BR-319: A coloniality space on the new Amazon frontiers

With the use of sociological concepts and categories, this article aims to understand how the Amazon region has been a locus of the capitalist/modernizing logic actions for decades so far, and how these are still present today through the use of new strategies and terms to try to conceal the real intentions and results of these actions. In this sense, the examination of the current condition of repaving project/process of BR-319, the road that connects Manaus to Porto Velho, is a privileged object to understand these actions and their results. The methodological approach is theoretical and qualitative. And the article is structured first focused on two central sociological concepts for such task. Through Jose de Souza Martins writing's, - it seeks to demonstrate how this road can be understood as a classical frontier space. And Anibal Quijano helps to understand the coloniality process expressed in these modernizing projects. After the conceptual understanding, the article takes secondary data about the road, from journalistic and scientific articles, official documents, and other kinds, to make an articulation between the historical and contemporary condition of two communities along the road axis - Vila de Realidade and Comunidade de Sao Sebastiao do Igapo Acu. This whole effort serves to demonstrate how certain historical and social conditions, even if updated to the current discursive demands, are maintained and reproduced in the contemporary Brazilian Amazonian reality.