Fighting against or Coexisting with Drought? Conviviality, Inequality and Peasant Mobility in Northeast Brazil

Abstract

Throughout Brazilian history, Northeastern droughts have been the context for massive rural flight and intra-national migrations. State policies and interventions have played a significant role in promoting or restraining the movements of those affected by such "natural" plights. In this paper, we examine the political ecology and moral economies that have underlined state intervention over drought and peasant migrations since the end of the 19th century. We compare two historical periods marked by contrasting regional perspectives on nature-society relations within the context of Brazilian semi-arid climate: the period known as the "fight against drought" (1915-1980) and the period of "coexistence with the semi-arid" (1990-now). This new vision of nature-society relations is examined within the context of agrodiesel development in Bahia. Our results show that these symbolic and material practices around nature and mobility have played a significant role in the making of specific regimes of conviviality and inequality in Brazil.

The Making of Speculative Biodiesel Commodities on the Agroenergy Frontier of the Brazilian Northeast

“…Similar forms of negativities have also been historically ascribed to Northeast peasants, whose subjectivities, labour, knowledge and livelihoods have been systematically devalued, as the ultimate “Other” of Brazilian modernisation, order and progress. The “Other” upon which recurrent modes of dispossession have been enforced, sometimes violently, sometimes quietly (Manzi 2020).…”

“…In Bahia, these “new political technologies” have been performed through the central figure of the cooperative , which has served as the intermediary between farmers and biodiesel companies. These cooperatives have been used by the State and biodiesel companies to better control production at a distance, and have helped to reproduce and mobilise a moral economy based on the value of loyalty, in a context in which Northeast peasant productive systems have been historically and systematically disqualified as disorganised, unpredictable and inefficient (Manzi 2013, 2018, 2020).…”

“…However, it can be understood as “dispersed dispossession” (Vorbrugg 2019) as state and corporate practices reduced peasants’ control over their land, labour, resources, knowledge and sociopolitical institutions (cooperatives). These dispersed and uneventful modes of dispossession are the result of a continued process of devaluation of Northeast subjects, natures, cultures and territories, with profound historical roots (Manzi 2018, 2020).…”

Pandemic Avant-Garde Urban Coexistence in Mário de Andrade’s Pauliceia Desvairada (1922) after the Spanish Flu

“…The young critic witnessed how the flu brought the international opera season to a standstill at the Teatro Municipal: singers, musicians and audience fell ill or stayed away out of fear, so that the theatre was finally closed. 15 Public life in the city had to be reorganized: "O medo imiscuiu-se na cidade adoentada. Nas esquinas, nas casas, bares e porões, 12 Also interesting is the renewed dialogue about Pauliceia desvairada in 1931, when in a letter of 16 August Andrade once again defends himself against the impression that Pauliceia desvairada was a spontaneous outburst ("mero desabafo").…”

“…especiallyLopez 1996Lopez , 2004Lopez and 2013. Avancini 1994, among others, has drawn attention to Andrades's specific interest in the art and architecture of the Baroque era 15. The reviews can also be read in E. Tadafumi Sato's master's thesis(Sato 2016) on Andrade's work as a critic.…”