Are There Bandits at Serra Do Mar State Park? Conflicts, Strategies and Multiple Uses of Natural Resources in the Atlantic Forest, São Paulo, Brazil

The history of the relationship between inhabitants and managers of the Picinguaba Administrative Nucleus in the Serra do Mar State Park (SMSP) is characterized by conflicts related to the rights to permanence and to the use of natural resources. The SMPS is located in the northern coast of São Paulo State, the richest and more developed state of Brazil. Created in 1977, the park remained on paper until the beginning of the 1980s decade. At this moment, these inhabitants, rural workers and fishermen, were delegitimized and lost their rights to work and to continue their cultural and productive activities. Since then, the inhabitants were considered illegal or, on their own words, “bandits”, due to the Brazilian law prohibiting the presence of inhabitants inside the Protected Areas with strictly protection. This research aims to analyze the conflicts, strategies and organization of the different social actors (inhabitants, managers, members of NGOs and researchers) related to the Picinguaba Nucleus, the use of natural resources and the access to land. All these actors have their own interests, perspectives, struggles and action strategies, and organize themselves around them in a very complex and multi-level arena. This conflict caused new forms of social organization in the SMSP: local leaders arose and communal associations that aim the struggle for the inhabitants rights were created. Three issues are transversal to this conflict and the strategies followed by the actors along the years: land issue, identity issue and use and conservation of natural resources issue. Thus, the inhabitants were organized around the struggle for their right to land, and using categories such as traditional people. All of this in a context with a Protected Area with strictly protection, located in a region not only with high biodiversity, but with a history of use of natural resources and human occupation.