Migrant Sugarcane Workers - Brazil This photo essay on the making since December 2011 is about the migrant workers of the sugar cane industry, a vanishing labor class in Brazil. It is inspired by the images of those FSA/WPO photographers of the Depression era like Dorothea Lange, Walker Evans, Lewis Hine and all those masters back in the 1930’s. This is a work in progress and next harvest season I intend to continue shooting and doing research collecting data on the sugarcane plantation history in Brazil aiming at the publication of a book on the subject by November 2014.
Migrant Sugarcane Workers
They arrive from other northeastern Brazilian states in October for the sugar cane harvest in the Reconcavo of Bahia. Here the harvest is still performed manually but soon it will be all mechanized. Half a million jobs and 500 years of tradition are to be phased out in the Brazilian sugar cane sector to satisfy western demands for more socially acceptable work practices in the biofuel industry.
Sugarcane cutters who have been working Brazil's land since 1525, when Portuguese colonialists first experimented with growing the crop, are to make way for mechanization. An estimated 80% of the 500,000 jobs will be gone within five years. Moving to a tractor-based system will cause pain and upheaval for its migrant workforce.
These cutters are the lowest paid work force in the biofuel industry and their labor conditions in the field have been widely criticized around the world. They stay in the northeast region from October through March and them migrate to the southeast for that region’s harvest season. They burn the leaves to stave off snakes, scorpions and facilitate harvesting next day, which has caused the criticism of environmental groups in Brazil. These migrant workers are mostly young illiterate exploited lowly at birth people who come to make a little bit of money to support their folks back home. They look at my camera with feelings of mistrust, humility, curiosity and sometimes I capture a smile disguising their indignation. Please refer to my website to view more images www.antoniomari.com