The world of chestnut workers: Daily life and exploitation in the Tocantins Valley (1890-1940)

Abstract

The poor backwoodsmen who lived and worked in the Tocantins River Valley between 1890 and 1940 belong to a category of workers who, not having their social experience built in the sphere of organized struggle, were, until recently, deprived of historicization. In this article, our objective is to reconstruct some of the dimensions of the work culture of the Brazil nut gatherers who lived in the Tocantins River Valley between the 1890s and 1940s, and whose work practices are at the center of their ways of life and, consequently, constitute the nexus between culture and exploitation, resistance and daily adaptation. A central concept in this investigation is that of culture, which we understand as a range of symbolic systems constituted by experiences and patterns of behavior that, not evoking the consensus of sociocultural relations, were lived and resignified by the Brazil nut gatherers.