Affected People by Dams of Balbina in the Amazônia: the artisanal Fishermen and their Fishing Practice Thirty Five Years Later
Elenise Faria Scherer, Edith Santos Corrêa

Abstract
This article is about the construction of Balbina Hydroelectric Power Plant (Usina Hidroelétrica de Balbina – UHB) on the Uatumã River, which is in President Figueiredo – a county near Manaus, the capital city of the State of Amazonas, in Central Amazonia. The plant was built in the 1970s, and its construction led to environmental impacts on both the complex and rich existing biodiversity and the way of living of the traditional people, including the ethnic group called Waimiri Atroari, that had lived around the Balbina Lake – where the dam was built – for millenniums. We can say that such a hydroelectric megaproject was one of the most perverse socioenvironmental crimes of the planet. The article discusses the changes in the rural families´ daily life. Among such families were the artisanal fishermen and fisherwomen sociologically called dam-affected people, who were affected in their ways of social reproduction and were obliged to move to other fishing territories in pursuit of other survival strategies. This article is part of the evaluative research of the socio-environmental impacts 35 years after UHB was built.

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