Originally published on 10/17/2004 by O Estado de Sao Paulo
EDUARDO NUNOMURA
Special report from Petrolina
The São Francisco River stands out of stubbornness. And it is because of this stubbornness – half “mineira”, half “nordestina” – that he will be tried once again. They want to transform it into a great water donator to the dry lands of the Northeast, while, so far, no serious project has recovered the life that has been taken from him. The transposition project was made a priority by the Lula administration, reigniting a discussion that dates back to the Empire. Can the most national of all waterbeds be the way of the fishermen, the producer of the food that ever lasts, the provider of enriching energy and, at the same time, the promoter of long dreamed integration for the “nordestino” people (the people of the Northeast)?
Along its 2,700 km, from the birth spring of the Canastra mountains, in Minas Gerais, to its encounter with the Atlantic Ocean, between the states of Sergipe and Alagoas, the São Francisco synthesizes all the inequities of an unequal country. Misery and richness, stone floors and irrigated lands, polluted and crystalline waters, destruction and recovery, hunger and abundance, caatinga and cerrado, nature’s life and death. All of that is materialized in the Old Chico, the São Francisco River, and its tributaries. Discussions that were initiated in the public meetings of the basin committee last Thursday.
“Most people indicated that the project is nothing more than a fallacy and that we, from the Low São Francisco, are against it”, said priest Isaías Carlos Nascimento Filho, after a consultation in the city of Propriá, in the state of Sergipe. Other meetings are already scheduled for the next few days. They will take place in Bom Jesus da Lapa (Bahia), Belo Horizonte (Minas Gerais), Petrolina (Pernambuco), Pirapora (Minas Gerais) and Salvador (Bahia). The discussion is placed upon an environmental impact study, a vital step before construction can begin. The 137-page report describes 44 consequences of the construction of the two channels that will suck between 26 and 127 cubic meters (a thousand liters) of water per second from the São Francisco. Twelve of those impacts are positive, including the creation of jobs, water supply for rural communities and containment of the rural migration toward the cities. Most of them show the negative effects of the project, such as the loss of fertile lands, reduction of energy production capacity, threats to land fauna and the risk of impoverishing the river’s biodiversity.
It comes as a surprise that a project which intends to bring salvation to drought-ridden lands could spell such harm to the environment. But those who live and depend on the river for their survival know that messing with the course of the water means trouble, in fact. The four water dams along the course of the Old Chico have already changed its flowing capacity. Now, it is artificial, with times and volumes determined by the computer. Which doesn’t make sense for everyone.
EMPTY NETS
“We live off this river, but he has lost his strength”, says fisherman Antonio Gomes de Carvalho, 40, a citizen of Saramen, a small village of Brejo Grande (Sergipe), at the mouth of the São Francisco. The dourados, surubins and piaus, the original fish of the river, have disappeared from his fishing nets. In their place, he now pulls out bagres, robalos, carapebas and other transition fish. The species are brought by the “salty tongue”. It’s the power of the sea that inverted the history of the strong river that once invaded the ocean. Six years ago, Pontal do Cabeço disappeared under the water and most of its inhabitants moved to Saramen.
With the waters under man’s control, fishermen are forced to become small entrepreneurs. All but the few ones who are contemplated by social projects. At the Sobradinho dam, in Bahia, the largest artificial lake in the world, José Ribamar Silva Machado, 47, is an example. He was included in a program to raise tilápias in captivity. He receives a minimum wage, while the fish get fat in the tanks. His canoe now only slides back and forth on a short crossing between the cages and the lake border. “And to think that I knew all the stones from here to Juazeiro.”
Tales of the fishermen, when true, help construct a mosaic of the São Francisco that is being threatened by man’s influence. Other characters, equally dependent on the river, help fill in the picture. The “sertanejo” (the man of the arid lands) is one of them. Juvenal João da Silva, 48, is a farmer in Belém do São Francisco, in Pernambuco. He lives less than 10 kilometers from the river banks. Survives on agriculture and raising goats. The water shortage is constant, and he has no perspective on what to give his children.
“If they brought me the river, I would be just fine. People’s lives here are threatened by drought and starvation”, says the sertanejo. He is the father of nine children and the grandfather or four, all living in the same plaster house, with a well in the yard that has to be filled by tanker trucks. The eldest son survives on filling up holes with sand in the roadways. He earns R$ 3 (less than $ 1) a day. With his wife, he also works at other people’s small subsistence plantations. On the little property that they own, they plant onions, tomatoes, rice and beans. Seldom, however, does the crop provide any abundance. And what about the transposition, Mr. Juvenal? “It’s a good plan by what ya telling me. But people like us are not that lucky.”
For centuries, the Old Chico has carried the burden of inequality. Be it next to his banks, in the so-called São Francisco Valley, where irrigation projects create oasis of prosperity next to super poor areas. Be it far away, in the arid wastelands of the Northeast, where, because of the chronic water shortage, many see the transposition as the only solution to the social drama. Emperor D. Pedro II, as the country’s most recent presidents, already said that the project was a priority for Brazil.
ROUGH LIFE
Taking water from the São Francisco to remote areas may bring together lives that would hardly ever cross one another. Such as the lives of Francisca Amaro da Silva, 57, and Maria Madalena da Conceição, 51. The first one works at the edge of the river, in the Frutex company. She picks grapes from the vines that grow on the irrigated lands of Petrolina, in Pernambuco. She receives a minimum wage of R$ 270 and works nine hours a day. Born in Ceará, she ran away from the drought with her husband 19 years ago. That’s when they put the little money that they had into a small property. It didn’t work. She was just lucky enough to get a job. “This here only makes the owners rich. As for us, all we can do is live a rough life.”
Maria Madalena is a cambiuá indian. Mother of ten, with no husband, she lives a rough life with the help of federal programs such as the Bolsa-Escola (School-Grant) and Vale Gás (Gas Ticket) in the town of Ibimirim, in Pernambuco, or with the little money that the family earns from hunting and selling native birds. She is one of the people targeted by the transposition project, which seeks also to benefit those who are far from the river. “Some days I stay out until dark in the donkey cart to ask the neighbors for water, because my children are dying of thirst”, she says. She tries, without much success, to raise corn, beans, pumpkins and castor oil plants. “I don’t know if I’ll be here to see the water.” If the drought persists, she says, even her children might migrate away from there.
In a certain way, 6-year-old Rafaela Santos da Silva represents the mythical side that many attribute to the São Francisco. Living next to the Itaparica Dam, the little pernambucana relies on the river for every time she loses a milk tooth. To her, the Old Chico holds the power of healing.
