A pobreza e a escravização do trabalhador rural na obra Machombongo, de Euclides Neto

Abstract

This study had as objective to analyze the poverty and the slave labor that the characters of the work Machombongo (1986), of Euclides Neto, realized in the cocoa plantation of the fictional Ronco D'Água farm. These characters were rural workers and lived in a poverty-stricken situation, precariously, in the huts made of straw that were offered by the boss, so that they lived while they were working on the farm. They also worked on cacao plantations to buy food and satisfy hunger. The workers lived hidden in the middle of the farm, because they did not have access to all the places, they could not walk all over the farm and they were oppressed by the farmer, the Deputy Rogaciano, that had the power to send and to demando in the region due to its great productivity of cocoa. Rogaciano, with all his economic power and with the recognition of all the Bahian lands that he owned, made agreements with the politicians and governors of Bahia, during the period of the Civil Military Dictatorship, and his powers were intensified to such an extent that the right was given to decide the lives of the region's residents. Cesar (2003) comments that Machombongo is the most credible representation of the dictatorial period in the south of Bahia, since it represents the oppression of the workers and the enrichment of the farmer during the Civil Military Dictatorship. The oppression of the workers was exacerbated, because the deputy practiced violence against the worker who did not obey his orders. The workers carried out exploited works, because they were afraid of the deputy and his jaguncos to practice some violence against them. The work carried out on the farm was quite exhausting, since the workers did what the large animals could not do, such as transporting logs in places where there were ravines. Although it was a work of enslavement, the workers did not have labor rights nor did they have documentation; worked anonymously. In this sense, the problematic that moves this research seeks to understand the poverty represented in an absolute way, which is that which shows the human being living in precarious financial conditions, with scarcity; living with the minimum to ensure survival, as Rocha (2006) explains. To address this problem of poverty and exploitation of workers within the Euclidean narrative, we use authors such as Lapa (2008) to clarify the poverty lived by the aggregates anda about the oppression that the aggregate workers they suffered on the farm. The methodology was constituted by the bibliographical research with the reading and the analysis of the work Machombongo. The corpus analysis encompasses the reading of the novel in question, aiming to understand how the Euclidean narrative can represent the characters who worked in the cacao crop, lived in poverty and suffered from social inequality. These workers were oppressed day by day, because they were silenced by the economic power, by the oppression and the violence of the deputy Rogaciano. In addition to living in oppression, they were exploited at work, with no opportunity to seek new employment, because they did not have enough financial means to move to other places and, therefore, lived in extreme poverty and were constantly humiliated, at the risk of losing their jobs. if they tried to act differently, at odds with the farmer's orders.