Bulletin of Latin American Research, Vol. 34, No. 1, pp. 53–69, 2015 Urban-Rural Livelihoods, Fishing Conlicts and Indigenous Movements in the Middle Rio Negro Region of the Brazilian Amazon THAISSA SOBREIRO University of Florida, USA This paper discusses how changing urban–rural relationships pose new opportunities and challenges for resource management in the munici- pality of Barcelos, Middle Rio Negro, Brazilian Amazon. The conlicts arising from poor delimitation of the rights of different resource users, as well as increasing rural–urban connections, have mobilised indigenous peoples to seek to protect traditional ishing territories. However, peo- ple’s mobility challenges resource management models that are based on permanent residence. This complexity underscores the urgent need for new ecological and political management models to deal with the lux of both people and natural resources, without excluding minority groups. Keywords: Amazon, conlict, ishing, indigenous, urban–rural. The Amazon rainforest has become increasingly urbanised since the 1980s (Browder and Godfrey, 1997). Nowadays, more than 70percent of the Brazilian Amazon’s popu- lation lives in cities (IBGE, 2012a). Scholars who study urbanisation generally focus on agricultural frontiers (Becker, 1985; Browder and Godfrey, 1997), but urbanisation has recently emerged as a driving force of transformation in forested areas far from frontiers (Guedes et al., 2009; Eloy et al., 2014). After the 1988 Brazilian Constitution was approved, the state began to recog- nise many rural areas as indigenous and traditional territories, after different groups mobilised to demand recognition of their identity, culture and rights over traditional land and natural resources (Cunha and Almeida, 2000; Almeida 2011; Allegretti and Schmink, 2009; Bolaños, 2011). Traditional groups had the opportunity to gain recognition as social subjects with collective territories and speciic livelihoods. The law recognises different sorts of territorial rights such as indigenous land, extractive reserves and sustainable development reserves (Little, 2002; Almeida, 2011; Schwartzman and Zimmerman, 2005); rights over aquatic territories under ishing agreements (Castro and McGrath, 2001); or rights subject to integrated use agreements (Fabré et al., 2011). The recognition of these territorial rights is part of a larger national strategy of rainforest conservation (Nepstad et al., 2006). © 2014 The Author. Bulletin of Latin American Research © 2014 Society for Latin American Studies. Published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd, 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA. 53