Experiências vividas, naturezas construídas: enchentes no Pantanal (Porto Murtinho – 1970-1990)

Abstract

The realtionship between man and nature, in Swampland, its interaction with ecosystem, the way to notice and mix with the peculiarities of the environment is marked by the cicle of the floods and its antithesis, droughts. The human experiments in a region historically valued, mainly by its environmental characteristics, are our proposal for discussion. Using the methodology of oral history, we know the experiences of the subjects, their daily practices and their life trajectory, while occupant in waterlands, especially in Porto Murtinho-MS. To understand how the local history includes, in their characteristics and modifications, the phenomenon of floods, we made a reading of history from the memory of a people that considers the flood a natural phenomenon, but remarkable in the region of Swampland, and the human strategies built for survival in areas traditionally affected by water. Men modify the landscape and the area around it, and they are modified, in the past or present. This network of relations is explained not only or only by political aspects, but also by the social, religious, cultural and economic aspects, and allows the understanding that the human action, individual or collective, is not only an identifiable determinant, but produces own significations, to promote the understanding that the region contains characteristics that go beyond the middle and paradisiac vision of Swampland, which means the regions as a paradise of animal species, reservation of flora and fauna, joining, in a good way of this representation, the waterland man and his history. In this context, the flood, under the perspective of Cultural History, produces a resignification about what a urban tenant is in Swampland and allows us to understand that the floods are not always a problem for that region.