O projeto Radar na Amazônia: tecnociência na ditadura militar brasileira (1964-1985)

Abstract

The dissertation analyses the provenance, development and consequences of the Project Radar in the Amazon (RADAM). The project was created in 1970, in line with the National Integration Programme and its main objectives were to carry out a survey of natural resources in the Amazon region with a view to promoting the colonisation of the region through the implementation of economic activities that would generate high foreign exchange earnings. As a result of documentary research we had access to a heterogeneous set of historical sources including internal reports of the project, authorial texts and reports of scientists participating in the fieldwork, final research reports, maps, photographs, in addition to administrative documents, all available for consultation in the Brazilian National Archive and in the library of the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics. This dissertation is the result of a master's degree research carried out in the Postgraduate Program in History at the Universidade Federal da Fronteira Sul, in the research line History of settlement, agriculture and the environment. The dissertation is divided into three parts: the first one seeks to elucidate the context of the construction of the need for economic development and cartography as a fundamental instrument of national progress, which ultimately generates the RADAM project; Finally, we seek to discuss how the information and knowledge produced by RADAM were mobilized in the formation of new social collectives promoted by the military dictatorship, emphasizing that in this process, while a certain type of relationship/occupation of the territory was promoted and encouraged, it ended up excluding other forms of social-ecological relations, producing the exclusion of humans and non-humans. In the theoretical and methodological aspect, we seek support in the intersection between Environmental History, History of Sciences and social studies of Science, Technology and Society.