3 minute read
From Linhares To Colatina
Monday – 11/01/2016
Departing from Regência, Arana, Vladimir and I go on for more than 60 kilometres along the river, through abandoned and parched cocoa farms. Ancient clearings today frame a landscape of decrepit and abandoned properties, all the way as far as Colatina, largely due to the witch’s broom19 disease. The vigorous production of the past has given way to old workers and their descendants living off the remnants of the earlier productive process. Farmhouses and former workers’ villages are often occupied by sparse families. Before reaching the BR101 highway, there are more than ten large farms, in a state of total abandonment, where some of the families, now without access to water, live in poverty. Many live on what grows even with scarce irrigation, and some insist on fishing for what are now reddish fish, one of the few sources of protein, although possibly poisoned. In a state of intense dryness due to the drought, the scenario resembles the semi-arid20 areas of our northeast region, which is frightening because the entire region was originally covered by the Atlantic Rain Forest21. The wide alluvial plain that extends for kilometres around the mouth of the river allows its floods to reach enormous proportions, a reality that is worrying. The water channel opened by Fibria22 is also located in this region, taking a huge amount of water to cool its machinery, many times preventing the flow of the river from being sufficient to reach the sea. To generate public acceptance, it has been named after Caboclo Bernardo, displeasing many.
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Monday – 11/01/2016
In Linhares, we are thirsty for work and growing uncomfortable with everything we see. The river here is impressive, and now its frightening tone variation replaces the old focus – the huge bridge destroyed years ago. Heading north, the region begins to get even drier, denoting a strong process of desertification, evidenced by the drought and poor soil, noticeable in its gullies. Here we pass an MST camp23, next to the roadside, on a hot, hard land deprived of shade. At the site, the vast majority are women and children in precarious condition. Asbestos tiles and black tarpaulins ensure the sleep of the families under the harsh sun, and sporadic food donations supply their nourishment. These are people affected for different reasons, from different places, and this makes their fighting condition, however fragile, their only possibility for improvement. Further on is the MST settlement Sezínio Fernandes de Jesus. With their prerogatives achieved and rights guaranteed, the settlement has an impressive physical structure and better living conditions than all the other places we visited.
They are more than one hundred families that have been affected by the crime and have come into direct conflict with the government for taking the necessary actions. In view of the possible contamination of their lakes by the mud that came down from Minas, they demand that the channels that connect them to the river be blocked... Fire and the blocking of the road on their doorstep have forced the government to act. Reports of the abuse of power and repression mark the conflict over ensuring the local water quality, the basic source of life.
Monday – 11/01/2016
“Amidst the merciless heat stands a majestic tree, an oasis of shadow inserted into the desolate MST camp: this is the meeting place. The families timidly agreed to talk to us and tell their story. On the fragile façades of the houses, the sound of plastic sheets, blown by the rare wind, marks the precariousness of the situation. Undoubtedly, here the disaster was not necessary to already question the imbalances in our society.”
