Developing subalternity: side effects of the expansion of formal education and mass media in Guaribas

Abstract

This article investigates the social impact of the Zero-Hunger Program (Programa Fome Zero, henceforth PFZ) in its pilot-community, the village of Guaribas in Northeast Brazil, particularly with respect to the expansion of public education and mass media. I attempt to show how the PFZ development project went beyond the delivery of financial aid, basic infrastructure, and economic technology in Guaribas, and sought to reform its beneficiaries' conducts, capacities, aspirations, and psychological dispositions.To that end, PFZ's concerted effort included workshops, the extension of public schooling, as well as increased exposure to mass media artefacts and pedagogical soap-operas. This enterprise, however, generated adverse "sideeffects" such as the devaluation of local knowledge, the decline of farming, the aggravation of intergenerational conflict, the substantial emigration of the younger generations, and Guaribanos' increasing internalization of subaltern status in relation to other national communities. ResumoEste artigo analisa o impacto social do Programa Fome Zero em sua comunidade piloto, o vilarejo de Guaribas, no sertão sul do Piauí, especialmente no que tange a expansão da educação pública e da mídia de massa. Em Guaribas, o Programa Fome Zero foi muito além do provimento de recursos financeiros, infraestrutura básica e tecnologia econômica, e objetivou reformar as condutas, capacidades, aspirações e disposições psicológicas de seus beneficiários. Para atingir tal fim, as ações do programa incluíram oficinas (workshops), a extensão da educação formal e o aumento da exposição a artefatos da mídia de massa. Essas iniciativas, entretanto, geraram efeitos colaterais adversos, tais como a desvalorização dos saberes tradicionais locais, o declínio do trabalho agrícola, o agravamento do conflito intergeracional, a expressiva emigração das gerações mais jovens e a crescente internalização de status subalterno por parte dos guaribanos em relação a outras comunidades nacionais. 2 The people of Guaribas (Guaribanos) are primarily farmers and herders of goats, pigs, and cattle, who cannot be said to practice integral subsistence agriculture only because they sell a small surplus of beans and corn to outside merchants. Guaribanos descend mainly from three families, the Alves, the Rocha, and the Correia da Silva, the first of which settled in Guaribas sometime in the mid-eighteenth century. Since these sertão uplands have always been sparsely populated, a very low demographic density obtains for the municipality (1,41 inhabitants per km 2 ), and accounts for the fact that almost all Guaribanos own a fair amount of land, passed on through generations, which they farm and show with pride. Even though the village's isolation should not be overplayed, until 1964, when a dirt trail trod only by animal caravans was slightly broadened, Guaribas was unconnected to the national road network, and no vehicles had ever reached the village. Palavras-chave:This precarious dirt road remains Guaribas' only connection to th...