Drawing on fieldwork with riverine householders in the Amazonian municipality of Abaetetuba, this article recounts an ongoing struggle against the construction of a fluvial grain terminal by Cargill, the global grain-trading giant. Over the past two decades, grain-trading firms have engaged in a publicly subsidized bidding war to expand export infrastructure in the Amazon, harnessing the world's largest river system to flush agricultural commodities on the global market. The so-called Northern Arc consists of a regional network of private grain terminals, ports, roads, and railways connecting disparate places within a broader landscape of value. This article overlays ethnography with historical analysis to examine the confrontation between a regional project of commodity chain integration and a set of valuations derived from the long-standing role of commodity exchange in the Amazon. I suggest that the Northern Arc articulates with the sociological legacy of the aviamento: a system of debt-peonage that structured the circulation of commodities in the basin during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. By connecting local understandings of power, circulation, and authority to a new structural position within the global food system, the Northern Arc has galvanized old antagonisms and reflects the history of social conflict along the Amazon estuary.

中文翻译：

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北方商人：巴西亚马逊河口沿线的基础设施和债务

本文借鉴亚马逊阿贝特图巴 (Abaetetuba) 市河流居民的实地调查，讲述了全球谷物贸易巨头嘉吉 (Cargill) 为建设河流谷物码头而进行的持续斗争。在过去的二十年里，粮食贸易公司参与了一场公开补贴的竞标战，以扩大亚马逊地区的出口基础设施，利用世界上最大的河流系统将农产品推向全球市场。所谓的北弧由私人粮食码头、港口、公路和铁路组成的区域网络，在更广泛的价值景观中连接不同的地方。本文将民族志与历史分析相结合，以考察商品链整合的区域项目与亚马逊商品交易所长期作用所衍生出的一组估值之间的对抗。我建议北弧与aviamento : 一种债务-公务员制度，在 19 世纪和 20 世纪构建了流域内的商品流通。通过将地方对权力、流通和权威的理解与全球粮食系统中的新结构位置联系起来，北弧激起了旧有的对立，并反映了亚马逊河口沿线的社会冲突历史。