By MANUEL DOMINGOS NETO*
Brazil needs a type of development that buries the prevailing colonial mentality, including in important sectors of the left.
Three highly profitable industrial sectors were present at the dawn of modernity: metallurgy, shipbuilding and sugar. They rivaled each other in technological sophistication and strategic importance. The sugar industry was born globalized and the energy content of sugar would change the nutritional status of humanity.
To produce sugar overseas, the colonizer murdered natives, brought slaves from Africa and set fire to the forest.
The sugar mill needed cattle as a source of protein, traction and means of transportation. Leather was used for a thousand purposes. Tobacco farming and gold mining also required cattle.
The backlands were taken over by livestock. The colonizers decimated the native peoples and set fire to a very special biome, favorable to human reproduction. In the caatinga, the fire was lit before the rains so that the branches would quickly bloom and fatten the cattle.
Hundreds of species that helped feed the population disappeared forever. The natural drainage system was destroyed. Old watering holes and springs disappeared. In Ceará, at the end of the 18th century, the colonizers created the largest dry river in the world, the Jaguaribe.
In Europe, the textile industry had advanced in the 19th century. More fires in the forest to produce cotton.
The rich and civilized learned to drink coffee and, to produce it, the colonized continued to set fire to the forest.
In Brazil, cities were growing and demanding animal protein. To raise cattle, whether extensively (on open land) or in demarcated spaces, the forest was set on fire.
The reproduction of the herds began to depend on the mountainous plateaus and, above all, the Parnaíba Valley. Everyone sang “my ox died, what will become of me? I’ll send for another one, little sister, from Piauí”. This was the first song sung from north to south in Brazil.
The aggression against the biomes would show its consequences in 1877, when the greatest humanitarian crisis in the history of Brazil broke out: half a million people died of hunger, thirst and plague. The Brazilian population was around ten million.
If it weren't for the refreshing Parnaíba Valley, where there was water, fish, meat, honey and native fruits, the mortality rate would have been greater. Half a century had passed since two Austrian scientists described Piauí as the Brazilian Switzerland.
Industrialized countries needed carnauba wax, vegetable oils and natural rubber. Exploration advanced in the biomes of the Mid-North and the Amazon. The resulting foreign exchange would benefit industrialization concentrated in the Southeast, observed Celso Furtado.
The Military Dictatorship was committed to ensuring the sale of natural resources. It opened roads in the forest and offered large plots of land to foreigners.
Democratic governments persisted with the same approach, now handing over the forest to monoculture farmers and miners. The old practices of decimating the indigenous peoples persisted. In addition to fire, the forest was also damaged by chemical products.
Environmental protection has been on the agenda for decades without any review of the agricultural model basically defined during colonization. The State supported agro-exporters.
This “breadbasket of the world” is a rip-off. The profits don’t stay here. They go abroad, which controls finances and international trade. It benefits those who produce agricultural machinery and inputs.
Modern agriculture does not generate jobs in the countryside: it generates demands on industry. In the Brazilian case, it benefits neither the countryside nor the city.
Monoculture for export is a disgrace. It sets fire to the forest, impoverishes the environment and prepares for disasters. It enriches a few and leaves the people without support. Piauí, which provided protein for a large part of Brazilians, now drinks milk from São Paulo.
Environmental disaster is not an emergency, it is a historical routine, as old as colonization; it is a permanent feature of the agricultural economy primarily focused on external demand.
Some say that today's fires are criminal, set to harm Lula. This is a cover-up for centuries-old wickedness. The criminals should be arrested, but we must not forget that the biggest crime is the type of agriculture encouraged by the State.
There is no plan to combat fires that will work. No environmental protection program that can mitigate the loss of biodiversity or assistance program that can lift millions of hungry people out of poverty today and tomorrow.
What we need is an agriculture that produces abundant, cheap, diverse, healthy food and that doesn't blow smoke in our eyes.
Where have you seen a progressive government applaud MATOPIBA?
Brazil needs a type of development that buries the prevailing colonial mentality, including among important sectors of the left.
* Manuel Domingos Neto He is a retired UFC professor and former president of the Brazilian Association of Defense Studies (ABED). Author, among other books What to do with the military — Notes for a new National Defense (Reading Cabinet). [https://amzn.to/3URM7ai]
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