The Adversity of Brazilian Drought

Drought-stricken NE Brazil is studied in the context of four regional units: the semiarid lowlands of the interior sertao, which have the maximum precipitation fluctuations; the well-watered Cariri valley, which experiences harvest shortages during abnormally dry years; the coastal fringe, which suffers during years of widespread drought; and the highlands of Baturite, where dry spells are noticed only through an influx of migrants from low-lying and drought-stricken areas. Adjustment to drought is, in general, low; it depends on the degree of drought awareness, which is also quite low. Affluent individuals are more inclined to make adjustments to droughts, although the likelihood of their being affected is less than among poor individuals. Middleclass individuals are more inclined to react to threats of an impending drought than to act under actual drought conditions. If age is taken into consideration, middle-aged individuals show greater awareness of drought conditions and a higher propensity to making adjustments than aged or youthful populations. Women are less inclined to make adjustments than men, and married people less than singles. Large families, probably compelled by the constraints, are especially prone to undertake changes in living conditions when a drought strikes. In general, the choices provided by economic feasibility, the possibilities of mitigating drought effects through technological know-how, and the social input of marriage and family size are very important parameters in shaping the character of the adjustments to drought. The Adversity of Brazilian Drought The spectre of drought has been a persistent hazard of NE Brazil throughout history. Northeasterners have seldom been successful in defending themselves from it without extensive outside aid. Thousands have died of hunger and tens of thousands have suffered losses of crops and cattle. In spite of this the area has been occupied tenaciously. It was the first part of Brazil to be colonized by the Portuguese who once considered it their richest land. It furnished most of the great early writers, churchmen, policians and national figures of the fledgling nation. Today it contains 30 % of Brazil's population. Come drought, however, and the region cringes with the pangs of hunger, reels at the sight of queues of jobless men, and is moved by reports of community upheaval and of mass migrations to other districts where, it is rumored, there is more rain, more employment, more promise. As recently as 1979 drought showed the Northeast its ugly face of hunger and social disruption. Indications of hazard risk were early in appearing. The Portuguese explorer, Pero Coelho, lost three children and several aides to starvation during the drought of 1606. Others followed settling in the same quarters he trod with little apparent concern for meeting the same fate. The Northeast was believed to be a productive land. Drought was seen as an extraordinary event unlikely to reoccur. This concept of drought rarity, this failure to appreciate the recurrence of the hazard, persisted widespread throughout the 19. century in spite of several catastrophic occurrences. Even in the present century droughts have been greeted with indignant surprise. At the end of the 1 800's there appeared signs that the nature of the phenomenon was becoming understood. Some suggested that there might be a cyclical pattern of inevitable This content downloaded from 207.46.13.28 on Wed, 31 Aug 2016 04:55:54 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms 122 GeoJournal 6.2/1982 recurrence. The government, which had been slow to accept the idea of repetitive droughta universally common patriotic reaction of hazard regionsbecame increasingly sensitive to the thought of preparation for the possibility of a recurrence. Most of the populace did not seem to hold that view, however. In the joy of post-drought rain the people tended to forget the calamitous nature of the problem. They were unwilling to commit themselves to the idea of a repetitive drought phenomenon taking, rather, a fatalistic perspective that whatever comes must come, for God alone can alter the future. Even in our day more than half of a sample in a recent investigation was uncertain whether or not there would be another drought in their lifetimes, neither positively predicting one nor denying that it was a possibility1'. The problem is one of perception, a judgment of personal vulnerability to the threat of drought. Should one admit the arrival or recurrence of drought, one must then face internal conflict to harmonize one's behavior with the dissonance of such a threatening confession. It is the degree ofthat perception which influences the adjustments persons or governments make to the hazard-belief, to the threatidea of present or potential disaster. The Drought Region of Northeastern Brazil: A Representative Sample NE Brazil is a geographical section of Brazil administratively composed of the nine coastal states of Maranhao, Piaui, Ceara, Rio Grande do Norte, Paraiba, Pernambuco, Alagoas, Sergipe, and Bahia. They share common cultural ingredients, similar industries and similar problems of underdevelopment. Together these states comprise 18 % of Brazil's area. The region is basically rural in character, 58 % of its people living in the agricultural districts compared to 44 % for the country as a whole2'. Nordestinos (northeasterners) possess mixed bloodlines of European, Amerindian and African ancestory exhibiting a wide range of physical features and skin colors. Only one NE state is untouched by recurrent drought problems, Maranhao, a transition zone between the rainforest of the Amazon basin to the West and the arid interior to the East, thus attractive to migrants from the zone of drought calamity. The Northeast knows only two seasons in its year: winter, the rainy period from January to June, and summer, the dry season from July to December. Northeasterners have accepted the yearly dry cycle by expecting the rainy half of the year to be sufficiently moist to raise their crops and carry them through to the next harvest. It is not the normal July to December arid spell which troubles them but the predicament in which the anticipated rainy season also turns out to be dry. When that occurs a seca, or drought calamity, is declared. The average precipitation for the city of Quixeramobim in the central backlands of Ceara, for example, is 688 mm per year, threequarters of which comes in the months of March and April. When the rains of that period are light, insufficient moisture for growing crops to carry the farmer through the year will be the probable result. The total rainfall received during the drought of 1970 at Quixeramobim, for example, was less t an 500 mm. Drought years are normally extremely dry with much less precipitation than the annual mean (Tab 1). When the harvest preceding a dry year has allowed yields abundant enough to permit the storage of food grains, a year of low precipitation might not be considered a serious drought in Quixeramobim. On the other hand, should the yield of the previous year be poor or at best fair, not producing a storage surplus, the d y spell would be discerned as a severe drought. Thus the magnitude of drought in the calamity z ne is not determined merely by the meteorological measurement of rainfall, but by the surplus amount of c ops harvested during the previous year, and any amount harvested during the arid period. This is the procedure the peasant farmer employs to appraise drought vulnerability for himself. Tab 1 Precipitation of Drought Years from 1 898-1 958 at Quixeramobim, Ceara Source: World Weather Records of 1896-1960, US Department of Commerce, Weather Bureau and ESSA, Washington, DC