A terra prometida no sertão do Piauí: trajetórias dos camponeses parceiros no Programa do Biodiesel.

Abstract

More than the ground on which we walk, the earth is a mother, it is a provider, it is life. The issue of access to land has always been a primary factor in the formation of Brazilian society. After all, who has the right to this vast expanse of land in which they plant themselves, everything gives? The landowners, who keep countless stretches of unproductive land as a future investment? Private capital, which, with State incentives, uses arable land to produce inputs that are often foreign to local culture? To the State, which has repeatedly turned its back on the needs of the peasant population? These questions are the background for the first work of sociologist Maria Elza Soares da Silva launched by Editora SertãoCult, which sensibly portrays the arduous struggle for the survival of peasants in the interior of Piauí. Convinced that they were taking a safe step towards the long-dreamed acquisition of land for the reproduction of their way of life, they found themselves thrown into an unknown reality, uprooted from their traditional agricultural customs and practices in order to adapt to the logic of production agribusiness. But this process was not without resistance. For harmonious coexistence, concessions were made both by partner farmers and by the company that hired them to produce castor beans for the production of biodiesel. Both sides had to win: the company, the maintenance of a lucrative contract with the federal government. The peasants, the promise that such land would be theirs after ten years of work. But the clash between traditional practices, capitalist dynamics and political interests has shown that promises are not always kept. The dream of the promised land in the interior of Piauí continues to cherish the days of those workers, whose life stories are recorded in an engaging way by the author, who in a breathtaking ethnographic experience inserts the reader in the routine of conquests and difficulties of the peasant partners of Brasil Ecodiesel - pioneer plant in the implementation of the social dimension of the National Program for the Use of Biodiesel Production - PNPB.