{"id":125553,"date":"2012-08-22T10:05:46","date_gmt":"2012-08-22T13:05:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/?p=125553"},"modified":"2015-11-27T13:32:59","modified_gmt":"2015-11-27T15:32:59","slug":"rebuilding-the-past","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/rebuilding-the-past\/","title":{"rendered":"Rebuilding the Past"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Cane

A.BRUGIER<\/span><\/a> Cane Cutter: tales of violence, treachery and fearA.BRUGIER<\/span><\/p><\/div>\n

In 1966, tenant farmers on the Usina Am\u00e1lia, one of the largest and most traditional sugarcane plantations in the interior of the State of S\u00e3o Paulo, called a strike for better wages and improved working conditions. In the midst of a military dictatorship, the movement led to the expulsion of nearly 4,000 families from the land. The episode would have been consigned to oblivion had it not remained indelibly fixed in the memory of farmers who, thirty years later, would recount tales of violence, treachery and fear to the researcher Maria Aparecida de Moraes Silva. These farmers, Moraes Silva writes, \u201chad fallen into a trap laid by both the landowners and their union.\u201d<\/p>\n

The memories of the farmers \u2013 and the 208 lawsuits filed against the plantation\u2019s owner, Ind\u00fastrias Reunidas Francisco Matarazzo, helped Moraes Silva as she reconstructed a period of profound transformation in the history of labor relations in the sugar fields, when temporary labor that took the form of migrant workers and day laborers (boias frias) replaced traditional tenant farmers. The farmers\u2019 stories also allowed Moraes Silva to become thoroughly familiar with the daily lives of the families of the time: how the adults cut the cane that the children would pile and tie in shiefs for transport to the mill; days enlivened by weddings, baptisms and the festival of the Three Kings, and nights lulled by the Siriema waltz: \u201cYour eyes, oh so many colors\/From a Hail Mary\/ That a rosary formed of bitterness\/ I pray all day.\u201d<\/p>\n

The research, begun in 1997, was supported by the S\u00e3o Paulo Research Foundation (FAPESP). The research Project, titled Sugarcane Women: Memories, sought to reconstruct the historical experience of women agricultural laborers. Recurring mention of the Usina Am\u00e1lia strike, however, led to the broadening of the study, which the author further justifies in the observation that \u201cno mention is made of the strike in the bibliography of rural prolitarization in S\u00e3o Paulo.\u201d By utilizing what she calls \u201ca networking system,\u201d Moraes Silva was able to identify and communicate with more than 70 former tenant farmers spread over the entire region of Leme, Ribeir\u00e3o Preto, Barrinha, Santa Rosa do Viterbo and S\u00e3o Sim\u00e3o. \u201cI had to resort to oral histories to retrace the events,\u201d she explains.<\/p>\n

Covering a territory of 11 thousand alqueires (in S\u00e3o Paulo State, a unit of land measuring 24,220 square meters) the Usina Am\u00e1lia mill was the agro-industrial arm of the Francisco Matarazzo Conglomerated Industries business empire. Besides its sugar fields, Usina Am\u00e1lia housed industrial equipment for processing cane and bagasse, as well as locally-produced eucalyptus, fruits and vegetables. Sugar, alcohol, cardboard, citric acid and canned goods were all produced on site. In the early 1950s, the Usina Am\u00e1lia mill was ahead of its time in making forays into biorefinery technology through its utilization of biomass. Thousands of workers \u2013 from agricultural laborers to factory-hands \u2013 were employed, all with ties to the local Food Workers\u2019 Union as the laws of the time mandated. Although heads-of-household among the tenant farmers were the official holders of employment contracts, productivity calculations that served as the basis of their remuneration were made by taking into account the unpaid labor of their wives and children.<\/p>\n

The more skilled workers had access to schools, hospitals, movies, churches, and even a supermarket \u2013 all in the vicinity of the farm \u2013 but these resources were beyond the reach of rural workers. The latter lived dispersed throughout more than 20 settlements of 100 to 150 families each, all of them among the cane fields far from the centers of community activities. They were allowed small orchards and vegetable gardens, but the necessary subsistence products were purchased at the grocery store that the landowner himself also owned. These expenditures were deducted from the salary of the head-of-household who, at the end of the month, often found himself in the red.<\/p>\n

\"Workers

PROJETO MULHERES DA CANA: MEM\u00d3RIAS<\/span><\/a> Workers striking at the Usina Am\u00e1lia mill in 1966 for better working conditions and higher wagesPROJETO MULHERES DA CANA: MEM\u00d3RIAS<\/span><\/p><\/div>\n

The strike<\/strong>
\nDaily life at the mill as well as the 1966 strike are described in an article by Marcos Pivetta titled \u201cThe Mansion of the Matarazzos in the California of S\u00e3o Paulo<\/em>,\u201d published in Issue 61 of the Pesquisa FAPESP<\/em><\/a> magazine in January 2001.<\/p>\n

Relations between the company and the tenant farmers became more strained with the institution of the 1963 Rural Worker\u2019s Statute, which according to Pivetta rendered the system of contract-retention illegal by equalizing the rights of rural and urban labor. The cane cutters were given the right to holidays, a Christmas bonus, a formal labor agreement (for each worker and not merely for those holding contracts, as Pivetta points out), medical care provided by the National Social Security Institute (INSS) and retirement. During the first year of the military dictator ship, this tension was mediated by the laws governing national security and strikes. According to Maria Moraes Silva, the agricultural laborers of the Usina Am\u00e1lia mill struck on the basis of rights guaranteed under the new statute and were expelled from the land for having incited a movement that was deemed illegal. \u201cAs soon as a cane-cutter was dismissed and talked into leaving the farm, his house would be torn down by the landlords,\u201d says Pivetta. Not only the worker\u2019s home, but an entire system of labor relations came tumbling down.<\/p>\n

The six-day strike went on for another five years in the memory of some of these former settlers who recollected the lengthy lawsuits and the company\u2019s appeals, from the Santa Rosa do Viterbo Municipal Court all the way up to the Supreme Labor Court, in Brasilia. \u201cThe legal opinions of all of the judges,\u201d writes Maria Moraes Silva in \u201cStrike at the Plantation\u201d, an article published in the compilation Social History of the Brazilian Peasantry, \u201cmade mention of the discriminatory dismissal of workers, the legality of the strike, the peaceful nature of the events, the rights of the workers, the peaceful nature of the union-organized assemblies, the reasons for demanding the amounts the company failed to pay on the occasion of the collective bargaining agreement approved by the Supreme Labor Court, and the adherence to the Labor Court\u2019s ruling that the movement be terminated.\u201d<\/p>\n

Moraes Silva adds that in the meantime \u201cmany of the workers, after years of waiting for a legal solution to their predicament, settled with the company for ridiculously-low payments. With the backing of the court, many of the workers were able to remain on the plantation, albeit without employment or means of subsistence as they awaited the inevitable outcome.<\/p>\n

These former tenant farmers have no recollection of any legal victory. \u201cThey brought vivid accounts of their experiences, permeated with drama, emotion and symbolism, not just descriptions of the past, but a re-creation and re-living of it,\u201d says Moraes Silva.<\/p>\n

The favored research subjects \u2013 the women \u2013 hold on to memories of how hard it was to find work, of being hungry, and of making do with a bowl of manioc soup in times of extreme hardship. As Moraes Silva puts it, these women, \u201calthough they did not participate directly in the strike, as wives and daughters, they suffered its consequences.\u201d<\/p>\n

Thirty years later, Moraes Silva would meet many of these women again, now as heads of households. To fulfill their new roles, they had to overcome even greater challenges than those faced as tenant farmers, notes Pivetta in an article published in the Pesquisa FAPESP magazine in 2000: \u201cCompeting with younger men and machines that gradually take over the task of cutting the cane, the female day-laborers faced enormous difficulties finding jobs in the rural areas.\u201d Some of them gathered the cane stumps left behind by the combines or \u201ctried their hand\u201d at pesticides in nurseries housing cane seedlings, while others became domestic servants.<\/p>\n

The women also held on to memories of family and extended-family ties and of the neighborliness that prevailed on the outskirts of the towns. \u201cSociability,\u201d notes Moraes Silva, \u201cgrounded in primary interrelationships of interpersonal identification and self-identification gives way to a sociability that is individualized and aloof. The traditions and culture of \u201ca world gone by\u201d can no longer fit within the confines of the new space. \u201cNew places had to be built to protect them, to prevent them from dying,\u201d says Moraes Silva.<\/p>\n

There, at what Moraes Silva calls these \u201cplaces,\u201d one finds the scattered shards of individual and collective histories. \u201cAs recollections emerge from the recesses of memory, what was once nebulous gradually takes on distinct, multi-colored forms,\u201d writes Moraes Silva in her 2001 article \u201cMemory in the Fabric of Time.\u201d \u201cOur neighbor would cook up these cornmeal cakes: she\u2019d crack some eggs right there \u2013 beat them well \u2013 throw in some lard, and then a little cinnamon, with about a half-dozen eggs really well beaten \u2013 with her own hands! She\u2019d then thicken everything with cornmeal. They\u2019d come out so soft and delicious. She\u2019d bake them and send a biscuit-bowl full of those cakes to mother.\u201d Thus a memory Moraes Silva relates, a recollection passed on to her by 93-year-old Dona On\u00edcia, still inhabiting another world and time where loyalty and gratitude were the symbolic manifestations of a unique social group.<\/p>\n

Do-it-yourself<\/strong>
\nMemory, however, contrives, reconstructs, and reinvents fragmentary remembrances, rendering culture \u2013 in the words of historian Peter Burke \u2013 a \u201cconstruction site\u201d of sorts. Some of Am\u00e1lia\u2019s former tenant farmers continued to partake in the rural tradition of Three Kings\u2019 festivities well into the 1990s. \u201cThe meaning behind the festival remained the same: the fulfillment of promises to the Saints for the receiving of grace,\u201d explains Moraes Silva. The wanderings of the kings, the sacred hymns and the joining of the blessed kings\u2019 banners took on new meanings formed out of the symbiosis between the recollection and reinvention of characters brought to life through the story\u2019s narrative. Moraes Silva herself witnessed the banner of the Blessed Kings, a Kings\u2019 festival in the city of Barrinha. The banner, \u201cthe one taken around the world,\u201d was with Our Lady the Blessed Virgin, who had no revelers, thus symbolizing another biblical event: the meeting of Mary \u2013 embodied in the person of Our Lady \u2013 with Jesus as he carried the cross. \u201cAwaiting the Three Kings\/Herod became angry\/he called together his secretaries and decreed his decree\/ that they proceed to Bethlehem\/ and that once there they begin killing\/ and that they kill boys\/ up to the age of two.\u201d<\/p>\n

Project
\n<\/strong>Sugarcane Women: Memories (n\u00ba 1996\/12858-2<\/a>) (1997-1999);\u00a0Grant mechanism\u00a0<\/strong>Research-project Assistance;\u00a0Coordinator\u00a0<\/strong>Maria Aparecida de Moraes Silva;\u00a0Investment\u00a0<\/strong>R$16,608.13<\/p>\n

Scientific article
\n<\/em>SILVA, M. A. M. A mem\u00f3ria na esteira do tempo<\/a>. S\u00e3o Paulo em Perspective<\/strong>. v. 15, n. 3, p. 102-12, 2001.<\/p>\n

From our archives
\n<\/strong>Matarazzo\u2019s Big House and Slaves\u2019 Quarters in the Rich Interior of S\u00e3o Paulo<\/a> –<\/em>\u00a0Issue 61 \u2013 January\/February 2001<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Memories shed light on the sugar plantation settlements ","protected":false},"author":153,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1240],"tags":[241,261],"coauthors":[469],"class_list":["post-125553","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-humanities-special-2","tag-history","tag-sociology"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/125553","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/153"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=125553"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/125553\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=125553"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=125553"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=125553"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=125553"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}