THE RURAL EXODUS Until a few years ago, the majority of the Brazilian population lived in the rural area. In the last decades, however, the process of urbanization accelerated, and, since 1970, most of the Brazilians live in the cities. Still today, of each ten Brazilians, four of them live in the field.
Since I left school, I already saw myself as a farmer, and always renewing that hope, from one year to another, of always progressing, always improving, but, for the small farmer, it's hard, the conditions are not easy to get up, to progress. The internal migrations are not a new phenomenon in Brazil: 10% of the Brazilians lived out of their home State in 1950, 10 years later, this number doubles. The rural exodus, the abandonment of the field by the people that leave to the cities, it isn't also a recent phenomenon, but, in the last years, a lot has been accentuated.
Here, between us, we can't keep going, we want work, here, to study in the city, go live in São Paulo to see if we can study and get a better job, we'll work and study to be anything in life. Do you think that the life there in São Paulo will be "nicer", better? I do, because here, to us, it's hard, work under the sun, rain, there's no excuse.
In São Paulo, you can work at a firm, you can work at ease. Here, if it's raining, we don't get paid. There, we're working, we don't get wet, we're getting paid.
In Brazil, approximately 15 million people work in agriculture; of these, four million are unemployed, approximately one million, employers, the remaining, 10 million, work on their own or without remuneration. For each Brazilian working in the industry, there are two working in agriculture. Most of the men of the field used to live near their working place.
At the formalization of the labor relations in the agricultural activity, the rural worker status caused a change in the mentality of the landowners. We can't have, the family is a problem that we have, that we can acquire having, sometimes, a partner, someone to help in the property, as has been the case here, causing serious problems, so, if things came back to what they were, in the settler time, these things, so, they would be more free with us, and us with them, there wasn't this problem of service time, there was more trust between the farmer and the owner, and the worker, and the employee, I mean, today, they keep our property, but already looking, tomorrow or after, for receiving that service time, I mean, this makes it a lot harder to the small farmer. It's precisely this: if people are smart, they don't get anything.
Why? It's about this law thing, because he sees that the person is smart, so he says: "if he's smart, I won't take advantage of him, how will I take advantage from him? He's smart, I'm taking advantage, he's keeping it, he's keeping everything, then he'll let all of that out, he'll make a complaint, I'm doomed".
Because a farmer with a dirty name is really dirty, a farmer, a besieger with a dirty name, in a police station, he's really dirty, so, I mean that they have that, they don't accept someone like that, when they see that the person is active, that the person understands the law, they don't accept, they won't give the job. When it was implemented, in the 1940's, the labor legislation caused a strong impact on the labor relations in the industry and commerce. Upon a better definition of the responsibilities of the rural entrepreneur, the rural worker status caused a similar impact.
One of the consequences was stimulating the presence of the intermediary in the labor hiring. For 15 years, I've been struggling with people like that, and there's always some good time, and then failure. What do you do with that people?
Rural work, I take the service with the besieger and I place them there, and each person gets one Cruzeiro. How many people do you take? I take 112, 100, 90, 80, 50, around that.
When he has a lot of work, he needs more people, from 100 to 150 people. In this new working condition, the service of these men is required according with the rural calendar and depends on a series of factors that are foreign to them. It stopped a little because of the weather, it was really hard on the tillage, the bosses thought that it couldn't continue any longer.
It's bad, because there's a lot of work, but there are a lot of machines that do the work, and there's no service left for day-workers, the day-worker, more than half lives lost in time, grieving, coming here to my door, as we're contractors, they come to my door and tell me to get them jobs, and my husband goes around, I struggle too, I struggle along with him to do the service, but, when he gets a work, the machines do half of it, so, all of the farmers have money, and then it's a fight against this machines, and almost none jobs for day-workers. Developed in highly industrialized countries, the rural machines perform, with the assistance of a few operators, tasks that used to demand jobs from large quotas of rural workers. Its cost demands a high capitalization, but a cotton harvester like this performs the job of 300 people.
In 1946, there were 6 thousand rural workers in Brazil; today, the country manufactures 60 thousand tractors per year. In the extensive cultures of products whose sale price depends, many times, on the foreign market, the machine is almost an economic imperative, but, on the other hand, its use reduces the labor market, this way affecting the low income of the rural wage earners. This part of the mechanization is also very important to the country, the country needs income, so, I think that this is not the problem that affects the employment of the rural rural workers, these areas being vacated needed to be more explored, they aren't being useful, because there's a lot of land left, which is creating very thick woods, the appearance of jaguars, and they're not being used.
The livestock, turning into pastures increasingly larger areas of our territory, also contributes to the decrease in the working opportunities in the countryside. The economic risks in the livestock activity are smaller than the ones of agriculture, and a lot of landowners chose to work with livestock to occupy farms previously dedicated to farming. The primitive Brazilians had houses and lands in a quantity much superior to their needs, concerning the repartition of land, each family man chooses some area that pleases him, and in it he makes his plantations, and, about that, about inheritances and dividing claims, they are handled by the European demandists and avaricious.
This picture described by a traveler of the XVI century, over time, changed, and the extensive cultures lead to the growing concentration in the property of land. We're more or less in the center of a farm. In this entire farm, this landscape here was inhabited by wage-earner workers and small producers.
With the evolution of this plant that started developing here, all these people started being called day-workers. I think that, with this development, there was a great advantage, wealth to the nation, but, to the man, it delayed, the men lost his human dignity to work in this region, all these people went to the cities' suburbs, where "favelas" are appearing, also here in the countryside. They earn their life working here in these farms, traveling in trucks, where they are carried, worse than pigs, worse than cattle, worse than any animal - the man is being carried in this asphalt road that we're seeing here.
Everything is bad, to start, they have to leave early, return late, you just can't work in the fields. How many people fit in the truck? Sometimes 112, there are times with 100, 90, sometimes with 112.
Is the trip bad? It's bad, very tight, very far, everything is bad. Notwithstanding of our country's immensity, the 15 million people that constitute the active rural population currently explore an area inferior to 4% of the Brazilian territory.
Pressured, with no perspective, the man decides to go away, he thinks that in the city he'll find the vital space that is missing in the field. The rural exodus, however, won't help solve any problem. Do day-workers solve the problem?
They don't, they don't. Why? It's hard because they're people with even less hope than us, because they have their wage and they know that they'll spend their whole lives in that, I mean, they don't worry about making our service yield, they come to do their time, it doesn't matter if they work a lot or if they don't work, I mean, to them, it doesn't matter what they'll leave as earning to the boss, being a day-worker troubleshoots, but doesn't solve our problem.
I'm a social worker here, in Assis, we've been feeling a lot the problem of the migrant in Assis, which is due to the location of the city, a road and rail center, so, we're, practically, between the States of Mato Grosso and Paraná, with this idea, we make a monthly tabulation, so, between the houses, what has the largest number is the search for jobs and medical treatment, now it started decreasing due to the harvest, so, when there's a harvest, it decreases, and, during off season, it increases. The decrease of the job opportunities in agriculture is further aggravated by the high birth rate, that usually are, in the rural are, superior to the city's. Furthermore, the people here in the neighborhood marry, but they don't look the future, a lot of people marry here, but they can't afford to get married, they don't have enough savings to get married, because, nowadays, the life here in the fields isn't easy.
I'm completely different, I want do have savings so that I can provide a good standard of living to my wife, because being married is not easy, and, is the person doesn't have a land of her own, to live from the pay, it's not easy. and the person doesn't face, these things, they just want to have babies, there's no excuse for the kids. There's not a lot of work, so, it's where the person lives and there's not enough work to keep the house, so they find a lot of difficulties in life.
You see, we live here in Tarumã, we pay a rent, we pay the electricity bill, we pay the water bill, we pay everything, the husband's salary is small, we have 5, 6 children, we can work in the fields to help him, when it's possible, we're day-workers, we're day-workers, but, when it's not possible, we stay at home; when we have a new baby, when there's a situation in which we can't go to the fields, we're forced to stay at home, we don't have anywhere else to live, where are we going to live? Under the three? I'll take my 5, 6 children and put them under a three?
I can't, no, I'm aware, the world is all of us', God made it, now, three people take over everything, we don't have anywhere else to live, where are we going to live? A rented house, as you can see there, costs 180 Reais, a small house like that, and, to a day-worker with no means, there's no water, there's nothing, not even light, there's no bathroom, not even a toilet, because our toilet is in the middle of the woods, if we must say. .
. The low income level of these men will make their integration to the urban area harder, they'll now have to pay for their living, besides acquiring groceries that, previously, at least in part, were produced by them for their families' consumption. In the old days, there were more people in the rural area, the commerce in the rural area, 5 years ago, it was 100% better, and, today, there already is failure in the rural area, in the rural area, you end up finding the people that come buy from you, very few people, their salaries are really small, they are not enough to support them, they keep damaging the seller, so, there are all these problems.
In this effort to ensure the survival of the family, even the perspective of providing an education to their children is harmed. Their schools are these, as I explained, I'll remove my oldest son, I'll send him to cut cane. Why?
Because they ask me so many things, they want me to support my children as a rich woman, and I'm not rich, I'm poor, so we're forced, now each page, each book that comes, each paper that comes, each uniform, everything is a hell of a demand that we have to attend, so, I can't, my conditions aren't enough, so, I remove them, they'll go to the fields. We're creating them in the farm regime, creating them there, he's a better man in the farm than if he was studying, because there are thousands of thieves that are studying, they study only to steal, only to steal, to cause disorder, to do all of the things that are bad, they studied for that. I mean, the life in the farm, do you think it's healthier?
It's more painful, you see, it's a life filled with sacrifices, getting up at dawn, it's cold, it's hot, it rains, but it's a life where the person is sweating, he knows the weight of his body, he knows how much he spilled, he knows how much his father suffered to raise him, so, he becomes an honest man, he becomes a work man, a man that knows what tillage is, he knows the tillage. Look for a student, what does he know about the tillage? I know, I know until when there are going to be bugs in the cotton; when I was seven.
When I was 7, my father sent me to the fields, my father didn't give me books, I weed, topple the land with animals, I line, I plant, I "paint the mugs", whatever I face in the fields, I'll farm like a man, I'll tear bushes down, I'll do anything, I don't have any reading, but I know everything about farming. The differences between us of the field and the city people make one of the main frontiers in human relations. The culture that these Brazilians have is connected to the land and will be of almost no value in the urban area.
On the other hand, the agriculture is capable of employing large quantities of labor, but, unless the fixation of the man to the land is stimulated, the rural exodus will leave large areas of our territory empty. The same factors that debilitate the economy of the wage earner start, now, to pressure the small producers. This way, I think that if I can buy more, I have to buy, or else I have to sell, because, in this small area, a few years from now, there will be no more living conditions.
Why? There are no more conditions to go on, they think that farming is not working, other are already in other fields in the city, they sell what they have, other can no longer survive in the small piece of land that they have. I stayed in a farm where I was the responsible, I was the cropper and in charge, and the bosses were Japanese, and they didn't know about the plantation, I was in charge, but, as the frost came, my oldest brother left, he bought a house for 20 thousand, and stayed there, his boys getting paid as bricklayers, we put the boys to work, today they are earning more than 6 thousand.
I'm illiterate, with a poor sight, I hope that my boys, I have five men, one with 19, other with 17, with 16, oth3er with 15; my youngest daughter is now 11 years old. Let's hope for them, they'll graduate to bring something home, let's see if we won't starve, I believe not. The urbanization means progress when the people that abandon the field find in the city better life conditions.
In the last 40 years, while triplicating the total of the Brazilian population, the number of inhabitants in the urban centers than six-folded, going from 13 to 80 million people. The Act no. 4.
504, of November 30, 1964, disposes over the land reform, and, in its first article, it concerns the set of measures that aim to promote the better land distribution before modifications in the regime of its possession and use, to attend the principles of social justice and increase of the productivity. The relatively low remuneration of the agriculture is related with the low productivity of the rural work. In many cases, the man might not want to sell his work force.
Producing to himself, he'll be able to get a better reward, with benefits, to him and his whole family, and to the society. Where will the path that guides the man far from the land of his own country lead to? Noticing the Brazilian progress, the men of the field aspire to integrate the society, to enjoy the well-being that they, with their work, help build.
