Trabalhadores da Juta na Amazônia: trajetórias de luta, suor e sofrimento

Abstract

This thesis investigates jute workers in the Brazilian Amazon, seeking to understand the strategies adopted by them to overcome the precarious working conditions in the Amazonian floodplains. The central idea behind this research was as despite degrading working conditions and the work itself, the jute workers managed to achieve high levels of productivity that over the course of 50 uninterrupted years, sustained the economy of the states of Amazonas and Pará with the jute productive chain. The guidelines of the qualitative approaches were favored by the methodology who inserts the quantitative aspects. Fieldwork was carried out at Vila Amazônia, in the city of Parintins, state of Amazonas, along with the veteran jute workers and other representatives of the community. We realized that jute workers production logic is based mainly on coercive and oppressive punctual actions, executed and managed within the profit financial system under direction of the regional elite. The question that commanded this study resulted in the recognition that the predatory overexploitation of rural labor in the Amazon was present in the economic activity of the jute with sweat and blood of the workers suffered. Many of the workers until now coexist with diseases and sequels caused by the painful, unhealthy and dangerous conditions of this type of work. It can be said by way of conclusion, that this study brings significant contributions to the Academy, and may constitute a document to substantiate strategies of action of the remnants of jute workers or their descendants with the public authorities.