Goiâs and Brasilia

I recently spent about a week and a half in Goiâs and Brasilia, in Brazil's Midwest. While in Goiâs I had the opportunity to travel to some rural areas and talk with people who have immigrated from northeastern Brazil, the region where I am conducting my research, to work cutting sugarcane or laboring in other types of agriculture. I learned that since the US-Brazil Biofuels Agreement in 2007, ethanol producing companies have begun to lease land from small farmers in midwestern states such as Goiâs in droves. The landscape, local economy, and culture are changing rapidly as more diversified small-scale farms are converted to large-scale sugarcane monoculture. This phenomenon is also inspiring increased immigration from the Northeast, the country's poorest region, to these rural areas where thousands of people can work in the sugarcane plantations making minimum wages.

Up until this trip I had not realized just how much the sugarcane industry and other forms of large-scale agriculture throughout the Midwest, South, and Southeast (Brazil's more prosperous regions) depend on migrant labor from the Northeast. Apparently the majority of the unskilled labor on the monoculture plantations in fact comes from the Northeast. This would include laborers working as registered workers as well as clandestine and even slave labor, which is in fact increasing in southern Brazil. People migrate from the Northeast because in that region there is simply little work, and laborers tend to be paid less and have fewer rights. In fact, on several occasions in Pernambuco I have heard sugarcane cutters talking about wanting to head to other states where they can make more money, be treated better by employers, and in general have greater security. That is, of course, as long as they are not duped into slave-like or clandestine working conditions.

While in Goiâs I visited neighborhoods which are almost entirely occupied by people from the Northeast who have come to search for work. It was an excellent opportunity to see the impacts of Brazil's expanding ethanol industry on livelihoods in the Northeast from this perspective- migration in search of a better life. They are still cutting cane, as their parents, grandparents, and great-grandparents probably did, but in a different part of the country where they feel there is more potential for a future. While doing my research in the Northeast I have met countless people who have tried living in other states, or whose family members have migrated to other states to try to find a better and easier life. On this trip I got to see how those people actually live once they make it down here. The people that I talked with all work long hours in hard labor, but expressed that they are happy to have made the move to Goiâs. This is because cutting cane pays better here, and workers receive far more benefits. In addition, there are other types of agriculture which employ the migrant laborers once the sugarcane harvest ends. This means that here in Goiâs there is no hungry season such as that experienced by sugarcane-dependent communities in the Northeast. All of the people I spoke with said that they feel they have a better chance at a future in Goiâs than in the Northeast, even if they continue only to work in agriculture there.

Here are some pictures of the communities of migrant laborers and the great people I met there:

 

 

 

After leaving Goiâs I hopped on a bus to nearby Brasilia, Brazil's capital since 1960. It is quite unfortunate that this entirely planned city was planned during an era when suburbia-style car dependence was all the rage. Trying to walk around this city is hell. I managed to do a bit of walking though, in addition to taking crowded buses and expensive cabs. I didn't get to see too much of the city while I was there. I had a good time, but have no huge desire to go back. The purpose of this trip was to interview the Ministries of Mines and Energy and Agriculture on Brazil's ethanol program. The interviews went fairly smoothly, and they while they did their best to blow me away with the success of Brazil's "green" ethanol industry, I did my best to get them to talk about things like the impact of the expanding ethanol industry on food security and agrarian reform, so desperately needed by millions of landless people in Brazil. They didn't blow me away, but merely told me what I expected to hear. They didn't do much as far as answering my questions either. The meetings were still worthwhile though. Brasilia was an interesting experience. 

In addition to my experience with the Ministries, I met some great folks working in agrarian reform and the landless movement while in Brasilia. These folks are always great to spend time with and learn from. They are passionate and driven, fighting relentlessly for social justice. Even if it is just from an office in Brasilia. Someone's gotta do it. They made for wonderful hosts during my time in the capital.

Brasilia's cathedral- interesting, huh?

 

Brasilia's version of the National Mall

Olinda!

I have moved into my very own little apartment in the BEAUTIFUL town of Olinda. I live about three blocks from the beach (where I unfortunately can't swim because all of the urban beaches here are polluted and shark-infested) and a ten minute walk from the historic center, which is a UNESCO World Heritage site.

Here is a picture of the view from my living room window:

Link to my Picasa album with more photos of Olinda: http://picasaweb.google.com/lynn.m.schneider/OlindaBrazil#

Inspiration for the Weary Traveler

Today, while attempting to read about methods for doing research on sustainable rural livelihoods, I found myself on an amazing website called Matador Network (http://matadornetwork.com/), an online community of travelers, adventurers and such. My kind of people. I managed to spend a good hour or two procrastinating by reading several interesting posts from other travelers. One of these was the humbly titled, "The 50 Most Inspiring Travel Quotes of all Time." It is always fun to read travel quotes that discuss the experience, the purpose, and the effects of a traveling/wandering/adventuring lifestyle. Especially when you're in a mid-trip mini existential crisis like I am (why I am here again? what am I doing? what about this research I have supposedly committed to doing?). So I picked out a few that really spoke to me and what I'm feeling on this trip, as well as what I've felt during and after other extended stints abroad. If you're traveling, you'll love them, and if you're stuck at home right now they might just induce some travel fever. I know its not just me that's addicted to the rawness of life abroad.

From:  http://www.bravenewtraveler.com/2008/03/07/50-most-inspiring-travel-quotes-of-all-time/

“Traveling is a brutality. It forces you to trust strangers and to lose sight of all that familiar comfort of home and friends. You are constantly off balance. Nothing is yours except the essential things – air, sleep, dreams, the sea, the sky – all things tending towards the eternal or what we imagine of it.” – Cesare Pavese

“When we get out of the glass bottle of our ego and when we escape like the squirrels in the cage of our personality and get into the forest again, we shall shiver with cold and fright. But things will happen to us so that we don’t know ourselves. Cool, unlying life will rush in.” – D. H. Lawrence

“Travel is more than the seeing of sights; it is a change that goes on, deep and permanent, in the ideas of living.” – Miriam Beard

“A journey is best measured in friends, rather than miles.” – Tim Cahill

“What you’ve done becomes the judge of what you’re going to do – especially in other people’s minds. When you’re traveling, you are what you are right there and then. People don’t have your past to hold against you. No yesterdays on the road.” – William Least Heat Moon

“The first condition of understanding a foreign country is to smell it.” – Rudyard Kipling


“Adventure is a path. Real adventure – self-determined, self-motivated, often risky – forces you to have firsthand encounters with the world. The world the way it is, not the way you imagine it. Your body will collide with the earth and you will bear witness. In this way you will be compelled to grapple with the limitless kindness and bottomless cruelty of humankind – and perhaps realize that you yourself are capable of both. This will change you. Nothing will ever again be black-and-white.” – Mark Jenkins

“There are no foreign lands. It is the traveler only who is foreign.” - Robert Louis Stevenson