Dos canaviais à Etanolatria: o (re)ordenamento territorial do capital e do trabalho no setor sucroalcooleiro da microrregião geográfica de Presidente Prudente-SP

Abstract

The labor world has gone through significant transformations in the current productive restructuring of capital, this is of course, capital changes self inflicted so it can face its own structural crisis. Thus, the employment has come under ever more precarious forms in different ways short-time, undercontracted, contracted out - system. So, the working class has become more heterogeneous, fragmented and increasingly complex. In this context, notably in the last decades of the XX century, capital and labor has been reoriented. The Geography of Labor, in which a reading of spatial changes and the relation society x natures through the lens of labour is involved, addresses the necessity of conceiving the labor as liberation opposed to imprisonment. In this set of circumstances, the alcohol industry complex in the geographic Microregion of Presidente Prudente caused a territorial reconfiguration of capital and labor in this particular areas of the Paulista territory, which for its turn, we consider a disputed land . The disputing process is between the sugarcane-based industry, social movements in quest for land, given this region has long been a historic stage of illegal farmers (landowners holding forged documents/titles). Soon came into this scenery powerful big landowners against small farmers (campesinos), the last ones regarded in this research as working class. Therefore, in this process, as a productive restructuring of capital, flexibilization of social relations of production and working conditions is a clear result. In the sugarcane agri-industries in the area where this research was conducted, precarious working conditions is sharp and expressed in many ways in which workers are not regarded as human beings. Besides, the relation between living x dead labor, has come through changes likewise every productive sector, for both in industry and the farming activities, machines and automation process is in surge, so jobless rate increases leaving the workers with no other option, because sugarcane hand harvesting was their last chance indeed. So, the worker`s unions, in general, opt out for dealings with capital holders, for, the are in a situation in which, unionized workers and workers as whole, face demobilization in world scale, in this sense it is very hard to bring them together as a working class. That`s why understanding and carrying out actions for all workers united as a social class more than fragmented/segmented groups is urgent, and in addition, is a first step toward conquering more political emancipation.