The local politics of a global hotspot: Environmentalists, farmers, quilombolas, and nativos in Brazil's Atlantic Forest

The coastal Atlantic Forest in Southern Bahia, Brazil is the subject of an intense contemporary debate with broad social and environmental repercussions. Here, environmentalists, family farmers, quilombolas (Afro-Brazilian descendents of slaves living in quilombo communities), and nativos (people born in this region) compete and negotiate for control of some of the most ecologically significant and rapidly disappearing land on the planet. These interactions occur not only among people with deeply entrenched race, class, and ideological differences, but through separate social movements and activist groups that often hold conflicting positions.;Environmentalists claim that land reform or independent family farmers near ecologically important areas pose threats to their conservation agenda. Family farmers resent natural areas being reserved for "plants rather than people" and complain an elitist environmental movement can be disconnected from the plight of the poor. In similar yet distinctive voices, quilombolas and nativos bemoan the loss of land and livelihood opportunities to what they view as esoteric environmental conservation, elites with capital and power, and neoliberal development. While in the past these groups have been able to pursue their goals in relative isolation or in collaboration with like-minded allies they must increasingly interact around common issues of ecology, economy, and culture that particularly impact their lives in what is known as a global "hotspot.";In this dissertation, I argue that differences in history, class, race, identity, subjectivity, and conceptions of place create important cultural politics that shape the relations among existing and emerging social movements and activist groups in Bahia's Atlantic Forest. I particularly focus on group leaders as important conduits for revealing how cultural politics are often ignored or suppressed. I explore how histories of colonialism and clientalism, constraints of race and class, and forms of "othering" create distinct separations among contemporary social movements and activist groups and inhibit their present-day relations and ability to unite around powerful forces that threaten their way of life. I conclude that studying across social movements and activist groups is valuable for illuminating critical power inequities and, in turn, for creating new cultural politics that have important ramifications for people and place.