“The Amazon will crush you, mistreat and leave you foul”: Workers from the northeast of Ceara, Brazil, in the Rubber National Campaign (1942-1945) Authors Carlos Augusto Pereira Santos

Abstract

The working conditions and most of all the way of recruiting the “rubber soldiers” in the National Rubber Campaign happened with the Special Service for the Mobilization of Workers for the Amazon (SEMTA) needs to be historically analyzed and carefully understood although it is not part of an impacting economic deal of the Second World War period, and did not bring development to the Amazon once this was an exclusively extractive activity. Thousands of male northeastern workers were allured to the rubber plantations fleeing from the devastating dry seasons, recruitment to war and starvation with the promise of riches and wealth. Through the narratives of the life stories of these men we will try to bring light upon one of the ignored pages of social history of the northeastern workers from the north of Ceará, Brazil.

Keywords

• workers
• semta
• "rubber soldiers"