The productive restructuring of sugarcane and the effects upon Pontal do Paranapanema (SP) workers' health

Author(s)

Angela dos Santos Machado

• Document type: Master's Dissertation
• Press: Presidente Prudente. 2020-06-15.
• Institution: Universidade Estadual Paulista (Unesp). Faculdade de Ciências e Tecnologia. Presidente Prudente
• Defense date: 2020-03-31
• Advisor: Marcelo Dornelis Carvalhal

Abstract

The central theme of this master’s research is the sale of land reform settlers' work to the sugarcane sector at Pontal do Paranapanema. These settlers are aggregated in the parent's lots, that is, are the children of those who fought and conquered the land. These subjects are, at the same time, peasants and workers in the sugarcane agro-hydro-business. We have discussed working relations in the sector and the health-care process in the current phase of productive restructuring, characterized by mechanized agricultural activities, for changes in work organisation and precarious, outsourced work and the resulting unemployment in the flexible logic of capital accumulation. We understand that the greatest risks to mechanized workers' health and safety are due to the intense pace of work, strong pressure to achieve the goals and the lack of breaks in the working day. This frantic pace causes collisions, engine overturns and fires. In addition to this, night and shift works may also constitute risk factors for workers since it increases stress, fatigue and the wear of the body. Thus, although the machine is strongly present and have generated a great unemployment in the sugarcane fields, human labour is still imperative in the planting and cutting of sugarcane. This mechanized work, portrayed as the opposite of manual sugarcane cutting, in fact hides wicked faces of overexploitation of labour in which can be seen the extension of working hours, the intensified work schedule and the low pay, without the workforce value increase on account of the professional upgrading of skills. The overexploitation of work and the forms of peasant income-exploitation are not exclusive of Brazil, but were historically built by the way Latin American countries were colonized, within the international division of labour and impacted by neoliberal policies. Thus, we have analysed the context of peasant exploitation and resistance in multiple scales (Pontal do Paranapanema, Brazil and Latin America) from research internship experience in Mexico, bringing examples from this country that can be related to our study area. Pontal do Paranapanema has a historic land squatting complex in which several fractions of the territory are still in judicial dispute and even a portion of the land already found to be vacant has not yet been diverted to land reform. The expansion of the sugarcane agrohidronegobusiness has served to legitimize the squatting and to limit agrarian reform. In addition to this, the large extension of sugarcane fields has had an impact on the entire population living in the municipalities because of aerial spraying of agrochemicals that poisons urban, rural and forest areas. (AU)

• FAPESP's process: 17/11731-7 - Sugarcane productive restructuring and implications for seated workers' health in the Paranapanema Pontal (SP)
• Grantee: Angela dos Santos Machado
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Master