Miguel Ferrante´s Seringal: human exploitation and violence in Amazonian rubber plantations

Abstract

In this article we explore the issue of violence and oppression suffered by rubber-tappers in the Amazonian rubber plantations, visible in Miguel Ferrante´s novel Seringal. The novel is set in the Santa Rita rubber plantation in the interior of Acre, in the Brazilian Amazon, and reproduces the oppressive life of rubber tappers who work for the owner of the rubber plantation, the “colonel. “Always aiming at “profit and more profit” rubber plantation´s owner exploits and enslaves the “seringueiros”, taking violent actions against the poor workers. The novel also reveals the subhuman condition in which the women in the rubber plantation live, subject to rape and other sort of violence. Women are more deeply colonized and exploited than the rubber men. We argue that violence against women and workers today reflects violence in rubber plantations in the XX century. Scholars such as the thinker Frantz Fanon (1979) who wrote about colonization and Cristina Wolf (2001) who researches violence in the state of Acre, among others, support our argument.