[The following article was prepared for April issue of Japan Eco Times. Any
organizations or individuals interested in supporting natural soap
fabrication initiatives by the women's group in Maranhao, contact directly
in Portuguese to ASSEMA (Rua das Laranjeiras 1432, Pedreiras, Maranhao,
65725, BRAZIL, tel/fax: +55-98-642-2061) or through Japan-Brazil Network
(Caixa Postal 1861, Porto Velho, Rondonia, 78900-970, BRAZIL, tel/fax:
+55-69-223-2605, yuta@ax.apc.org). Japan Eco Times is a monthly English
journal published by Asia Pacific News (103, Rumeri Akasaka, 8-5-4 Akasaka,
Minato-ku, Tokyo, JAPAN, tel:+81-3-3478-6351, fax: +81-3-3478-3885) dealing
primarily with environmental issues in Japan. < signifies Portuguese letter
c with cedilla.]
Deep in the interior of the state of Maranhao, in the northeast of Brazil,
local female workers have initiated a unique women's movement integrating
the practice of traditional extractive economy, prevalent in the Amazon for
the past centuries.
The workers identify themselves as coconut-breakers ('quebradeira de coco'),
making a living by collecting and gathering coconuts of palm trees called
Baba<u, widely distributed in the Amazon as well as in the center-west and
northeast of Brazil. Baba<u is an endemic oil palm; a pioneer fire-resistant
species flourishing in regenerating stands. Characterized by moist tropical
rainforest areas pertaining to the Amazon basin, the western half of
Maranhao has been progressively burned and cleared in the past two decades
to make way for cattle ranching and large-scale agricultural development by
outside investors.
Faced with increasing encroachment on traditional land-use, severe conflicts
broke out during this period between ranchers and landless peasants
desperate to secure a piece of land to cultivate. As lands were restricted
into hands of a few, Maranhao attested the worst kind of property
concentration, which triggered widespread invasions by land seekers on
abandoned pastures as well as cleared but dormant holdings. Murders and
death threats were common in the title holders' attempt to oust such land
grabbers, causing one of the highest incidences of rural violence and misery
recorded in Brazil.
After two decades of battles emerged some cases in which their land disputes
finally set to resolve by recognizing official settlement programs
administered by the government's land authority (INCRA), accommodating the
peasants' request and defacto land-use practice in the occupied areas.
Women have played a vital role in such development. While men engaged
themselves in subsistence farming in leased farms, women dared to trespass
encroached properties to collect Baba<u coconuts; a traditional activity for
making available cooking oil and coconut milk for domestic consumption. This
meant that they served themselves as the front soldiers against land
encroachment defended by a group of 'jagun<o' (a hired gun) employed by
title holders.
A small group of female collectors consists of all ages. They leave home
early to walk a long distance to reach areas where Baba<u abundantly occurs
in the both primary and secondary forest. There they simply pick up
necessary amounts of Baba<u coconuts already dropped and discovered
underneath the palm stands, carrying the fruits in the Baba<u-leaf woven
baskets till they get to their outdoor workshop established in the forest,
undertaking their simple but rigorous routine for which they are entitled
distinct social identity as coconut breakers.
They do so sitting on the ground by repeated blows of a sharpened machado
to extract several units of small nut found inside the hard shell. An
eight-hour service by a trained worker enables to collect some 15 kg of nuts
by processing shelled volume of 180 kg.
In the Amazon in recent years, a variety of local initiatives have sprung up
to seek for revitalizing traditional extractive economies practiced in the
region by the indigenous and non-indigenous local populations; an effort to
preserve the region's increasingly threatened ecosystem while managing
sustainably its resource potentials.
Various forest products such as Brazil nut, copaiba oil, cupua<u, a<ai and
buriti fruits have been targeted for sustainable harvesting and management,
which will avoid depreciation of fundamental resource base on which the
local populations depend for subsistence, while enabling to yield necessary
income to obtain social services of health and education. Baba<u is one of
such tools bridging local subsistence needs and the global conservation
concerns of the Amazon.
In the late 1993, a number of coconut-breaker groups in Lago do Junco
region of Maranhao initiated a unique experiment by processing Baba<u
coconut oil to fabricate by themselves 1,500 units of natural soap; a
drastic attempt to be independent of socioeconomic exploitation as raw
material supplier. Among 400 thousand families dependent on the extraction
of Baba<u coconuts, five cooperatives have been established mobilizing a
thousand member families in the region, in addition to another thousand
families participating in the support of their processing and marketing
efforts.
"Our soap fabrication experiment will continue for the next eight months
before determining economic viability of the project on a long term" says
Noemi Porro, coordinator of the Association of Settlement Areas in the State
of Maranho (ASSEMA).
Unlike local development efforts often counting on outside financial
support, the women in Lago do Junco region managed to obtain seed funds
through their own fund-raising activities including used-clothes sales,
making their self-help efforts most promising in the Brazilian Amazon. With
continuing technical assistance from ASSEMA, they intend to look for
marketplace support from overseas couterparts f they decide to embark on
soap and shampoo processing initiatives on a commercial scale.
Back in Japan there is a noteworthy history in which innumerable groups of
housewives initiated nation-wide movements for using natural soap while
boycotting the use of synthetic detergent; a major pollutant of river waters
throughout 1970's. Recent initiatives have focused on the recycling of used
cooking oil to reduce water pollution while turning the material into solid
soap; a practice being carried out by various cooperatives and spontaneously
evolved housewives' groups.
Furthermore, a question has been raised on the use of 'environment friendly'
soap made of vegetation material such as palm oil, 97 % of which has been
imported from mono-culture plantations in Malaysia. Increasing demands for
palm oil have been pressuring on the country's crucially dwindling natural
forests to be replaced with extensive palm farms, further affected on soils
by the use of pesticides to maintain productivity. Social pressures are
also being put on the traditional local communities which are facing
dislocation and abandoning of subsistence farming to accommodate low-wage
labor force required at plantation sites.
While systems for overall environmental and social assessment as well as
rigorous monitoring of such enterprise are necessary, constructive efforts
can also be directed towards support of various small-scale local
initiatives emerging world-wide aiming to attain sustainability in both
environmental and socioeconomic terms. Harvesting natural Bara<u and efforts
of processing its oil by the coconut-breakers in Maranhao offers a good
example for us to indicate how we can concretly opt for consuming meterials
from sound environment sources.
Geographical as well as psychological barriers may be diminished when the
emerging women's movements on both sides of the planet confirm their common
footing and agenda over a simple product; seeking better environment through
the use of truly natural soap.
(end)