Lago Do Amapá: Hidrogeomorfologia De Um Paleomeandro Do Rio Acre

Abstract

This text presents a historical and contextual narrative about the formation and changes that occurred in a large territorial area located in the Lower Acre River Valley, which in the early twentieth century was near Vila Rio Branco, the administrative headquarters of the then Department of Alto Acre. This administrative department was one of three such entities established by the Brazilian government in 1904, shortly after the official incorporation of Acre State at the end of 1903, when the country signed the Treaty of Petrópolis with Bolivia. The area in question, in the face of colonization and extractive occupation processes occurring in the late nineteenth century, first evolved as a rubber plantation and then underwent fragmentation and acquired agricultural function, in conjunction with the extractive exploitation that had been waning in strength in the decades following the 1910s. This land use began to undergo significant changes in the mid-1940s, marked by new forms of territorial occupation and diversified exploitation activities of the former Amapá rubber plantation. The area acquired multiple uses (extraction, hunting, fishing, agricultural production, leisure, environmental preservation, housing, and commercial activities), facilitating the emergence of new territorialities throughout the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, reinforced by changes in land ownership (territorial fragmentation by lease, inheritance sharing, sale, occupation, and expropriation). Nowadays, this geographical area that corresponded to the former rubber plantation known as Amapá is largely territorialized and still carries its old name. The rubber plantation, however, is now referred to by multifaceted nomenclatures, such as colônias do/no Amapá, bairro do Amapá, praia do Amapá, areal do Amapá, APA do Amapá, Lago do Amapá. These examples demonstrate the dynamic discursive forms that serve to name changes of geographical, historical, environmental, and economic nature experienced by the area in just over a century. The referential name is the same, but the meanings are different and loaded with stories.