| Summary: | The article develops a critical analysis of the Calha Norte Program (CNP) based on the concept of spatial practices between 1985 and 2018. Founded in 1985, CNP was then part of the Brazilian National Security Council. It underwent several institutional changes before being aggregated into the Ministry of Defense in 1999. Being labeled by Brazilian White Papers as a Defense Social Program from 2012 on, CNP is an infrastructural program with military and civilian branches, covering all seven States of the North region of the country plus the States of Maranhão, Mato Grosso, and Mato Grosso do Sul. We begin the article reviewing critical documents and specialized texts related to the institutional policies created by the program. The theoretical approach is grounded in the concept of spatial practice, formulated by Henri Lefebvre and firstly applied to the Amazonian context by geographer Bertha Becker. They have seen space as a subjective political relation in which the State produces itself from the interaction with other socio-political agencies. From our point of view, CNP conceives the Amazonian environment as rudimentary and within a power vacuum, responding to that by affirming that military institutions are uniquely competent to bring a one-dimensional development program.
|
|---|
