citizenship and denial, despite social achievements in terms of emancipation that occurred during the course of the historical movement. However, the civil society has taken advantage of the loopholes in the colonial-modern-racist capitalist system, some of which remain and/or are opened by the condemned of the earth in order to re-exist in the search for the construction of another rationality capable of rescuing lost humanity.