2 minute read
Areal And Entre Rios
Sunday – 10/01/2016
Our first direct contact with the specific work we are here to do throughout January takes place in the village of Areal, close to Regência. The community is located 800 metres away from the flowing, though sad, Doce, embedded in the middle of dozens of pumpjacks, in Portuguese “cavalinhos” (little horses), oil extraction wells belonging to Petrobras16 in the Lagoa Parda field. I have the impression I am on a ticking time bomb – all over, there are pipelines and cows in a parched landscape. The silent movement of the pumps set the pace of development, confronting the impoverished condition of the village. There are few houses, and the rare population has fled from the sun. Garbage is scattered through the village where boats have retired from the river and roças17 no longer exist. Samira, a long-time friend who is also discovering the river, and I interview the Barcelos family; several children are playing and running. Some of them, beautiful and with clear native Indian features, have several open sores on their bodies, like some kind of skin disease... could it be from the river?
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We speak with the residents who anxiously take turns explaining the situation and the way Samarco selects the beneficiaries and all the insufficient water supply that has been carried out.
Sunday – 10/01/2016
The following Sunday morning, we go to an INCRA18 settlement initiative, led by Mr Nilton. The water he used to draw from the river for his crops, once rich and diverse, has dwindled to its twenty-fourth part and he is now reliant on Samarco’s water truck supply at increasing intervals. We observe his dry roça, the barbecue place next to a spoiled natural swimming pool, hope in the shape of an artesian well (possibly contaminated) and dead lambs from diarrhoea. The incessant struggle for the demarcation of his land has been raised to the dimension of the destruction of the river. The resistance of those who do not sleep, of those who breathe and are drenched in the contradictions of our society, despite being invisible to the television of the big cities, is incessant. Witnessing the water crisis, combined with the abundance of mud and the destruction of the community autonomy of entire populations, creates an awareness of the urgency of commitment that I have rarely felt.
Sunday – 10/01/2016
Mr Nilton explains the new farm water management: “Samarco trucks deposit drinking water in a 25,000-litre container, intended for direct consumption by the family, bathrooms, cooking and to quench thirst.
Crops were initially irrigated from the river. Today, there is a new well between the river and the crops where the water has a lighter colour... how long? The pump house is in the same place, nestled between the hope that the river will suddenly become clean and the nostalgic memory of a healthy river.”
