ResumoAo longo das décadas de 1970 e 1980, a Amazônia se tornou um símbolo de debates sobre o futuro do planeta, destacando não apenas riscos ecológicos, mas também conflitos fundiários e exploração humana, e provocando indignação muito além das fronteiras brasileiras. Com base em um estudo da fazenda de criação de gado Cristalino, estabelecida em 1973 pela Volkswagen com o apoio do regime militar, o artigo explora as razões da "globalização política" da Amazônia. Ao tentar atrair atenção internacional para suas políticas de colonização da floresta, que apresentaram como um modelo universal, o governo brasileiro e seus parceiros de negócios contribuíram involuntariamente para transformar a Amazônia em uma arena de controvér-sias globais. Palavras-chave: Amazônia; história global; regime militar. AbstractOver the 1970s and 1980s, the Amazon became a symbol of debates about the planet's future, highlighting not only ecological risks but also land conflict and human exploitation, and provoking indignation far beyond Brazilian borders. Based on a study of the Cristalino cattle-ranch, established in 1973 by the VW Company with the support of the military regime, the article explores the reasons for the "political globalization" of the Amazon. By trying to attract global attention for their policies of forest colonization, which they presented as a universal model, the Brazilian government and its business partners unwittingly contributed to turning the Amazon into an arena of global controversies.

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This article aims to identify new historical causes for the making of the Anthropocene (the rise of humans to a geological force) by addressing Brazil’s transformation into an oil producer and an oil-dependent country between 1930 and 1975. This example allows an escape from the essentialist explanation of the Anthropocene as the result of humans’ insatiable appetite for consumption, commonly rooted in an analysis of Western industrial society, and to focus instead on the notion of freedom in a former colony. Indeed, in the context of nation-building and modernization debates, petroleum appeared to many Brazilians as an opportunity to emancipate the country from its peripheral role as global raw material provider. The rise of petroleum gave a post-colonial sense to the nation-founding myth of Brazil’s exceptional nature, which served as romantic background for a movement towards resource sovereignty embedded into a global anti-imperialist context. In Brazil specifically, oil production became an opportunity for a process of ecological transformation that promised to rid the country of colonial landscapes of exploitation, and even appeared as a solution for stopping the unsustainable destruction of tropical forests. Ultimately, these petro-ideals of emancipation, by positively linking nature and the nation, also hindered fully detecting the scope of the pollution problems that oil was generating. As argued in the article’s conclusion, this example should rekindle the discussion about the unintended link between freedom and geological change in the analysis of Anthropocene causalities.

« La marque qui connaît notre terre » : l’enracinement de Volkswagen au Brésil, 1968-1973 L’article retrace l’enracinement de Volkswagen ( vw ) au Brésil dans les années 1960-1970. En s’appropriant les discours locaux sur le développement, l’entreprise s’imposa comme un partenaire du projet national brésilien. La conversion « nationale-développementaliste » de vw fut permise par la dictature au pouvoir, qui voyait dans l’ouverture au capital étranger un pas nécessaire vers la modernisation du pays.

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