A quick shower has moistened the completely clear-cut ridges. Washing hangs on the barbed wire fences of the few houses there, dripping lazily. Moisture prevents the strong morning wind from kicking up dust from the dirt road. Off in the distance, like some foreign object in the landscape, lies a wooded valley – wild vegetation breaking the graphic patterns of the surrounding fields. The noon heat decreases markedly under this canopy of leaves – it is actually pleasantly cool. Hidden between the tall trees, only the experienced visitor can spot the entrance to the small farm owned by José Raimundo de Matos (69) – a narrow path leads to Zé Arturo’s two simple clay houses comprising the farm. One is a barn-kitchen combination with a large wood stove made of clay and an old table in the center of the room. There are tools, sacks and barrels on the walls as well as an old buffet cabinet from the 1960s. The family sleeps in the second four-room dwelling, which also has a living room with a tube television.
Zé Arturo leans against the stove and drinks a coffee with one of his four sons. He laughs as his son complains about life in the city. All of his seven children have moved to “the streets” as he puts it. They say agricultural work is too difficult for them. However, at the moment there is no work in Nova Olinda, the small town 12 km away. His daughters and sons can only survive with help of the Bolsa Família, a state assistance program for poor families. Zé is proud of his “green hell”, the name his neighbors have given his plantations, which are based on the agroforests system. He has been cultivating his arable crops since 1995, protected by a self-planted secondary forest. It is commonplace in the sertão to completely clear the land and to have an intensive cultivation of monocultures (corn, beans, soy).
The conversation is interrupted by a loud scream and the presence of a bitter smell coming from the direction of the main building. His wife Bastina (Maria Neusa Cordeiro dos Matos, 68) calls out, fear resonates in her voice. Hastily the men run the few meters across to the wash basin, which is located outside of the house under a tree. From a hole in the tree four meters high – a striped hog-nosed skunk (Conepatus semistriatus) looks down; it hisses, Bastina screams. They all frantically search for long sticks, a machete is quickly found. However there is no ladder tall enough. So the washing is postponed to the next morning, and just to be safe, the machete remains next to the mountain of white bed linen.
Sunday morning, 5:30 a.m.: the sun slowly creeps through the leafy roof of Zé and Bastina’s house. Bastina catches up on the laundry. Canaries and humming birds buzz around the blossoms atop the bushes. The hymn of the sertão is playing on the radio: “A Triste Partida”, the sad departure by “Patativa do Assaré”, the poet of the northeast hinterland. The poem was set to music by Luiz Gonzago in 1964 and describes the pain of the families who, because of the drought, had to leave their farms and survive in the favelas of the big cities.
With his three hectares, Zé has meanwhile generated 900% more profit than his neighbors with about the same amount of land, as a study by the agricultural workers’ union in Nova Olinda points out.
