somanlu jul dez 2006.pmd - Eventos - Ufam

“Soldiers” and citizens in the rainforest: Brazilian rubber tappers...
of tappers who died of malaria, snakebite, or malnutrition was undoubtedly higher
than that of Brazilian troops who died in combat in Italy – the latter numbered at
454 (of a total force of more than 20,000) – although there is no official record or
consensus on the casualties in the rainforest and estimates vary widely. The existence
of cases of debt slavery in the Amazon today is a shocking reminder of the ongoing
failures of the Brazilian government and the international human rights movement
to eradicate this problem.
Nevertheless, these standard interpretations of the battle for rubber tend to
conflate the agenda of federal officials and seringalistas, to confuse government intent
with consequence, to dismiss the wartime patriotism that gripped the Amazon and
other regions of Brazil, and to overlook the varied wartime experiences of the
tappers. Moreover harping on the “traditionalism” of peasants and extractivists
assumes the incapacity of the rural poor to embrace nationalist discourse and political
change. In short, wartime tappers are seen as incapable of seeing the forest for the
trees. That the tappers’ fledgling efforts to enlist state support were unsuccessful in
the short run should not detract from their historical significance. In a revisionist
vein, this paper looks at the wartime battle for rubber as a historic moment of state
intervention (by both Brazilian and American officials) in rural labor relations in the
Amazon, and the efforts of the Brazilian government to confer political prestige and
social rights of citizenship to the nation’s most marginal populations. These tentative
efforts, which until today remain incomplete, are nonetheless noteworthy for
understanding the history of state formation, political subjectivities, and the struggle
for the rights of citizenship in the Amazon.
Condemnation of the battle for rubber reflects the general indictment of
Vargas’s policies towards the rural workforce that blankets Brazilian labor
historiography (skewed by an overwhelming urban focus). Although rural workers
were entitled to minimum wage, paid annual vacations, and notice prior to dismissal
under the 1943 labor laws, scholars have pointed to their non-enforcement as evidence
of Vargas’s reluctance to confront the rural oligarchy whose export crops provided
the vital foreign exchange for import substitution industrialization (STOLCKE, 1988,
p. 108). The so-called “oligarchic pact” kept wages and political mobilization low in
the countryside, allowing large landowners to maintain relatively backward agricultural
techniques, small per hectare returns from the land, and declining yields, without
sacrificing their own living standards (BARRACLOUGH, 1973, p. 105-6). 6 Still others
40 Somanlu, ano 6, n. 2, jul./dez. 2006