Fragile Lands of Latin America Strategies for ... - PART - USAID

Extractive Reserves 153
extraction in areas where reserves are being created is weak or non-
existent. Studies of these systems are urgently needed, particularly in
light of current environmental trends in the Amazon.
Extraction and Autonomous Rubber Tappers:
Units of Production and Land Tenure
The basic unit of native rubber production in the Amazon since the
rubber boom has been the seringal, translated by Weinstein (1983) in
her study of the rubber boom as "rubber estate."' During the rubber
boom, and up to the present in many regions of the western Amazon,
the seringal was subdivided into a barracdo, or depot, the headquarters
of the patron's operation where rubber was bought and merchandise
sold, and a number of coloca~des, or holdings, the residences of rubber
tapper families. In the seringais occupied by independent rubber tap-
pers, the barraG%o no longer exists, since the patrons have either
abandoned the seringais or sold out to cattle ranchers from the south
(Schwartzman and Allegretti, in press). In seringais with ongoing con-
flicts, the barra~ao has typically become the ranch house or headquar-
ters of the cattle ranch.
Seringal Cachoeira, located in the municipality of Xapuri some 15
kilometers south of the BR-317 highway on the Bolivian border, oc-
cupies 24,898 hectares and is inhabited by 67 rubber tapper families,
or about 420 people. The average size per holding is about 372 ha.
Seringal Cachoeira, like the majority of the seringais in Xapuri, was
sold to a cattle rancher in 1978 whose manager lives where the depot
formerly stood. Unlike on the other seringais in the vicinity of the
county seat and near the road, the rancher who claims Cachoeira has
not deforested any of the land. In October 1987, the rubber tappers
staged a successfbl demonstration against the opening of a road which
the rancher had wanted to run through the seringal, and blocked its
construction. Like most of the seringais in the area, Seringal Cachoeira
is also claimed by the rubber tappers who live there (many of them
for over thirty years). Legal title to clearly delimited areas of land was
relatively unimportant during the rubber boom. Control over a labor
force dispersed through the forest according to the location of unevenly
distributed rubber trees was more important. Consequently, many of
the titles sold during the land boom of the 1970s are imprecise or
conflict with other claims. In addition, untitled occupants (posseiros),
such as the rubber tappers who can show that they have been on the
land for more than a year and have made improvements, have rights
under Brazilian land legislation. Seringal Cachoeira was surveyed in