BETWEEN THE GARDEN, THE RIVER AND THE TOWN: TERRITORIALITY AND INDIGENOUS FOOD CIRCUITS IN THE UPPER RIO NEGRO

Abstract

This article asks how urbanization, territorial mobility and present-day market relations reshape the circuits through which food is produced, obtained, exchanged and eaten by Indigenous peoples in the Upper Rio Negro, with particular attention to São Gabriel da Cachoeira, Amazonas, Brazil. It is a bibliographic and documentary study that brings together the geographic, anthropological and food-related literature on the region and public documents, chiefly the records of the National Historic and Artistic Heritage Institute (IPHAN) on the Traditional Agricultural System of the Rio Negro and the results of the 2022 Demographic Census. Milton Santos's notion of used territory guides the reading. The article argues that the growth of the municipal seat cannot be read simply as the abandonment of Indigenous food systems. The literature records multi-sited arrangements that combine swidden gardens, river, forest, kinship networks, villages, town, commerce and public programmes. These arrangements show a capacity to recompose livelihoods, but they also stem from concrete constraints, such as the scarcity of arable land around the town, travel costs and a growing need for cash income. The territorial approach makes it possible to describe food as circulation between unequally equipped places rather than as a state of preservation or loss of tradition, a shift with consequences for research and for policy design.