As culturas dos brejos: um estudo no gerais do médio São Francisco, semiárido de Minas Gerais

Abstract

In gerais, in the left bank of the Middle São Francisco River, in the Semi-arid region of Minas Gerais, rural populations constructed their territories and cultures, mediated by access to water. These generalist populations created and continue to create agrarian domains and dwellings shaped by their relationship with nature. In this region, the wet areas locally known as "brejos" are fundamental agro-environments for providing for families, creating ways of life, and producing food systems. However, agricultural modernization policies implemented in the region since the 1970s, alongside climate change scenarios, have exacerbated socio-environmental issues related to the death and drying up of water sources. This ethnographic study aimed to understand how the social and climatic changes that occurred, especially from the 1970s onwards, impacted the water regime and traditional rural communities that established their ways of life in the brejos of gerais. The study revealed the diversity of agro-environments co-produced through deep knowledge of nature's cycles, but also demonstrated how changes in the rain and dry seasons, the drying of water sources, linked to changes in land use and consequently in the management of the brejos, altered the spatial mobility and sovereignty of families. Despite these transformations, they developed new techniques and updated their knowledge to remain in their territories.