ABSTRACT
The present chapter deals with the capillary forms of Brazilian anti-trafficking policies in the Amazon and their possible relationships to the practices and dynamics of racism. The argument is that these policies actively participate in the performative updating of a legacy of colonial governance technology related to the racialized management of Amazonian territory. This technology of governance that is referred to is historical and multidimensional. It has been going through a process of irregular construction, revision and reinvention from the times of the first European colonization of the Amazon. From then until now, in different forms, its principal agents have been the strategic relations between the State (colonial, imperial or republican, national or transnational), diverse armed and explorational forces, different mercantile and commercial agents focused on the exploration of natural resources, and, very important in this case, Christian institutions.
