Resource Flows, Uses and Populations Territorial Attachments: The Case of the Oyapock Watershed (French Guiana, Amapá State of Brazil)

Abstract

This article presents a stakeholders’ mapping exercise in 2017 and 2018 in the Oyapock watershed. Ninety-two maps were obtained covering almost the entire watershed. Results show that roads are becoming a more significant spatial reference to people, apart from the population minority living along the river. This latter polarizes itself into Brazilian colonization down and midstream, legal farmers on the Brazilian side, illegal gold diggers on the French Guiana side, and an Amerindian demographic growth upstream, both at the expense of the historical Saramaka/Creole area. Recent roads sticking each bank of the Oyapock River to their hinterland, Brazil, and France, respectively, like rubber bands, are separating them slowly, despite the bridge, primarily useless for now.