Conserving human and other nature:

A curious case of convivial conservation from Brazil∗

Jonathan DeVore†
Eric Hirsch‡
Susan Paulson§

Abstract
This article supports a concept of convivial conservation, here con-
ceived as efforts to establish vital interdependencies among humans
and ecosystems, toward the mutual regeneration of both. Building
from ethnographic research we have carried out among subaltern Latin
American communities, indigenous and otherwise, we focus on rural
Brazilian squatter communities that arose in the 1990s in opposition to
plantation economies that have degraded both human and non-human
life. In discourses and writings of conservation and environment work-
ers, members of such non-indigenous squatter communities are some-
times marked as ignorant, if not hostile, adversaries of nature, and
their reliance upon slash-and-burn techniques condemned as destruc-
tive. As these families redress long-standing distributive injustices
that have injured their lives, we find novel commitments to conserv-
ing nature, as expressed through squatters’ efforts to cultivate native
∗
This is an unpublished English version of the published French version, which can
be cited as: DeVore, Jonathan, Eric Hirsch, and Susan Paulson. 2019. “Conserver la
nature humaine et non humaine Un curieux cas de conservation conviviale au Brésil.”
Anthropologie et Sociétés, 43(3):31-58. https://doi.org/10.7202/1070148ar
†
Visiting Assistant Professor, Anthropology and Latin American, Latino/a and
Caribbean Studies, Miami University, devorejd@miamioh.edu.
‡
Assistant Professor, Department of Earth and Environment, Franklin and Marshall
College, eric.hirsch@fandm.edu.
§
Professor, Center for Latin American Studies, University of Florida,
spaulson@latam.ufl.edu.

1
 tree species within their agroforests. These non-utilitarian commit-
ments to conserve native trees defy presuppositions of an ideological
field informing diverse approaches to nature conservation —whether
“fortress,” “participatory,” or “development”-oriented— which vari-
ously renders different human populations into either quasi-natural
“guardians” or “enemies” of nature. Seeking to move beyond this ide-
ological field, we examine possibilities of nature conservation outside
of formal conservation areas. We argue that redressing long-standing
distributive injustices can foster human practices that jointly repro-
duce sociocultural and biophysical processes.

Introduction: Scenes of amity and en-

mity
We begin with two scenes from our ethnographic research in Latin
America, both involving rural families’ attempts to invoke the earth’s
fertility:1
In the first scene, consider a song that three indigenous Quechua-
speaking farmers sang to their land in the Colca Valley of Peru’s south-
ern Andes, the site where Hirsch conducted two years of ethnographic
research between 2008 and 2017. One late September afternoon in
2014, the bass-toned voices of Dons Máximo, Sabino, and Gerardo
reverberated down multiple levels of a terraced farm and into the val-
ley below. Their song beseeched the earth to allow the seeds they
had just planted to be warm and to bear fruit. The song began after
they had hydrated themselves and the terrain with their home vil-
lage’s particularly strong brew of chicha, a sacred drink of fermented
maize and barley. Their Quechua-language verses, forming a chant
called the “Hialeo,” had them shout out the name of the feminine-
gendered terrain, “Mama Ch’ela.” They praised the Pachamama, the
plow bulls that had helped them in their labor, their home villages,
and their families. As these words of praise were chanted to help the
seeds grow, the verses also conveyed the singers’ satisfaction after a
day of collaborative labor. Dons Máximo, Sabino, and Gerardo were
able to end the long day in convivial celebration. Singing to the land,
and nourishing it with chicha, is a form of conserving and sustaining
1
We wish to thank Kevin M. Flesher, Nicholas C. Kawa, Mark Moritz, Felipe Pinheiro,
and Barbara Piperata for conversations and comments on different iterations of this work.

2
the laborers’ relationship of reciprocity with seeds and soil.
In the second scene, consider a small group of landless men clearing
a plot of forest along the coastal cacao zone of southern Bahia, Brazil,
the site where DeVore began conducting several years of ethnographic
research beginning in 2002. One early September morning in 2002, De-
Vore joined Colodino, his brothers, and their sons as they cut through
the understory of young rainforest that had regrown on an abandoned
plantation called Nossa Senhora, where they had begun squatting in
1997. The men’s voices, calls, and occasional laughter reverberated
through the surrounding forest, together with the sounds of machetes,
axes, and a borrowed chainsaw they used to cut through twisted vines
and sever the trunks of young trees (see Figure 1). Clearing the un-
derstory vegetation, they were preparing the land to be burned and
later cultivated with manioc9, beans, bananas, and vegetables, and
eventually enriched with various perennial agroforestry trees. The
men did not praise the forest or sing the name of the land. But they
ended their day of collaborative labor in convivial celebration, playing
dominos in front of Colodino’s house, listening to loud seresta music,
and sharing a bottle of cachac̃a to celebrate their satisfying day of
hard work. Into the evening, Colodino and the other men engaged in
an impassioned conversation about “environmentalists” who condemn
them for destroying the rainforest.

3
 Figure 1: Squatters at Nossa Senhora clearing forest understory for
eventual burning and cultivation. September 16, 2003. Photo by
Jonathan DeVore.

These two scenes form the backdrop for our inquiry into a debate
that informs different theories, practices, and policies of nature conser-
vation, a debate whose most polarized positions are commonly char-
acterized with the terms “fortress” and “participatory.” The cultural
performance of the Quechua-speaking Peruvian men —Dons Máximo,
Sabino, and Gerardo— appears to exemplify the stereotypic closeness-
to-nature frequently associated with indigeneity. This closeness to na-
ture would render them ideal candidates for involvement in so-called
“participatory” (or “community-based”) approaches to conservation.
The cultural performance of the landless Brazilian men, by contrast
—Colodino, his brothers, their sons— can be seen as exemplifying
the stereotypical hostility-to-nature frequently associated with poor
(swidden) farmers around the world. This hostility to nature would
render them ideal targets for exclusion through fortress approaches to
conservation, as hinted in their evening conversation.

Argument and ethnographic context

Recent literature on approaches to nature conservation2 discusses, de-
bates, and critiques the different approaches, stakes, and genealogies of
both fortress and participatory conservation (e.g., Agrawal and Red-
ford 2009; Brockington et al. 2008; Vaccaro et al. 2013). In this contri-
bution, we critically examine aspects of an underlying ideological field
that informs both conservation approaches, influencing each by a con-
ceptual dichotomization, and practical segregation, of wilderness from
humanness. This dichotomization ramifies toward further differentia-
tions among “kinds” of humans with differential value for (or threats
to) conservation efforts. We seek to move away from this ideological
field in support of conversations and conceptualizations of “convivial
conservation” —the topic of a recent panel for the POLLEN18 confer-
ence in Oslo, organized by Bram Büscher and Robert Fletcher, as well
as the topic of their latest book project (Büscher, personal communi-
cation; see also Büscher and Fletcher 2019). In our present discussion,
2
https://www.nytimes.com/1993/03/30/science/brazilian-rain-forest-yields-most-
diversity-for-species-of-trees.html

4
we understand convivial conservation as efforts to establish vital in-
terdependencies among humans and ecosystems, toward the mutual
regeneration of both. The idea of conviviality conveys senses of joy,
cheer, and togetherness from the Latin terms “live” and “with,” while
also deriving from the term convivium, indicating a “banquet” or a
“feast.” The idea of conservation, derived from the Latin terms to
guard, to keep, to watch, likewise conveys a sense of togetherness for
mutual preservation and protection. Building on ideas of co-living,
co-existence, commensality, and co-preservation, we thus understand
convivial conservation as highlighting people’s efforts not only to live
well and with one another, but also to live well and with non-human
beings —for the mutual flourishing of all.
We contribute to incipient research on convivial conservation by of-
fering reflections and analysis on a case that we hope will foster further
dialogue, field inquiries, and clarification of theoretical, practical, and
normative issues. Proceeding from the second scene presented above,
we consider squatter communities that were established in 1997 by
formerly landless Brazilian laborers on the coast of southern Bahia
—a site within Brazil’s Atlantic Forest that harbors particularly high
levels of biodiversity. These communities arose in the aftermath of an
economic crisis caused in part by a witch’s broom fungus (Monilioph-
thora perniciosa, formerly Crinipellis perniciosa) that devastated the
region’s cacao economy beginning in the early 1990s.
During eight summers, between 2001 and 2009, Paulson led field
research schools with graduate and undergraduate students who spent
about a month in Southern Bahia. Each year, Paulson facilitated
participatory learning in the provincial town of Ituberá, at a rubber
plantation and a nearby nature preserve, and among two rural commu-
nities, including the squatter settlement at Nossa Senhora. Initially
a participant in one of these field schools, DeVore subsequently com-
pleted 38 months of ethnographic research between 2002 and 2012 with
families at Nossa Senhora and other nearby squatter communities.
During this time, DeVore collected extensive oral histories and con-
ducted semi-structured interviews; administered household and farm
surveys with 100 households; undertook community and farm map-
ping; worked with locally available historical documents; engaged in
participant observation; and documented local people’s life-histories
through video narratives, briefly discussed below. Our understanding
of research conducted in southern Bahia by Paulson and DeVore has
been deepened and enriched by other research we have carried out

5
elsewhere in Latin America, including Hirsch’s research with Quechua
farmers in the Peruvian Andes, and Paulson’s 15 years of research on
Bolivian socioecosystems.
Unlike indigenous farmers with whom Hirsch worked in the Peru-
vian Andes, who illustrated a kind of human-environment relationality
idealized in environmentalist media around the world (Redford 1990;
Conklin and Graham 1995), we found that squatters on Bahia’s south-
ern coast were strongly marked as environmental threats to remain-
ing patches of Atlantic Forest. Especially because of their reliance
on slash-and-burn agricultural techniques, Brazilian environmental-
ists would sometimes condemn these and other squatters as ignorant,
if not outright hostile, threats to nature. In June 2004, for exam-
ple, a middle-class Brazilian man living in the state capital, Salvador,
shared his opinions about DeVore’s ongoing research with squatters
on Bahia’s southern coast: “Those guys don’t even know what the
environment is.” In another conversation in 2009, a woman working
on a conservation project led by the Odebrecht foundation lamented
how the region’s poor manioc farmers were destroying the Atlantic
Forest, concluding: “If only they were all better educated.”
Squatters living at Nossa Senhora were familiar with such condem-
nations, and often articulated justifications in response. One farmer
named Damião would often repeat the phrase: “I have no interest
in cutting down a tree. But I have to survive.” On another occa-
sion, Damião suggested to DeVore that it was ironic that the Brazil-
ian federal government, through its environmental protection agency
called IBAMA, does so much to “protect jaguars, but doesn’t protect
small farmers.” To combat the stigma of their status as non-protected
destroyers of nature, families at Nossa Senhora enthusiastically told
Paulson, DeVore, and other visitors about their ongoing efforts and
future plans to cultivate environmentally-friendly agroforests. Indeed,
over time, these families have created exceptionally biodiverse agro-
forestry systems aimed at both subsistence and cash crop production.
Moreover, as we will describe below, many of these families have also
deliberately cultivated and conserved native tree species within their
agroforests —trees from which they expected little economic gain.
It is no surprise, and not news, that poor swidden farmers around
the world have often been condemned for destroying the environment.
We see squatters at Nossa Senhora as struggling for release from a
long history in which their lives and their environments have been
shaped by centuries of violence and mutual degradation. Their ongo-

6
ing project to build thriving socioecological spaces extend struggles by
indigenous peoples, enslaved Africans, and landless Bahian families to
disentangle themselves from the region’s exploitative extractivist and
plantation economies. The most recent phase in these struggles be-
gan in the 1990s, as landless workers occupied several abandoned and
bankrupt plantations in the region. As many of DeVore’s interlocutors
were men shaped by years of plantation life and labor, it is also not sur-
prising that their relations and dispositions to nature have sometimes
been viewed with suspicion. Insofar as dominant gender paradigms
mark (and transform) such men into subjects expected to perpetuate
violence against women, children, as well as other men, they are also
naturalized as subjects expected to commit violence against nature
—a naturalization that is reproduced in some eco-feminist discourses.
What we present below is a curious case in which poor men,
branded as inimical to nature, have reconstructed their lives through
intimate relationships with land and fields, agroforests and trees, and
other features of the biophysical world. As these former plantation
laborers succeed in extracting themselves from longstanding roles as
beasts of burden on commercial plantations, they are manifesting ex-
pressions of masculinity that not only embrace conventional ideas of
being “producers” and “providers,” but also ideas of being “reproduc-
ers” and “caretakers” for native trees, animals, and other organisms.
These men and their families are succeeding in reconstructing their
lives, and their sociohistorical situation, in ways that both permit and
foster mutual valuation of human and other life. By writing about
the process here, we contribute to an emerging corpus of literature
that illustrates surprising and diverse intimacies between human and
non-human life (e.g., Burman 2017, Hirsch 2017, Singh 2017). We
also challenge the assumption that lifeways that prioritize harmony
with nature —particularly certain stereotypic representations of this
harmony— only exist, or can only exist, among isolated groups cat-
egorized as “indigenous,” who live in a nature otherwise purified of
human presence. Recognizing new evidence toward this end can foster
conservation efforts through support of socioecosystems that deepen
human relationships with, rather than segregating them from, non-
human nature.

7
 Beyond amity and enmity
Some popular and scholarly approaches to conservation draw on an
idea of wilderness, conceived as “a pristine sanctuary where the last
remnant of an untouched, endangered, but still transcendent nature
can . . . be encountered without the contaminating taint of civiliza-
tion” (Cronon 1996:69). “Seen this way,” Cronon writes, “wilderness
presents itself as the best antidote to our human selves, a refuge we
must somehow recover if we hope to save the planet” (1996:69). Chal-
lenging this idea, Cronon instructs us that the difference between hu-
manness and wildness is anything but natural; it results from struggles
for power among people in their relations to nature, which sometimes
involve violent acts of segregation and enclosure.
The ideological field informing this politics of nature derives partly
from European colonial culture, and intellectual threads within the
European Enlightenment, which sharply distinguish humans from na-
ture, instrumentalizing the latter in the service of the former (Hork-
heimer and Adorno, 2002 [1947]), while instituting a hierarchy among
human kinds, some considered less human. In this way, the ideology
of humanized vs. wild places ramifies to further dichotomies, such as
that between civilized vs. uncivilized peoples, whose respective life-
ways are taken to be consequences of —and thus appropriate to—
those spaces demarcated by the initial dichotomy. A popular trope
that aligns indigeneity with wild nature, for example, is clearly ar-
ticulated by Shetler, who writes that “pre-Columbian America was
still the First Eden, a pristine natural kingdom. The native people
were transparent in the landscape, living as natural elements of the
ecosphere. Their world, the New World of Columbus, was a world
of barely perceptible human disturbance” (Shetler 1991:226, cited in
Denevan 1992:370).
This ideological field delineates normative boundaries for nature
conservation. Members of civilization who penetrate wild spaces —
especially civilization’s marginalized, impoverished, and discontented
members— are marked as environmental threats who must be fenced
out, whereas certain groups of indigenous peoples are marked as natu-
ral guardians of wild spaces who may be fenced in.3 These normative
notions of who ought to be fenced out, or fenced in, inform the in-
3
It should be noted that a community’s indigenous status or indigenous self-
identification is not a guarantee that conservation regimes will be automatically friendly
to them (see West 2016). We will revisit this point below.

8
 tellectual common ground for —at least some iterations of— both
fortress and participatory approaches to conservation. The strategy
of securing conservation by divorcing some (i.e. civilized, modern)
humans from other nature can be seen, for example, in a recent —
mostly hypothetical— conservation proposal known as “Half-Earth”
or “Nature Needs Half” (Locke 2014). Derived from observations of-
fered by Wilson (2002, 2016), the proposal seeks to designate 50% of
the earth’s land mass and water area as a patchwork of conservation
zones, completely protected from most —but not all— human life and
economic activities. This approach has garnered numerous advocates,
as can be seen in one recent publication that counts 49 co-authors
(Dinerstein et al. 2017). The proposal has generated debate among
proponents (e.g., Kopnina 2016) and critics (e.g., Büscher et al. 2017),
who worry that such a project would portend the forced removal and
resettlement of marginalized peoples whose livelihoods are enmeshed
with diverse environments (Kashwan 2016).
Some proponents of Half-Earth incorporate participatory dimen-
sions by promoting inclusion of small groups of indigenous (or “tra-
ditional”) peoples within the bounds of such nature preserves. A
website promoting the Half-Earth project offers as an example the
Tumucumaque National Park in northern Brazil, which incorporates
indigenous people who exemplify expertise in “safeguarding mankind’s
wilderness heritage.”4 The possibility of including indigenous partic-
ipation is taken to “refute” criticisms of Half-Earth proposals for the
potential to “displace rather than empower indigenous communities”
(Dinerstein et al. 2017, 6). But indigenous presence within such
nature reserves is only tolerable on condition that they limit their ex-
ercise of sovereignty (and use of resources) within parameters deemed
acceptable by the project. Kopnina (2016, 179) makes this normative
expectation explicit: “if indigenous communities would prefer to re-
main in those areas while maintaining traditional livelihoods, and if
it can be shown that their presence would indeed not be detrimental
to ecological integrity, reconciliation may be possible.”
A key aspect of this move, common to Half-Earth and other partic-
ipatory and fortress conservation projects alike, is the view outlined
above of certain indigenous peoples as natural guardians of nature,
reproducing a long tradition of “green primitivism” (Ellen 1986) and
“green orientalism” (Lohmann 1993) that relies on the trope of the
4
See http://natureneedshalf.org/amapa-state-brazil/ Last accessed January 20, 2018.

9
“ecologically noble savage” (Redford 1990; see also Krech 1999; Stear-
man 1994; and Hames 2007 for an overview). Indigenous peoples are
viewed as “endangered species” (Ramos 1994, 164) in need of pro-
tection within the confines of wild nature preserves (cf. Conklin and
Graham 1995; Muehlmann 2011). This is the conservationist version
of what Hale (2004) calls the “Permitted Indian,” or what we here
think of as Permitted Eco-Indians, who, as naturally apt stewards of
nature, can be permitted to reside within the bounds of otherwise ex-
clusionary conservation projects. Some eco-feminist projects similarly
render women —by contrast with men— as naturally apt and nur-
turing stewards of nature (Leach 2007). Paulson’s investigations into
the naturalization of men’s “productive” labor in physically and en-
vironmentally destructive Latin American industries (Paulson 2015)
highlights essentializations of women as “reproductive” laborers and
care workers, which is extended in some eco-feminist discourses as
natural caretakers of nature.
These archetypes of environmental amity and enmity are problem-
atic on multiple levels. First, these reifications ignore long (post)colonial
histories and political ecologies of violence that create human and en-
vironmental degradation (Malm and Hornborg 2014; Moore 2017a,
2017b). Men such as Colodino, his brothers, and their sons —as
well as other non-indigenous and non-traditional peoples, including
itinerant migrant laborers— are rendered into quasi-natural enemies
of nature, incapable of engaging in the caring labor necessary to re-
produce socioecosystems across generations. Efforts to manage and
control their lives and livelihoods thus find justification. Second, the
trope of the Permitted Eco-Indian relies on stereotypes of what Ramos
(1994) calls the “hyperreal Indian,” while ignoring realities of embod-
ied indigeneity. The complex reality of the Quechua farmers described
above, for example, is that their relationship with the land is medi-
ated —and arguably even sustained— through diversified household
economies that occasionally involve, among other things, wage labor
in extractivist and polluting ventures such as mines and commercial
agriculture. These aspects of their livelihoods defy stereotypes of eco-
logically noble purity, potentially disqualify them from stereotyped
roles as indigenous ecological stewards, and, under the right histor-
ical circumstances, could mark them for removal and resettlement.
Finally, these archetypes place undue responsibility upon indigenous
peoples (or women) to protect nature, while enabling social elites to
abdicate responsibility for environmental degradation for which they

10
 are disproportionately liable, and from which they benefit dispropor-
tionately. In short, the intimately related ideologies and reifications
outlined above harbor a deeply regressive politics.
We do not claim that there is no role for closed nature preserves
in conservation efforts, let alone no participatory role for indigenous
peoples or women! We are personally familiar with ecological reserves,
such as the Michelin Ecological Reserve on the coast of southern Bahia,
that have met with significant success in the regeneration of native
species and natural habitats (e.g., see Flesher 2013).5 Closed con-
servation areas are an important component of a holistic conserva-
tion strategy, but they are not alone sufficient to protect ecosystems,
nor do they transform the underlying relations of political ecological
(re)production that justify ongoing exploitation of human and other
nature.
Instead, we urge attention to political ecological projects that are
transformative —in the sense articulated by Fraser (1995). Some such
projects are emerging amid dialogues and initiatives concerning “de-
growth.” Initially conceptualized in the 1970s as “décroissance,” a
way for wealthy Western European societies to contribute to global
sustainability, degrowth proposes “an equitable downscaling of pro-
duction and consumption that increases human well-being and en-
hances ecological conditions” (Schneider et al. 2010: 511; see D’Alisa
et al. 2015; Paulson 2017). While degrowth thinkers share core con-
cerns with nature conservationists —including awareness of “limits to
growth” (Meadows et al. 1972), planetary boundaries (Stockholm Re-
silience Center 2015), and concern for climate change (IPCC 2014)—
proponents of degrowth concur that we need more profound transfor-
mations of those political ecological relations and sociocultural values
that facilitate and justify grossly unequal distributions of the causes,
burdens, and benefits of environmental harm. Attention to wilder-
ness preservation alone may draw critical attention away from these
questions, thereby preserving the political economic and sociocultural
status quo.
Recent conversations have asked what degrowth might mean for
less wealthy people and societies (Paulson and Gezon 2017), with
some proponents emphasizing the need for “a full ensemble of envi-
ronmental and redistributive policies” (Kallis 2011, 873). Along these
lines, DeVore suggests that a politics of “redistributive democracy”
5
See the reserve website: https://rem.michelin.com.br/REM/reserva eng Last accessed
January 20, 2018.

11
(de Sousa Santos 1998; see DeVore 2017b) and “repeasantization”
(Edelman 1999; van der Ploeg 2009; see DeVore 2018a) embraced by
rural Brazilian squatters may offer important lessons for broader ef-
forts to extract people from exploitative political economies driven by
accumulation, growth, and profit maximization.
In what follows, we explore ways in which certain (re)distributive
politics —here expressed in the form of redistributive land reform
policies— may not only foster human wellbeing, but also support con-
vivial conservation in the form of mutually nourishing, sustaining, and
conserving relationships with other organisms in a shared environ-
ment. We describe a shift from political ecologies of mutual violence
and degradation among people, and between people and their envi-
ronments, toward situations of mutual conservation and joint flour-
ishing. We thus draw attention to possibilities for renewal in hu-
man relations with nature, especially among human populations who
have been marked and rendered into threats to nature. We highlight
surprisingly convivial —and mutually conserving— relationships with
nature thriving outside of plantation settings and ecological reserves
alike, which defy expectations shaped by the ideological field outline
above. We thus highlight possibilities for nature conservation that
involve remediating the underlying conditions that contribute to the
apparent hostility between nature and people, such as Colodino, his
brothers, and their families.

From plantation to convivial

conservation
For centuries, Brazil’s highly biodiverse Atlantic Forest has figured as
a site of competition and conflict among profit-driven extractivist ven-
tures, state-directed timber conservation efforts, and sources of liveli-
hood for socially marginalized people living along the Brazilian coast
(Dean 1995; Miller 2000). In 1785, during Brazil’s colonial period, for
example, a crown judge in the city of Ilhéus, on the southern coast of
Bahia, complained that poor manioc cultivators using slash-and-burn
techniques to open agricultural fields had “reduced precious forests as
ancient as the world to ashes” (Barickman 1991:289). The judge was
defending the Portuguese crown’s wishes to preserve coastal timber
resources for its own uses.
Over centuries, the southern coast of Bahia persisted at the mar-

12
gins of Brazil’s colonial economy, where royal officials and Jesuit priests
competed for control over humans and forests. These same forests
served as refuge for indigenous peoples, enslaved Africans, and other-
wise marginal peoples seeking to escape forced labor regimes and the
colonial order. Struggles over land and forest took new turns with the
abolition of slavery in 1888. Former slave owners sought to retain con-
trol over emancipated slaves by transforming a legally captive labor
force into one that was captive to wage labor. Brazil’s maldistribution
of land and other productive resources combined with new vagrancy
laws to help ensure that former slaves joined the ranks of the depen-
dent rural poor (Baronov 2000). The threat of destitution was key to
keeping wage laborers —divorced from means of production— depen-
dent on economies that extract value from human bodies and natural
ecosystems. Across the Americas, the post-emancipation experience
often amounted to a re-inscription of new forms of unfreedom.
What alternatives were there and are there for realizing the promise
of freedom and well-being in post-slave societies, such as Brazil? What
role can and do non-human others and ecosystems play in the forma-
tion of good lives? How might conservation and care for non-human
organisms and environments be bound up with the conservation and
care for people?
DeVore has been investigating these questions through long-term
research on the southern coast of Bahia, near the municipality of Itu-
berá. His ethnographic research on diverse land rights movements that
emerged in the 1990s is complemented by ethnohistorical research,
drawing on oral histories to reconstruct the post-emancipation life-
worlds that emerged in the region. Starting early in the 20th century,
former slaves and other members of the rural poor sought freedom
from plantation life by squatting in the region’s hills where they cul-
tivated manioc gardens, foraged, fished, and hunted in the region’s
forests and rivers. Stories told by former members of these communi-
ties and their descendants portray a way of life that joined experiences
of what they called “struggle” with those of “satisfaction” (DeVore
2014:147-158), as people had enough to eat, and enough to go around,
through relations of sharing and reciprocity. While these families en-
gaged in market exchanges for products ranging from manioc flour
to coffee and oranges, most people were not compelled by desires for
profit and accumulation, but rather social reproduction (however, see
DeVore 2018b).
Between the 1950s and 1970s, this socioecological world estab-

13
lished in the first half of the 20th century was dismantled through a
protracted land grab that occurred in tandem with the expansion of in-
dustrial capitalism. This land grab was inaugurated by one of Brazil’s
most infamous capitalists, the late Norberto Odebrecht, who extracted
timber from the region’s forests and re-sold the land to national and
international investors seeking to plant rubber (DeVore 2017a, 2018b).
As rural families who had managed to maintain distance from the re-
gion’s exploitative plantation economies lost their freedom and ability
to provide for their communities, they were forced to sell their labor
to rubber and cacao plantations that began expanding into the region.
The new generations of plantation laborers created by these dis-
possessions experienced a significant turn of fate in the early 1990s,
when the region’s cacao economy was devastated by the witch’s broom
fungus that crippled the region’s cacao economy, led to mass layoffs,
and bankrupt plantations. By 1997, groups of unemployed plantation
laborers near Ituberá began to occupy the lands on several declining
or abandoned plantations. Reclaiming their freedom from plantation
life, they established new homesteads and communities by gradually
transforming forest that had regrown on and around former plantation
land into highly diversified agroforests (see DeVore 2017b).
People in these communities understand their freedom as partly
constituted through meaningful material relationships with land, trees,
organisms, and other aspects of their biophysical situation. Many peo-
ple express joy and affection for their trees, marking a contrast with
years of anguished work with plantation trees, where their bodies and
the fruits of their labor were controlled by others. Squatters’ renewed
relationships with land and trees restored what we consider to be the
squatters’ caring capacity —their capacity to care for others, includ-
ing those who cannot provide for themselves, whether owed to illness,
handicap, childbirth, or old age. This ability to care, provide for, and
conserve human life thus emerges through cultivating and sustaining
dependent relationships with trees and other non-human lives.
The conservation and care for non-human lives was the focus of re-
flection among squatters at Nossa Senhora, as families employed slash-
and-burn techniques to slowly transform forests into bountiful agro-
forests, including cash crops such as cacao, rubber, and cloves as well
as foodstuffs including manioc, bananas, beans, corn, and vegetables.
Over years, what began as small gardens of annual crops eventually
transformed into agroforests oriented toward both cash-crop produc-
tion and family consumption. In the course of cultivating these agro-

14
forests, many farming families incorporated saplings from native sec-
ondary growth (so-called capoeira) tree species —which quickly sprout
up in the newly burnt plots— to provide shade for the slowly maturing
agricultural trees beneath (DeVore 2017b, 660-661).
In August 2009, Colodino invited DeVore to film his farm. Over
several days, Colodino directed the telling of this story, as DeVore
filmed and eventually rendered the video onto DVD media (see De-
Vore 2014:1-7). As director, Colodino had a distinct vision of how he
would present his life story. He began with a scene of him traversing
a small stream in the forests of Nossa Senhora, and transitioned to
scenes of the diversified agroforests that sustain his and others’ lives
today. Acutely aware of the stigma surrounding his use of slash-and-
burn techniques, Colodino devoted nearly a half hour explaining its
necessity while also pointing to plots of forest that he both preserved
and enriched.
Colodino’s DVD was a local hit. In subsequent weeks and months,
more than a dozen other farmers approached DeVore for help filming
their farms and to make their own DVDs. Many people reflected on
different moments in the history of their agroforests’ cultivation. Some
farmers revealed places where natural springs emerged from the earth,
providing on-site sources of water crucial to their work and livelihoods,
whether for drinking, bathing, washing, or even for operating small
hydroelectric mills. Some farmers showed how they sought to preserve
these springs by tending and nourishing small stretches of forest above
places where water emerged from the earth. While these springs were
treated as a form of property under the ownership and stewardship of
individual families, several farmers also emphasized that these springs
form a common and public resource accessible to other local landless
families, squatters, and plantation workers (see DeVore 2017:649-656).
Filming their farms was an occasion for people to reflect on the
momentous changes that had occurred in their lives. Many shared
intimate memories, remembered moments of hunger and hardship,
revealed sites of earlier dwellings, first trees planted, and even ani-
mals who returned for their share of produce that has become abun-
dant. One squatter named Edgar described this land as a “second
mother” that occasioned his own and his companions’ “rebirth.” An-
other squatter named Lázaro reflected that there could be nothing
better than to have one’s physical health together with a bit of land
to work, reflecting that such a “person [in such circumstances] has
their freedom, has everything.”

15
 A squatter named Floriano was among those who asked DeVore
to help film his farm. In July 2010, DeVore met with Floriano at his
family’s farm where they spent the day filming. As he directed the
filming process —much like Colodino— Floriano traced the story of
his family’s life and labor, which began with scenes of forest and then
transitioned to scenes of the diversified agroforests that supported
them. Floriano emphasized the intimacy of his relationship with the
farm, as well as a strong desire to share his story with others: “I
had many dreams of one day making a DVD of my roa, of my farm.
This farm is part of my life.” By being part of his life, he not only
meant that the farm was merely associated with him —as an object
of property— but that his farm was causally connected with warp
and weft of his life, his flesh, his blood, and wellbeing. The various
subsistence and cash-crops —such as the fruit pulp-producing cupuaçu
tree (Theobroma grandiflorum, a close relative to the cacao tree, Theo-
broma cacao)— literally gave to and for his life. In one scene, Floriano
explained, “It’s good to plant plenty of fruit.” He elaborated: “And
the fruit will reveal itself, it’ll say: ‘I’m here.’ It’s like the cupuaçu
saying, ‘I’m here. We’ve arrived at the time for me to give to you’.”
This give and take did not stop with Floriano and his cash-crop
and food-producing agroforestry trees. Floriano also spent significant
effort planting native trees traditionally valued for the hardwood tim-
ber that he would probably not see in his lifetime. Floriano recalled
that not long after his family began to occupy and cultivate their
corner of Nossa Senhora, he planted various native trees from seeds
and seedlings, including pequi and aderno trees, numerous sucupira
trees, two dozen jatobá trees —and a half dozen oti trees that he
remembered planting twelve years earlier (ca. 1998):

Passing through the region, I saw some good [oti ] seedlings

there, I brought them to see if they’d work [take root],
if they’d grow. I planted this oti tree here. The thing
suffered, but he began to extend himself, saying, “I’ll rise,
I’ll rise.’ . . . They say that for him to give [fruit], it takes
30 years. I say, “I wanna see.” The thing was planted one
day, it was my birthday. On my birthday I went there,
planted him.
And I planted a jatobá tree. It’s an Atlantic [Forest] timber
. . . and there weren’t any here. So, I came and brought

16
 them here, and put them in. Here it is. And not just her.
I have some twenty jatobá seedlings.
While filming, he also drew attention to young sucupiruçu (Para-
piptadenia ilheusana) trees, the seeds for which he had collected from
other mature trees that he had encountered in the forest: “I got [the
seeds] from the forest, put a tarp out [under the canopy], and a bunch
of seeds fell there. And since I didn’t have any [sucupiruçu trees] in
my own little forest, I went there and sowed [the seeds]. With luck,
they happened to sprout, and so I went about disseminating them.”
He explained his motivation in collecting these native tree seeds and
replanting them on his land:

I plant because nature asks for it. The land asks for plants.
So, if the land asks, and there are no [trees] here, [the
farmer] has to bring them from elsewhere to plant. That’s
why I plant. Because it’s for [their] survival, and to show
my children, my grandchildren, my great-grandchildren that
there are those plants they talk about in books . . . So I’m
very happy with this . . . And this example that I’m making
here, I want it to serve for a century. So that all who may
come work the earth, who have their little farm [roçinha],
and also plant some three or four or five trees, to show
their children and to show their grandchildren and great-
grandchildren.
Some of Floriano’s companions questioned his decision to plant
native trees. He recalled that some jokingly asked him: “What’ll you
do with them, eat them?” To which he replied:

I don’t eat it, I don’t eat it. But the birds eat, the others
. . . As long as they go there, they don’t come to eat off my
plate . . . If I don’t plant [for them], they’ll come eat off my
plate . . .
“This year,” he explained further, the aderno trees he planted on
his farm “put out plenty [of fruit]. I’ve got plenty of seeds here on
the ground. . . this is food for birds, toucans, inguaxo [Cacicus haem-
orrhous], and even the paca [Cuniculus paca].” Later, he explained,

17
he returned to enrich these plots with cash-crop-produing trees such
as cacao, rubber (Hevea brasiliensis), and various fruit trees:

Afterward I planted the cupuaçu tree, since I had to care

for the area. And for me to care, I had to plant something
for me to eat, too. Because I only planted for the animals, I
didn’t plant for myself. Well I had to plant for the animals
[gestures to aderno tree], plant for myself [gestures to the
cupuaçu tree], to feed myself and to feed the animals, [and]
the insects.
He explained that if he did not plant something for the animals
and insects, they would go directly to his cacao:

The cacao is the food that we [humans] want most, so we’ll

share [dividir ] with them. . . We give —we plant for them,
too.
Floriano’s insistence on planting for nature (“I plant because na-
ture asks for it. The land asks for plants”), and planting so that
insects, bird, and mammals can also eat (“toucans, inguaxo, and even
the paca”), represents an interesting convergence with arguments for
Half-Earth-style conservation —ensuring that nature has its share.
Floriano’s ability to eat, and to provide food for his family and com-
munity, is bound up with ensuring that there is enough for other
organisms to eat —ensuring that each has their own “plate,” as Flo-
riano suggests. But nature’s half is not guaranteed by fencing other
organisms out, but rather by making space for them at a shared table
—here, a table that takes the form of an agroforest.
Floriano may be exceptional in the poetry with which he articu-
lated his relationships to the agroforest and native trees that he sus-
tains on his farm. But he is not unique in cultivating native tree
species on his farm, as many other farmers have cultivated and inte-
grated native tree species into their agroforests. In some cases, people
deliberately seek out native tree seed and seedlings to plant. In oth-
ers, people deliberately adopt and cultivate native trees that initially
arise as spontaneous seed germinations, or as shoots (brotos) from the
stumps of fallen trees (see Figure 2).

18
 Figure 2: Farmer at a squatter community called Sapucaia posing
with a young pequi tree (Caryocar sp.) that he cultivated from a
spontaneous regrowth within his agroforest. June 17, 2010.
Photo by Jonathan DeVore.

Squatters such as Floriano express strongly non-utilitarian orien-

tations to the native trees they cultivate, which are not useful in either
subsistence or economic terms, as they offer little to no fruit for peo-

19
 ple or for the market.6 Moreover, those who cultivate hardwood trees
will not live to harvest the timber that only develops over generations.
However, planting native trees may interpreted as an agroecological
strategy to mitigate lost harvests, by directing the attention of ani-
mals, birds, and insects elsewhere —as Floriano suggests (“If I don’t
plant [for them], they’ll come to eat off my plate”)— thus involving a
utility calculation.7 Moreover, these climax trees species also provide
shade, both for people and for the sciophytic (shade-loving) agricul-
tural trees growing below, such as cacao. But if shade is included in
an overall utility calculation, then Floriano might have been better off
to plant rubber (Hevea brasiliensis), which provides both shade and
latex that could offset harvests consumed by other organisms. Thus,
we find reason to also take seriously Floriano’s initial suggestions that
he plants trees for the sake of their own conservation. These trees may
outlast the humanized agricultural landscape of their birth. And in-
deed, from a conservation standpoint, these trees also produce pollen
that may be distributed long distances, thereby playing a role in the
maintenance of genetic biodiversity.8

Conclusion
The lives of men such as Floriano and Colodino have been shaped by
long histories of violent economic expansion fueled by exploitation of
people and other nature. Extractive industries ranging from logging
and mining to petroleum exploration and industrial farming have de-
graded local ecosystems and contributed to global climate change. In
recent decades, massive expansion of these industries parallel dramatic
increases in disability and early death —including from occupational
accidents— suffered by Latin American men (Paulson 2015). Growing
gaps between life expectancies for Latin American men, on average,
and significantly longer lives of Latin American women are related to
violent regimes of masculinity that support degrading and hazardous
working conditions, and that also fuel environmental conflicts in which
socioeconomic elites conscript some poor men to fight against other
6
There are many varieties of philosophical utilitarianism. Here we have in mind the tra-
dition influenced by Hobbes and Bentham in which utility calculations necessarily involve
psychological egoism (see Driver 2014).
7
We owe this point to conversation with Mark Moritz.
8
We owe this point to conversation with Kevin M. Flesher.

20
poor men in contests over the appropriation of territory and resources.
Against a history of conditions in which subordinate men have
been brutally employed in the aggressive exploitation of nature for
someone else’s profit, we find great hope in this study illuminating
practices and meanings through which poor rural men nurture and
care for themselves, others, and non-human nature. Even as exploita-
tive economic processes continue to undermine the resilience of many
families, communities, and ecosystems, here we have highlighted indi-
viduals and communities who strive to forge healthier socioecological
relations. In southern Bahia, rural families squatted on plots of forest
or abandoned plantation land in order distance themselves from the
hardships of plantation labor. Many were led by middle-aged men
who had little to show for years of grueling plantation labor, except
their fatigued and depleted bodies. These men and their families were
portrayed not only as threats to private property controlled by the
region’s socioeconomic elite, but also as threats to the endangered
biodiversity of Brazil’s Atlantic Forest. In surprising contrast, we en-
countered affirmative meanings and actions by men who experimented
with roles in nurturing and nourishing human and other nature. As
Floriano and his companions cultivated non-utilitarian relationships,
and even senses of commitment to the well-being of other nature, they
contributed to concrete positive outcomes for the conservation of cer-
tain native tree species. What lessons can we learn from squatters at
Nossa Senhora for convivial conservation efforts elsewhere? How can
other communities draw from and adapt their example to foster inter-
dependence among humans, and among human with other nature?
Some conservation scholars have described measures of poverty al-
leviation and measures of biodiversity preservation as standing in a
relation of mutual antagonism, such that progress on one front seems
to come at the cost of progress on the other front (Sanderson and
Redford 2003). Others, however, highlight the “mutual implication”
of such goals, such that “justice for nature or the environment is in-
extricably connected to justice for human beings” (Nonini 2016, 85).
In this view, progress on one front is bound up with progress on the
other front. We find this viewpoint appealing. Indeed, in the case of
formerly landless Brazilian families described above, we see an exam-
ple of a politics of poverty alleviation —through policies and politics
of redistributive land reform— that is mutually implicated with the
conservation of more than human lives alone.
Conservation work will continue to employ closed conservation ar-

21
eas, conservation-based development, and other forms compatible with
currently dominant political economic trends. We advocate the paral-
lel advancement of efforts to create conditions that support communi-
ties in creating their own expressions of convivial conservation. In the
cases addressed here, and others we have studied, communities rally
and reconstruct rich cultural resources to establish mutually nourish-
ing, sustaining, and regenerative relationships with other organisms in
a shared environment. One important way to foster these affirmative
initiatives toward human and other wellbeing is via (re)distributive
politics that promote a more just distribution of burdens and benefits
of environmental degradation or conservation, and more just access to
material and non-material resources to build worlds in which people
and others can thrive together.
Another move necessary to facilitate the flourishing of convivial
conservation is to challenge ideological and discursive constructions of
human beings, and especially men, as naturally driven to maximize
profit by exploiting nature. Such visions inform closed and partici-
patory conservation regimes alike, making exceptions only for certain
minorities (indigenous, feminine, or traditional) who are naturalized
as and expected to act as guardians of nature. Instead, we suggest
an alternative option of recognizing that we humans (re)produce our-
selves, our desires, our relationships with others, including relation-
ships with non-human others, through tremendously varied sociocul-
tural systems that are subject reconstruction and renewal. This means
that conservation efforts can work to identify and support relations of
(re)production that nurture humans —including men such as Floriano,
Colodino, and other members of their middle-aged male cohort— who
do not follow norms of predatory exploitation, but instead seek to
establish nourishing, reproductive, and mutually conserving relation-
ships with nature.

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