High food prices are especially bad for sugarcane planters and cutters because “the owner won’t let us plant our own crops (beans, yuca, and other staples) on company property to feed ourselves”, said Ribamar, a worker in his twenties.
“When Lula was president, we found out for the first time that we have the right to overtime pay.” “We’re at work while waiting but with no pay,” recalled another worker, who has been working and living on the company property for 25 years. Get one whole story, direct to your inbox every weekday. The company has refused to provide more than one trip per day back to the residential quarters, forcing the workers to wait in the heat until the end of the second shift. Jose and other workers wait in the searing heat by the company bus, which will take them back to the sugar mill, the Usina Santo Antonio, and the company accommodation. His father and grandfather both worked cutting sugarcane and his more distant relatives served as plantation slaves. “Lula will bring down the prices,” said Jose, a cane planter in his thirties, recalling the massive social transformation for low-paid workers – especially in the northeastern region – engineered by Lula’s Workers Party governments between 20. In Alagoas, 64% of the population earns less than $5.50 a day and many of the workers, as in other parts of the country, are counting the days until the 2 October presidential election and an expected victory for former president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva at least in the 30 October run-off. The spectre of hunger is back in rural Alagoas, ranked seventh in the 2021 poverty index of 146 Brazilian municipalities compiled by Marcelo Neri of the Getulio Vargas Foundation (FGV). Food and fuel costs are soaring, driven by multinational and commodity speculators. The workers’ daily wage does not go very far these days in Brazil. That’s less than $8, for each backbreaking shift. Scores of sugarcane planters hack at the bare ochre hillside in Alagoas in northeastern Brazil with four-foot hoes, tilling up to four miles of land per day for just 41 Brazilian reals.
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