SPECIAL FORUM: films EVERY ENVIRONMENTAL HISTORIAN SHOULD SEE

Environmental History, Apr 2007 by de Andrade-Downs, Renata Marson Teixeira, Beinart, William, Bess, Michael, Brady, Lisa M, Et al

The following thirty-seven essays appear in alphabetical order based on the author's last name. On pages 391 -393 readers will find a bibliography, which also serves as an index, of the films discussed in the essays.

Behind the scenes of March of the Penguins, directed by Luc Jacquet.

RENATA MARSON TEIXEIRA DE ANDRADE-DOWNS

the human side of deforestation

"WE FEEL REMORSE in cutting one-hundred-year-old trees in three minutes, but we must do it to survive," a charcoal worker sighs. The Charcoal People is a beautiful documentary based on a rich ethnography of charcoal production for pig-iron, and was filmed on the frontier of forests in the states of Mato Grosso, Goiás, Pará, and Amazon in Brazil. When I first saw The Charcoal People last summer, I immediately added this film to the syllabus for my graduate seminar on the environmental history, policy, and culture of Latin America. Whereas many academic studies of charcoal production have concentrated on economic, energy, and environmental issues, this film focuses on the human side of the humannature interaction as related to forest destruction for pig-iron and steel production in Brazil. What makes this film so interesting is that it shows how consumption of steel-products, such as cars, in the United States, Europe, and Japan is deeply tied to the lives and struggles for survival of charcoal workers (carvoeiros) in the hinterlands of Brazil. The Charcoal People portrays carvoeiros' lives through nuanced biographies, focusing on the socially produced identity of the carvoeiro as an inherent part of the destruction of forests, and on their bodies as an anachronistic technology, rooted in mid-nineteenth century charcoal production.

With no voices other than those of the carvoeiros and their families, the film depicts the hardships in the lives of adults, teenagers, and children, while focusing on their social identity, morals, and bodily engagement in a series of specialized activities related to the production of charcoal in brick beehive kilns. The film starts with familiar scenes and noises of trees falling as large chains attached to them are pulled by the engine of a very old truck, driven by a young subcontractor who owns the truck and works for the landowner who leased the lands for the steel mill. The next scene extracts a short conversation, during the delivery of wood for burning inside the charcoal kilns, between the young truck owner and a seventy-six year-old African-Brazilian carvoeiro who helps him to unload the wood at the site: "Not much wood! Have you tried that lot there," points the carvoeiro. "The road access is closed and the forest is protected by law and now fenced," responds the truck owner. From that moment on, the film focuses on short biographies of carvoeiros, both adults and children, portraying how people of different races share a common past and a contemporary struggle to survive by producing charcoal. The images of the many different bodies exposed to the elements, heat and smoke are compelling, and clearly depict health hazards and unsafe work conditions to which these people are subjected.

The film adds a historical perspective on the anachronism of current charcoal production by connecting the bodies of carvoeiros with those of Brazil Indian and African slaves who produced charcoal during the peak of mid-nineteenthcentury smelting and forging in the states of Rio de Janeiro and Minas Gerais.

This film also helps us to understand the role of family, child labor, goverment, and steelmakers in the prduction of low-cost charcoal and low waged carvoeiros. For example, generations of carvoeiro families, many times compared to "gold miners," have had to migrate toward eucalyptus plantations or pockets of open access forests in order to harvest them and produce charcoal. This situation has aggravated their working conditions, as one of the carvoeiros observes: "Charcoal used to be a good business, but today pays almost nothing."

The film also poses a historical question about why steelmakers in Brazil have chosen charcoal instead of coal to reduce iron into steel. There is not a simple answer, but I wished that the film had also touched on macro-economic and political factors that have contributed to charcoal choices. First, the fact that domestic coal production has been so small while the cost of imported coal so high has historically forced the Brazilian government to create incentives to use regulated quotas of primary forest to produce low-cost charcoal. second, the economic volatility of the U.S. pig-iron price has historically dampened long-term investment in reforestation for charcoal production in Brazil. Instead, the film avoids those discussions by focusing primarily on the lives of the carvoeiros.

With astonishing and sensitive photography of the human dimension in charcoal production, The Charcoal People complements and expands related sections on "Instruments of Devastation" and "The Development Imperative" found in Warren Dean's classic account of the destruction of Brazil's Atlantic Forest, With Broadax and Firebrand (California, 1995). While Dean briefly describes the role of itinerant workers in charcoal production, this documentary alerts us to what could happen to the Amazon forest if sixty-thousand carvoeiros migrate to the Amazon region to produce charcoal where new iron ores have been found and steel mills have been constructed. However, this film also presents an in-depth perspective on what sort of hardships those sixty-thousand carvoeiros face in Brazil, with vulnerable and volatile work contracts, child labor, and worsening living and working conditions, as they migrate and follow multinational steelmakers toward the Amazon forest. In the bodies of the carvoeiros, forests have a purpose: to produce their livelihoods.