Baseado em uma perspectiva inovadora assentada sob a investigação de fontes policiais para o estudo da história da geografia brasileira e sob a metodologia oriunda dos surveillance studies, o projeto em questão busca analisar a vigilância dos órgãos estatais de informação sobre a militância político-intelectual do ibgeano Orlando Valverde durante a ditadura civil-militar brasileira (1964-1985), mostrando como a repressão sobre ele, embora o tenha coibido, não o impediu de exercer resistência e de trabalhar para a redemocratização do país no âmbito, sobretudo, da Campanha Nacional de Defesa e Desenvolvimento da Amazônia (CNDDA).
This work examines the territorial dynamics of the Buieié Quilombo over two decades, confronting data on the evolution of land use with punctual experiential accounts of how landscape transformations are experienced by members of the community in the face of contemporary territorial pressures. Located in the Zona da Mata Mineira, the community deals with socio-environmental pressures that have stimulated changes in the landscape and in ways of life. The research combines a literature review, analysis of satellite images (2002–2025), and semi-structured interviews with residents to examine transformations in the territory and the challenges to community resilience. The results reveal the growing influence of monocultures (eucalyptus and coffee) in the surroundings, the reduction of traditional agricultural areas, and the expansion of rural and urban constructions. Despite the vulnerabilities, especially caused by the expansion of the city toward the territory, the community demonstrates resilience through collective organization, access to educational public policies, and cultural preservation strategies. The study highlights the need for definitive land titling and for policies that strengthen quilombola autonomy in the face of external pressures.
André Thevet (1516–1592) made his mark on the history of 16th-century Brazilian cartography. His unfinished nautical atlas, Grand Insulaire et Pilotage (1586), brings together 229 maps of islands, a large proportion of which are located in Brazil. The recent discovery of a much more complete version of the work has revealed new maps, nine of which are presented, located and commented on in this article – three of which were already known and six of which were previously unknown. These maps offer a fragmented view of Brazil, a country that was still relatively unknown to Europeans at the time. This fragmentation also symbolises the colonial rivalry between the French, Dutch and Portuguese, who were competing for control of disjointed coastal areas.
Chiara Vangelista’s book, Cartografia Migrante (2025), analyses the legacy of Hercule Florence (1804–1879), a French draughtsman, explorer, cartographer and inventor. Born in Nice, a Savoyard by birth and an Italian by adoption, he arrived in Brazil in 1824. He joined the Langsdorff Expedition (1825–1829), a major scientific expedition to Brazil funded by the Russian tsars. Hired as the second draughtsman, he travelled over 13,000 km along the Tietê, Paraná, Paraguay, Tapajós and Amazon rivers, alongside Baron Georg von Langsdorff. Following the death of the draughtsman Adrien Taunay in 1828 and von Langsdorff’s illness, he became the sole witness, documenting the fauna, flora and indigenous peoples through watercolours, sketches and his journal. His archives, forgotten for a century in Saint Petersburg, were rediscovered in 1930; today, two digital platforms trace his journey. A pioneer of zoophony (1830) and photography (1833), he was also the author of the first pictorial atlas of clouds and epitomised the encyclopaedic spirit of the 19th century.
Translation of the article by Yves Lacoste entitled Les géographes, l’action et le politique, the editorial published in the double issue 33-34 of the journal Hérodote, relating to the first semester of 1984.
This text presents a set of observations from the trip made between the cities of Manaus, Novo Aripuanã and Manicoré in January and February 2025, making observations and following the dynamics of river transportation along the Amazon and Madeira rivers. The text seeks to provide a varied set of figures that were obtained by the author during her travels and that portray the different transportation dynamics and existing networks.
This study examines how collective agroecological transition processes, grounded in the Peasant-to-Peasant Methodology, contribute to strengthening food and nutritional sovereignty and security in Cuba. The investigation draws on an ethnographic approach conducted during an immersive training program in the country, aimed at understanding how the Agroecological Revolution has helped ensure the human right to adequate food. The findings highlight the transformative nature of agroecology, expressed through the valorization of peasant knowledge, cooperation, and community organization. At the same time, they reveal the constraints imposed by an adverse geopolitical context marked by the ongoing economic blockade. In this scenario, the Cuban experience underscores the need to link agroecological transition efforts with the broader struggle to end the blockade and to promote economic and social justice.
This article discusses the growing militarization of urban life, using Praça Rio Branco in Belo Horizonte as an empirical example. In the format of research notes, the paper argues that the perception of fear and insecurity is used to legitimize the militarization and exclusion of vulnerable groups, especially the homeless and drug-using population. It then proposes an alternative approach to demilitarized urban intervention, focusing on public health and assisted drug use, as a counterpoint to repressive strategies that often prove ineffective in organizing space and public life in contemporary times.
The Kivus provinces, on the eastern border of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), have been in a state of chronic violence since the Congo Wars (1996-2003), and are experiencing a new geopolitical upheaval with the second rebellion of the M23 group (March 23 Movement), sponsored by Rwanda. North and South Kivus are traversed by the conflict front, where armies and armed groups are accompanied by the discourse of ethnic nationalism, making the front line a real, symbolic, and imaginary attribute. In terms of human rights, there are violations by all actors involved, according to the United Nations, suggesting the establishment of a kind of front against human rights in the Kivus.
This article aims to contribute to the Marine Spatial Planning (PEM) process in the state of Amapá, Brazil, based on the organization and analysis of multisectoral data based on thematic descriptors defined in federal regulations. The research is based on a geographical approach, with emphasis on the socio-environmental diagnosis of the Coastal Zone of Amapá, a region characterized by a vast biodiversity and a marked deficit of systematized information. From the consultation and compilation of secondary databases, thematic maps of the physical and biological characteristics that configure the local marine-coastal space were produced. The results reveal the peculiarities of this coastline based on technical and scientific knowledge produced over the years, which point to the fragilities of the region, signaling the importance of planning strategies that consider local specificities and respect the principles of Integrated Coastal Management (ICG). The study highlights the lack of up-to-date data, especially in relation to human activities in the sea, biodiversity and infrastructure, which compromises decision-making for public policies aimed at the sustainable management of this territory. It is concluded that the systematization of geographic information is an essential step to subsidize marine planning and governance actions, especially in regions such as Amapá, where the informational gap is still a challenge, pointing, producing and analyzing critically. The experience presented here can serve as a methodological reference for other areas of the Atlantic Amazon and contribute to the implementation of the PEM on a national scale.
In just a few decades, Shenzhen has managed to establish itself as one of the leading centers of manufacturing and innovation in the field of hardware. This article thus seeks to revisit the recent history of this development model, theorized at the intersection of open-source culture and the modular approach of shanzhai (山寨) production, before examining its role in the Greater Bay Area integration project. Published by Beijing in February 2019, this plan aims to leverage the Special Economic Zone’s specialization in high technology as well as the complementarities between the various municipalities to coordinate growth and create a megaregion capable of competing with the bays of Tokyo, New York, and San Francisco.
This article discusses elements of state violence and militarization conveyed through images captured along the Mexico–United States border. The images underpinning this commentary were taken by a team composed of three Brazilian researchers and one Mexican researcher within the framework of a joint academic international cooperation project aimed at understanding militarization and drug trafficking in Latin America and the Caribbean. During the fieldwork conducted in May 2025, the content of the images made evident elements already well established in the literature regarding the presence of violence in the process of militarizing social issues in Latin America, particularly migration and cross-border control.
Although there are several studies on federal states and their political-administrative regions, the convergence of territorial networks is still insufficiently addressed, especially regarding the key points and connections necessary to understand the projections of the State in transition. Due to the continental dimensions of Brazil, including a significant portion of the Amazon, the space-territory was examined with the central objective of interpreting the country’s territorial design. Based on five centuries of historical formation, the emergence of points within the political-administrative networks was mapped as active spatial subsystems. Territorial transformation demonstrates regional implications associated with the organic connections between different compartments that have accompanied the structural dynamics of the territory. It is argued that the complexity of the state network produced a heterogeneous pattern, influencing how certain points and their connections contributed to the stability of the Federation and to the regional hierarchy of the country. The systematized mapping of the space-territory confirms the existence of spatial patterns and compartments, indicating the urgent need to improve the processes and models of regional development in Brazil. In this context, accompanying the innovation of regions in transition, the spatial system has actively participated — and continues to participate — in the conception, restructuring, and territorial and national projection of strategic development.
The Mapa da Segurança Pública 2024 (SNSP) recorded 37,639 intentional homicides in Brazil in 2023 (103 per day, 91.8 per cent of whom were men). Rio (1,118), Salvador (986) and Manaus (866) top the list. São Paulo has the lowest rate (5.64 per 100,000), whilst Amapá has the highest (41.29). According to the Atlas da Violência (SIM/Sinan), the victims are mainly young men (90%), black or mixed-race (76%), with low levels of education: a total of 326,532 young people died between 2011 and 2021. In 1999, homicides were concentrated along the São Paulo–Rio de Janeiro axis; by 2019, they had shifted to the Northeast and the Amazon region. In 2024, the concentration in poor regions (the North-East and the Amazon) and low rates in the South and South-East (except Rio de Janeiro) are confirmed: the reduction in more developed areas can be explained by law enforcement and agreements between factions, whilst in the North-East and the Amazon, a lack of resources and rivalries between criminal groups intensify conflicts.
