Análise das políticas compensatórias e das estratégias de sobrevivência do homem do campo, principalmente no período de seca: um estudo do caso

Abstract

The Brazilian Northeastern region has been affected, over the centuries, by a phenomenon know as “droughts”, which assumes a great relevance from the geoclimatic, meteorological, economic, social, cultural and environmental viewpoints. Their impact are largely acknowledged as production failure, unemployment, migration, death, disease outbreaks (often more deadly than hunger itself), family disruption, buildup of city slums, water scarcity, hunger, riots, plagues and a host of wrongdoings. The overall situation is apt to bring about instances of despair, resilience and solidarity. There has been no want of measures to solve those problems (which range from the importation of camels to the construction of huge reservoirs such as the Castanhão Dam), specially since the “Great 1877-1978 Droughts”, the most severe of the 19th century, when about 5% of the Brazilian population perished. Thenceforth, the droughts turned into a problem of governmental politics that made the Northeastern region to a case of major concern, so that given the regular occurrence of that phenomenon countrymen carry on being highly vulnerable to low-pluviosity periods. Within this social context lies the Limoeiro do Norte county, enclosed in the Vale do Jaguaribe micro-region. The main objective of this work was to analyze the compensatory policies and survival strategies of countrymen during “droughts” periods. The basic material consists of a literature survey and a secondary database derived from the Arizona Project. As to the compensatory policies, the results obtained so far show there to occur a temporary relief of the starvation state of most families but without accounting for major structural changes. It was also noticeable that despite the several restrictions to prevent a countryman to be productive (lack of farmland, water and basic input economic resources), agriculture is still the main activity and source of his survival by resorting to a number of strategies through the combination of various income sources, yet the great majority still suffers from a lack of economic means for a decent living. The main outcome of this study has been the acceptance of the basic hypothesis, namely that the execution of public policies for tackling the droughts problem has failed to turn the Northeast countryside a more livable environment. The main evidence of that failure lies in the fact that the rural population continues to be historically vulnerable to the same scarcity of survival means, yet the countryman seems to be endowed with a very strong sense of adaptation that somehow enables him to endure a host of difficulties and to make the best of what is available for his welfare, specially during periods of severe droughts.