This series intends to portray beyond strict documentation, the emotions and soul present in the daily life of the population living in a sub-region of the Northeast of Brazil called Sertão (“backcountry”). Trying to capture the mystical aspect always surrounding this region and its people, compelled to deal everyday with the duality between life and death, light and dark, motion and stillness.
The Sertão (“backcountryâ€) is a sub-region of the Northeast of Brazil. This region has historically had the single largest concentration of rural poverty in Latin America. One of the main causes of poverty is the imbalance of land tenure, the income inequality as well as the low diversification in agriculture. Everything is intensified by the adverse climatic conditions, consisting in extremely erratic rainfall, leading to catastrophic drought lasting for periods of years sometimes. Whilst occasionally rains are extremely heavy and due to lack of infrastructure, floods and other problems arise. The droughts are a true tragedy, in the 19th century, it killed around half of the population living is those areas. Although hundreds of years passed, the Sertanejos (people living in Sertão) still constantly lives under the threat of absence of rain which can affect and regulate all their life.
The population is mostly rural, poor and illiterate, being religion a very important and constant aspect in everyday life. To them, reality has two faces: rainfall and drought. They are, above all, a community that endures with strength and faith the hostile conditions of life and climate. The lack of access to education, health care, land and work, together with the long periods of drought, has historically caused the migration to urban areas in Southeast Brazil. Creating an actual population of refugees inside the country. However, in recent years the reality of the Sertanejos has been slowly changing, due to political actions by the government, trying to reduce the extreme poverty in Brazil. Facilitating their access to water, food and health care. Withal, much work remains to be done, considering that social inequality as well as the lack of access to land, never ceased to exist.
The families, geographically isolated, usually lives in villages and survive through subsistence farming and livestock. Households are mostly headed by women, which is very common in rural communities. Either, because their husbands migrate to other parts of the country in search of work, or because their partner left them as single parents, bearing the responsibility for running both the family farm and home. Despite the very harsh and complicated life, they are very kind and hospitable people, wanting to share everything they have, even if it is not enough for them.
This series intends to portray beyond strict documentation, the emotions and spirit present in the daily life of this population. Trying to capture the mystical aspect always surrounding this region and its people, compelled to deal everyday with the duality between life and death, light and dark, motion and stillness.