Expulsion by suffocation: Soybean plantations,toxicity,and land grabbing in the Brazilian Amazon

Abstract

This article develops the concept expulsion by suffocation to describe how glyphosate-driven expansion of soybean plantations reshapes life in the Lower Tapajós region of the Brazilian Amazon. Based on eighteen months of ethnographic research, I show how glyphosate operates as a literal agent of asphyxiation and a metaphorical agent that chokes the creation of knowledge, crops, and the reproduction of life in these territories, rendering them uninhabitable. The analysis traces how a colonial-military imaginary of “emptiness” is produced through slow chemical harm. Following the reflections of a traditional farmer from a riverine community, I denominate as farces the forest strips and roadside houses that mask dispossession and make claims of damage harder to voice. Ethnographic cases illustrate respiratory distress, crop failure, and economic enclosure as mutually reinforcing forms of suffocation that push Indigenous, Quilombola, and riverine families off their lands. The article also follows counter-plantation practices, especially among the Tupinambá, as they defend living territories that sustain multispecies life. By foregrounding breathing, atmosphere, and concealment of harms, the concept of expulsion by suffocation contributes to debates on slow and chemical violence, offering a respiratory and spatial framework for understanding the multidimensional harms that constitute the agroindustrial takeover of the Amazon forest.