Chapter 6 Human–insect relations in Northeast Brazil’s twentieth-century sugar industry

On history, once more

The best way to unveil the importance, function and role of something is by asking: what would happen if this thing (anything) did not exist? For example, what would the history of America – or capitalism itself – have been like without sugar? One of my aims here is to try to answer one such kind of question: what would the history of sugar in Northeast Brazil have been like without insects? Before trying to answer it, though, I shall argue that we should take a step back and reflect on the foundations of the historical discipline. Running counter to the hegemonic monospecific paradigm¹⁴ in Western academia, we currently witness a multispecies turn. Even anthropology, traditionally centred on humans, has tried to deanthropologize itself.¹⁵ It has not been different in history, and several authors have recently demonstrated that animals (domestic or wild) and vegetables, ‘supposedly voiceless and largely defenseless entities were in fact authentic actors in the historical drama’.¹⁶ Even though Western historiography has only recently embraced the challenge of writing the world beyond the human,¹⁷ animals have been considered agents and legally protectable individuals with collective rights since at least the twelfth century.¹⁸ In some parts of medieval Europe, it was common to send a bailiff to the places where the animals being sued had settled to read to them, at least three times loud and clear, the summons to appear in person before the judicial authority. For example, in 1846, Charles Berriat-Saint-Prix wrote the Rapport et recherches sur les jugements relatifs aux animaux, highlighting numerous cases of excommunication of rats and caterpillars, as well as sentences against pigs, elephants, grasshoppers, beetles and even a rooster condemned to be burned for having ‘laid an egg’.¹⁹

Although we have been experiencing, since at least the Industrial Revolution, what is conventionally called the Anthropocene,²⁰ humans never had complete control over the biosphere. From an environmental perspective, we are not creators of but mere participants in history. After all, ‘societies’ have never been solely adult, male, or rational.²¹ It was precisely from such a perspective, for example, that in his classic With Broadax and Firebrand: The Destruction of the Brazilian Atlantic Rainforest (1995), Warren Dean questioned what Brazilian agriculture and history would have been like had no leaf-cutting ants appeared, ‘capable of stripping a field of manioc in a night or two, invulnerable to any countermeasures?’²² On the other hand, an ecology that closes its eyes to human social action is also incomplete, as ‘both history and ecology are, as fields of knowledge go, supremely integrative’.²³ As William Cronon argued, ‘human beings are not the only actors who make history. Other creatures do too, as do large natural processes, and any history that ignores their effects is likely to be woefully incomplete’.²⁴

Indeed, all human actions occur within what we can call ecosystem dynamics. ‘Human society coevolves with nature; human history unfolds within a broad natural context even as it helps shape that context’, wrote the editors of the Encyclopedia of World Environmental History.²⁵ In this regard, Richard C. Foltz warns that ‘we should remind ourselves that humans interact not only with each other, but in all times, places and contexts with the nonhuman world as well. All human actions take place within the context of ecosystems, and are affected by them in ways that differ enormously over time and space’.²⁶ As we distance ourselves from the planetary scale, human events seem to correspond to only a micro part of a much longer and broader story, which David Christian and Fred Spier call ‘Big History’.²⁷

In a way, environmental history is the attempt to de-banalise the banal and highlight the ecological complexity of what people take for granted. It proposes a story of the obvious, that is, we are not alone in the world. We cannot exist (any of the almost 8 billion inhabitants of the planet) without food (of animal or vegetable origin) or water, without excreting the waste that our organism metabolises daily, or dressing and building shelters to protect us from the sun, rain and animals; that is, without transforming what modernity calls ‘nature’.²⁸ Once enunciated, such a statement (and all that is implied, even implicitly, in environmental terms) seems so obvious that perhaps this was the reason why historiography took so long to realise that all history is environmental history (to the same extent that all history is contemporary history, as Benedetto Croce claimed). In fact, the obvious commonly blinds people, including historians, preventing them from questioning their origins, dynamics and effects. In this sense, as Enrique Leff stated, ‘environmental history is the history of unspoken histories’.²⁹

From this perspective, an immense group of nonhumans – which we could designate as biotic actants without anthropomorphising them – are not only passive recipients of human actions but active presences in the world.³⁰ Therefore, history always deals with an inseparable, solidary and contradictory (though not necessarily antagonistic) set of complex and dynamic social and environmental systems sharing their existences over time. In this sense, history is nothing but intra- and interspecific ecological interactions projected in a space-time that humans perceive, signify and narrate. Moreover, we are subject to the same evolutionary pressures as any other species, meaning we may become extinct anytime.

Therefore, analysing how elements (biotic and abiotic) interact in space is always more complex than simply investigating isolated, static forms and objects, as they involve relationships that are not always establishable directly or objectively.³¹ In fact, the problem here is not to enlarge the number of actors, nor simply to describe their habitats, behaviours, forms of reproduction, and so on, but to capture them in their connection with the rest of the world.³²

Back to sugar, humans and insects in Brazil

Caio Prado Júnior once wrote that ‘Brazil is a gift of sugar’.³³ He is recognised as one of the greatest Brazilian historians, alongside Gilberto Freyre, whose celebrated Nordeste (1936) was translated into French as Terres du Sucre. Both expressions captured the essence of one of the most socially unequal regions in the world. It was ruled by a tiny economic elite that exploited forests, rivers, soils, and hundreds of thousands of human and nonhuman individuals (all perceived by the planter class as natural resources or laboring landscapes, in the expression coined by Thomas Rogers)³⁴ over five centuries. The introduction of the sweet gramineae, leading to the so-called ‘sugar civilisation’, caused profound transformations (a revolution, one might say) in the production model and landscapes in this part of the planet.³⁵

The geography of the northeastern sugarcane area is confusing: the so-called Forest zone is essentially a coastal region whose name refers to its original biome, now almost extinct – the Atlantic Forest. Since these lands began to be colonised by Europeans, their exuberant arboreal vegetation has been devastated, opening the way to what geographers Gilberto Osório de Andrade and Raquel Caldas Lins Andrade designated as ‘swollen lands’: ‘unmeasured latifundia’ of sugarcane.³⁶ In an expression now commonplace among regional inhabitants and academics, the ‘forest zone’ became the ‘sugar zone’. Originating in Southeast Asia and brought to the West by the Arabs, ‘sugar cane was first carried to the New World by Columbus on his second voyage, in 1493’.³⁷ The first cultivar introduced into Brazil was the so-called creole cane, or da terra (native), having been the longest cultivated (almost 270 years) until it was replaced by the cayenne variety in the early nineteenth century.

Although entomologists have reached no consensus, the newest methods of evolutionary classification reveal that insects account for approximately 66 per cent of all animal species (over one million) in the world.³⁸ The entire colonial period holds no records of insects becoming pests in the Brazilian sugarcane fields. In 1648, physician and naturalist Willem Piso, together with cartographer and botanist Georg Markgraf, wrote Historia Naturalis Brasiliae, describing with no further details a species of winged black worms – called by the natives guirapeacoca, and by neo-Europeans pão de galinha (larvae of the beetle Ligyrus fossator) – which corroded roots and killed the sugarcane.³⁹ In 1711, missionary André João Antonil listed what he designated as the ‘enemies of sugarcane’: drought (lack of water and excessive heat); goats, oxen and pigs (sometimes sacrificed by the planters, ‘upon fair pain’); horses and thieves.⁴⁰ In his Travels to the Northeast of Brazil (1817), chronicler Henry Koster did not mention insects or the so-called blast, a bacterial disease that was devastating Caribbean sugarcane fields at the time. Instead, Koster stated that ‘the cane is subject, naturally, to various diseases, but of a nature to be remedied. Rats destroy large quantities, and the fox is no less encountered’. Actually, in these accounts, humans are the ones described almost as ‘pests’, for ‘they have no scruple, passing through the reeds, to cut a bundle of ten to twelve reeds and suck them, while they walk, or take them home. The damage committed [by thieves] is thus incalculable, especially in the cane fields situated along the edges of the roads frequented’.⁴¹

Such testimonies suggest that insects did not seriously threaten the sugar economy during the entire colonial period. But how come? How could we explain, for instance, that at that same time, sugarcane plantations in the Caribbean, as Matthew Mulcahy and Stuart Schwartz⁴² demonstrated, were ravaged by armies of insects and various diseases caused by fungi and bacteria, while Brazil seemed free of such evils? As reported in the literature, references to creole plants are probably based on their genetic proximity to the wild species. In such cases, it tends to mean that it has greater genetic variability and therefore is less likely to be victimised by parasites and pathogens. A greater genetic variability implies fewer chances of a particular disease affecting all individuals of a species due to their genetic differences. This is why native or more adapted species (which evolve along with their possible pathogens) are more resistant and tolerant (or even immune), while exotic species tend to be more susceptible or to spread pathogens more easily and quickly.

Furthermore, crops closer to forests tend to take advantage of their ecological balance, as the cultivated species find a larger number of pollinators and a smaller number of pathogens due to increased competition.⁴³ The same occurs with pests. Agricultural activities cause several environmental impacts. For example, in the Caribbean, the monoculture system has rapidly replaced the native forest, where insects and plants benefit from co-evolutionary processes. Such events can cause numerous imbalances, like the proliferation of phytophagous agents that are now far from their natural predators.

Unlike the small islands in the Caribbean, where sugarcane and the forest competed for space, with an imposed need to create new cultivars to increase productivity, the continental Brazilian territory allowed sugarcane to expand without having to cut down all the forest. Since the 1970s, various studies in over fifty countries have led biologists to conclude that the larger number of insects listed as sugarcane pests is directly proportional to the increase in planted area.⁴⁴ Combining such findings with the data suggesting that ‘until the middle of the nineteenth century, the neo-Brazilians converted no more than 8% of the Atlantic Forest biome to crops, pastures and urban areas’,⁴⁵ one can infer two things: (i) creole cane benefited from its likely high genetic variability (for being closer to the wild plant), as well as from better-preserved forests until the mid-nineteenth century, and (ii) the occurrence of sugarcane diseases and pests in Brazil is directly linked to the lower genetic variability brought by the new cultivars in the nineteenth century, as well as intensified deforestation. The abundant forest fragments near monocultural fields during the colonial period seem to have favoured a small set of biologically different successional or pioneer species (such as creole cane). Such a mosaic composed of simplified and poor subsystems – such as monocultures – and dynamic and rich subsystems – like forests – seems to have ensured an ‘alternative state of equilibrium’,⁴⁶ thus generating a broader, more integrated steady system.

This hypothetical steady state probably collapsed in the late nineteenth century with the intense import of new cultivars, expansion of cultivated areas, intensified deforestation and the establishment of large mills (usinas). All these novelties drastically altered the sugar landscape and made the environment less able to recover from disturbances. These seem to have been the main factors that created the ideal conditions for the population of certain insect species – otherwise controlled by formerly abundant natural enemies (nonhuman enemies, to be more accurate) in the forest fragments – to become pests.

The introduction of the cayenne cane in the early nineteenth century was part of a major process of plantation renovation aimed at increasing production and competing more aggressively in the external market.⁴⁷ This new cultivar brought some advantages over creole cane due to its taller stem, thicker features, nodes further apart, and greater vegetative vigour. It also matured earlier (in only nine months), resisted better to poor weather and had more woody stalks and richer sucrose content, in addition to presenting greater purity. All these qualities turned cayenne into farmers’ preferred cultivar, quickly spreading in various regions in Brazil.⁴⁸ However, it would not take long for the early effects of such interventions to emerge. In the mid-century, gummosis – the first plant disease in the world – appeared in Bahia. For the first time, Brazilian sugarcane fields were plagued by a large-scale disease for which no explanation or known solution existed. Coeval documentation reports ‘cries of alarm’ and ‘panic’ in the attempt to fight the terrible ‘evil’, the devastating ‘disease’ that caused so much damage and discouragement to the sugar industry. The Revista Agrícola, linked to the Imperial Fluminense Institute of Agriculture, was a major means of researching and disseminating agricultural practices in that period. It published eighteen articles on sugarcane culture only in its first seven issues (between 1869 and 1872), and even though coffee was the main Brazilian export at the time, sugarcane persisted in all its issues until 1876.⁴⁹ Scientists from all over Brazil were busy researching the causes and means to fight ‘the plague’, as it was known.⁵⁰ Meetings were called to deal with the matter, with documents showing the great interest of the authorities in Rio in managing the consequences of the sugarcane decadence, as well as providing the planters with new sugarcane cultivars, usually from selection or artificial crossbreeding. The never-ending story of the search for new sugarcane cultivars starts at this point as an effort to save the plantation economy.

Even though gummosis was to be shown later to be a disease caused by a bacterium (Pseudomonas vasculorum), the early reports claimed that its pathogen was a caterpillar known as fura canna (Procera sacchariphagus). According to Ladislau de Sousa Mello Netto, editor of the Revista Agrícola, this was a moth of the Crambidae family, ‘one of the most fearsome enemies that cane fields count on’.⁵¹ In 1870, because of attempts to discover the actual causative agent of gummosis, Alois Krauss described large agglomerations of insects like the cochineal (genus Dactylopius) in Bahia’s sugarcane fields. He even counted 200 insects in a single sugarcane node, with each individual cane often containing 3 or more nodes. He concluded that those insects probably had some connection with the disease. He found four caterpillars per cane, and stated that they could become a pest if their natural predators were eliminated. Krauss also mentioned several other insects that used to attack sugarcane, such as beetles of the species Noterus clavicornis, lice and the rare cockroach.⁵²

At the Cachoeirinha Plantation, in the municipality of Escada, state of Pernambuco, the use of natural hybrids in fortuitous pollination by wind or insects, a cultivar known as manteiga cane was the most accepted by planters and spread throughout the Northeast until the 1930s, when the mosaic virus devastated the sugarcane fields in the second great epidemic in the historical record. In the state of São Paulo, scientist Adrião Caminha Filho pointed out that in 1920 production fell from 800,000 sacks to 250,000 sacks of sugar, a drop of almost 70 per cent.⁵³ According to the newspaper Diario de Pernambuco, mosaic represented a great danger, a ‘terrible pest’, a ‘disease of dire consequences’ that was causing a ‘great calamity’. Faced with the crisis, the Pernambuco state government created the Office against Mosaic, in August 1926, through an agreement with the Federal Government, mayors and business people. The Office stipulated a fine of 200,000 réis – doubled in recurrence cases – for those who would plant cane affected by mosaic. In cases of cane shipments from infected municipalities, the fine was 300,000 réis, also double in recurrence cases. In cases of a large extension of the disease, expropriation for public use was even more likely to occur through indemnification by the state. Besides the coercive nature, essential to ensure that the guidelines would be effective, according to health authorities, the Office against Mosaic also aimed to explain to those concerned ‘the damage caused by the disease and the best way to mitigate or eradicate it, instructing, in this regard, farmers and people in general, through conferences, prints, posters, distribution of publications and teaching in schools in the region’. It was with this in mind that, in September 1926, the governor of Pernambuco ordered the reproduction and distribution of coloured prints of the sugarcane mosaic. The motto was that ‘it will always be easier to convince a farmer not to plant a sick cane than to oblige him to uproot an already born plant’.⁵⁴ In February 1928, the Pernambuco Agriculture Auxiliary Society offered a prize of 100,000 escudos for whoever discovered the disease’s aetiology.

The mosaic disease was already known on the island of Java as early as 1890. It appeared in Egypt in 1909 and the following year in Hawaii, spreading rapidly. It then spread to Puerto Rico, Argentina, Santo Domingo and the United States (Louisiana, Florida, Georgia, Alabama and Mississippi). Carrying a virus as the pathogen, mosaic is an infection that occurs within the living tissues of the plant and cannot be eliminated without destroying the cane itself – it is an ‘incurable disease’. It spreads in two ways: through primary infection, when a sick stake produces sick canes, or through secondary infection, when insects spread the pathogen. Such a scenario created a kind of vicious circle: insects attacked the canes while transmitting the mosaic virus, which, in turn, weakened the plant making it more susceptible to attack by other insects. Referring to the state of São Paulo, renowned agronomist José Vizioli stated that ‘the intensity with which pests and cryptogamic diseases have ravaged the state’s sugarcane fields can be attributed to the weakened state of the plants, intensely attacked by “mosaic virus”’.⁵⁵

Whether as pests or agents that transmit disease, insects helped shape the history of sugar production in Northeast Brazil throughout the twentieth century. Testimonies reveal that even before abolition, planters used to force ‘more than a hundred unfortunate slaves’ to spend ‘the night wandering the extensive floodplains armed with embira [plant genus in the family Thymelaeaceae] flares to burn the beetles’.⁵⁶ In the 1910s, the beetle pest was already regarded as a ‘matter of utmost importance to the northern states of Brazil’, as Carlos Moreira claimed – head of the Agricultural Entomology Laboratory of the National Museum (linked to the Brazilian Ministry of Agriculture, Industry and Commerce). In a text entitled Os besouros da canna de assucar, Moreira proposed as a good measure to establish a modest prize, in money (100 réis), per kilo of beetle and pão de galinha, paid by the municipalities, or the state government, so that many children and women could have a small income catching these insects and larvae, killing them and keeping them until reaching one kilo or more, which the authority in charge would receive in exchange for the prize and then destroy by fire. He also points out that at that time, the damage caused by beetles was so recurrent that ‘in the contracts for leasing land for planting sugarcane there was almost always a clause exempting the lessee from paying the lease of the land in the year in which the beetle appeared causing damage’.⁵⁷ The extensive area where the beetle pest prevailed has a sense of the challenges involved in combating the plague, something that the landowners had to live with for a long time. Studies from the 1950s recorded an average population of 700,000 insects per hectare regarding beetles and pão de galinha on infested land. In 1954, 100 per cent of the Pitangueira Plantation, for example, was lost.

Ligyrus fossator and Podalgus humilis were the two main species of coleoptera that plagued the sugarcane fields in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. These insects are native to Brazil and live underground, digging galleries for food. Their biological cycle includes four stages: egg, larva, pupa (or chrysalis) and imago (adult stage). Before wholesale land clearing for sugar plantations, they lived on the roots and shoots of wild plants. Although nonhuman enemies generally limit their population, they eventually started to prefer cultivated plants. The simplified vegetation caused by monoculture modifies the humidity of the soil, making it more receptive. These beetles have nocturnal habits, flying from twilight and through the night. At dawn, they penetrate the soil. The females fertilise eggs in the soil (at a small depth) or under dry rotten cane straw. The larvae of the larger beetle (Ligyrus fossator), which live for an average of one year, are commonly named pão de galinha and are more harmful than adult insects as they attack the planted stalks even before they sprout. They destroy the buds and attack the body of the stalks, corroding them and, after penetrating, eroding their internal tissues and leaving the cane completely hollow. After devouring the plant’s supporting roots, these larvae ‘can promote the toppling of an already formed clump’.⁵⁸ These insects indiscriminately attack shoots, buds and young shoots as adults. In contrast, the larvae of the smaller beetle (Podalgus humilis) are less harmful and attack the stalks in two ways: gnawing and perforating new shoots a little below the soil surface, or perforating the stalk from end to end, ultimately bringing the need to replant them.

In addition to beetles, various other insects – such as caterpillars, cochineal, sugarcane borers and termites – plagued the sugarcane fields. The latter were ‘among the most widespread pests of sugarcane in Pernambuco’ in the 1950s, infesting almost all the hills and tableland areas, thus contributing to ‘a sharp increase in the cost of production and a shortening of the crop’s profit margin’.⁵⁹ Often associated with low germination of the stubbles, or their weakness and stunting, termites attacked canes at all ages, facilitating the ingress of ‘rot microorganisms’. At that time, the average sugarcane yield in Pernambuco was one of the lowest in the world⁶⁰ – from 60 to 80 per cent of the buds rotted. The combination of low-quality seed cane, inadequate soil preparation and fertility, and getting the planting season wrong turned pests and diseases into one of the main reasons for this poor performance. According to Pimentel, the plant disease known as red rottenness was ‘the main enemy of sugarcane’,⁶¹ as its pathogen, the fungus Colletotrichum falcatum, was spread by several pests such as Castnia, Metamasius, Elasmopalpus, Xyleborus and Diatraea, ‘universally known as the insect that causes the most damage to the sugar industry’.⁶² The attack of these invertebrates usually reduced or delayed cane germination by allowing certain microorganisms – present in its bark or in the soil itself – to penetrate through the wounds they opened. These fungi, bacteria and viruses destroyed the food reserves and tissues of the buds before they could grow.

Moreover, when in contact with constantly mutating microorganisms and enormous genetic plasticity, the resistance features of the cane cultivars – produced vegetatively and with a fixed genotype – tended to succumb, leading to degeneration. Such an issue was particularly visible when measuring ratoon production (harvests based on the annual regrowth of sugarcane in tonnes per hectare). According to agronomist Abdon Pereira da Silva, the low yield of ratoons was ‘one of the most serious problems that have afflicted the country’s sugar agroindustry’.⁶³ José Clóvis de Andrade – the first president of the Association of Agricultural Engineers of the Northeast (1947) and who represented the Sugar and Alcohol Institute at the Congress of Agricultural and Sugar Engineers, in Havana (Cuba), in 1948 – claimed that the diseases were ‘the great problem, at all times, of the sugar industry’.⁶⁴

The economic effects of the great diversity of pests and diseases became unbearable, and the problem started to be treated as a ‘public calamity’. In this context, in 1953, the Commission to Combat Sugarcane Pests was created in the state of Pernambuco, a permanent body to study and control matters of such nature. The general objective of the commission was to investigate the consequences of diseases and pests on agricultural and industrial yields, in addition to proposing methods for combating them.⁶⁵ Initially planned to last only five years, supported by an annual budget of two million cruzeiros, the commission remained active until the late 1960s. The records published in the newspaper Diario de Pernambuco, the principal news outlet in the state at the time, show that the installation of the commission was considered ‘a day of celebration for every farmer’, as it was necessary ‘to know the enemies, to know how many they are, to which family, the genus and species they belong. What evils they cause and the proportion thereof’.⁶⁶ Indeed, more was invested in science to combat pests than education and working-class welfare; the newspapers paid more attention to insects than the hundreds of thousands of tenants living isolated in sugar zone. The Diario enthusiastically applauded the initiative of allocating a plane, piloted by a war veteran, to combat pests, as in the excerpt below:

The fight carried out using the spray plane targets not just one insect but several. The whole long series of predators affecting the sugarcane fields will be effectively hit by the insecticide […]. The pilot, Bonifácio, executing the low flight, dumps a cloud of insecticide, which is slowly deposited on the ground […]. The Amaragi Plantation’s extremely rugged topography is a challenge to Bonifacio’s skill as he climbs, descends, lowers, and shoves his way through tight canyons, leaving a trail of dust behind him. For the Amaragi planters, the test being performed is invaluable, and if the expected results emerge, then it will almost be a survival factor. According to our information, in 1951–52, Amaragi Plantation produced 5,700 tonnes of cane. In crop 52–53, on practically the same area, only 1,100 tons were harvested, in addition to the further loss that the cane field was planted four times. ‘Beetles’ accounted for almost all the damage and it is not without reason that the agronomists who visited the plantation at the time designated it ‘beetles’ headquarters’.⁶⁷

In the 1960s, the sugarcane froghoppers (Mahanarva posticata and Mahanarva fimbriolata) were the main enemy of the sugar industry. This insect species destroyed everything, everywhere, attacking indiscriminately – all sugarcane cultivars, all ratoons, all ages and all topographies. The cornfields and hay fields adjacent to the cane fields were not spared either. In a single clump with 12 canes, at Pumatizinho Plantation, for example, researchers found 401 insects, among young and adults. Froghoppers soon became an ‘economic scourge of considerable importance […] a serious problem never before encountered’,⁶⁸ with ‘unpredictable consequences in the agricultural and industrial sectors. In a letter addressed to the Northeast Sugar Foundation, in 1965, the Commission to Combat Sugarcane Pests stated that the status of public calamity attributed to the froghopper forced public and private sectors to harmonise their interests in defence of the state’s economy. After calling for an ‘immediate control plan to safeguard sugarcane, the vanguard of Pernambuco’s wealth’, the document added: ‘we cannot falter in the face of such a transcendental problem’.⁶⁹ Amid this ‘unequal fight against a powerful enemy’ a taskforce was then organised among various state, regional, federal and international agencies, in addition to the business class: (i) Commission to Combat Sugarcane Pests; (ii) Pernambuco Institute of Agronomic Research; (iii) Large Mill Cooperative of Pernambuco; (iv) Pernambuco Sugar Suppliers Association; (v) Sugar Study Group; (vi) Northeast Sugar Foundation; (vii) Special Group for the Rationalisation of the Northeastern Sugar Industry; (viii) Superintendency for the Development of the Northeast; (ix) Sugar and Alcohol Institute; (x) Ministry of Agriculture; (xi) Hawaiian Sugar Planters Association; (xii) U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID); and (xiii) Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations (FAO). Most of these agencies met regularly to deliberate and create protocols to combat insects. In the extraordinary meeting held on 10 March 1967, Dr Mário Bezerra de Carvalho, from the Pernambuco Institute of Agronomic Research, stated that ‘in the battle that was to be waged against the froghopper pest, all the specialised agencies should march together, thus pursuing a single interest, a single goal’.⁷⁰

The difficulties in winning the war against insects led the Brazilian authorities to bring two internationally renowned entomologists to the Northeast sugar zone: Pietro Guagliumi, from FAO, and Roger Williams, from the International Research Institute, linked to USAID. Guagliumi spent five years in Brazil exploring sugarcane pests in several producing states of the country, including Pernambuco, Sergipe, Bahia, Rio de Janeiro, São Paulo and Paraná. His technical report, entitled Combate à cigarrinha dos canaviais, highlights that the insects had an ‘extraordinary development’ and were the ‘most important sugarcane pests in Brazil’. Guagliumi identified two insect species: the so-called sugarcane root froghopper (Sphenorhina liturata) and the sugarcane leafhopper (Mahanarva indicata). To feed on the sap, the insects would inject an enzyme that acts as a toxin into the leaves and necrotises the tissues, initially in situ and then progressively around the affected area, forming elongated patches. Such burns reduce the capacity of the leaves to carry out photosynthesis, which, in turn, decreases sap circulation in the leaf lamina, drastically reducing sucrose content in the stalks. Moreover, by covering extensive areas, these spots can cause the leaves – and even the whole plant – to die.⁷¹ Roger Williams, for his part, did not hesitate to state in his preliminary report that ‘everyone will agree that the control of these insects is far more complicated than imagined’. Williams introduced the idea of ‘economic threshold’, that is, the density of a pest at which a control treatment would provide an economic return. He advocated this logic for two reasons: firstly, because ‘we need to save money’, and secondly, it allows ‘delaying the time at which the leafhopper will acquire resistance to the insecticides’ used to kill it.⁷²

Several means were employed to eliminate the insects. Genetic control (that is, introducing new cultivars) was the most widely used and was always expected to generate excellent results. On the other hand, mechanical control was the most primitive way to fight pests since it required each insect to be manually collected from the sugarcane fields. Chemical control through insecticides was advised and encouraged, but it required specific equipment and trained labour; moreover, it did not work for pests in the larval stage because the insecticides hardly reached them. In such cases, stripping could considerably reduce the number of nymphs hiding under the leaf sheaths. However, the intense application of insecticides endangered the lives of many of the pests’ nonhuman enemies, causing other pests to emerge (these were populations kept in check until then). This was also the reason why burning infested fields was not recommended. Despite having taken five to ten years to show the first results, biological combat was the most recommended method by scientists, even though it has not been adopted. Referring to the froghopper, Pietro Guagliumi argued that, to fight the insects and their larvae efficiently, ‘there is no other resource but the use of their natural enemies (parasites, predators and fungi), that is, a well-studied and planned “biological control” that allows taking advantage of one or more limiting factors that for years or century have kept the pest in balance with other extrinsic and intrinsic factors, which constitutes the “habitat” of the same species’.⁷³

Human–sugar–insect relations

One finds a new way of understanding and narrating the history of sugar in Northeast Brazil by paying attention to insects. This is a history of humans and nonhumans deeply connected with each other and the environment. Although microorganisms and insects are the main nonhuman protagonists in this story, people (a small group of humans comprising capitalists strongly supported by the state) are present throughout. After all, they were the ones who (i) brought sugarcane to Brazil; (ii) promoted intense deforestation altering the ecological balance of thousands of years; (iii) installed an unstable monoculture production model; (iv) created hundreds of sugarcane cultivars with little or almost no long-lasting immune response; and (v) created commissions, crisis committees, research institutes, machinery with state-of-the-art technology – all to propose solutions to the many diseases and pests that they (that is, this small group of humans) were primarily responsible for propagating. In contrast, rural workers – a group of humans whose interests were clearly distinct from those of the elite – concurred at least to: (i) subvert the capitalist monoculture logic, (ii) promote the maintenance of the sites and (iii) retrieve part of the forest balance in the degraded areas through crop diversification.⁷⁴ Moreover, these actors helped to promote an agroforestry system logic that precisely corresponded to an attempt to ‘imitate’ the forest ecological balance.

The theoretical implications of these interactions force us to rethink not only the place of humans in the history of sugar but the history of sugar in America as a whole. We must reassess the role of insects in all places where they became pests. Investigating the history of sugar only from a human point of view (whether that of planters or workers) is something like seeing and not seeing simultaneously. If interactions are all there is, with the entities influencing each other mutually, then their stories cannot be narrated in parallel, as if they did not touch each other. The human social history of sugar is inseparable from its botanical history, which, in turn, is inseparable from the history of the insects that affect both people and plants.

Notes

1. 1. Edward O. Wilson, The diversity of life. Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press, 1992.

2. 2. Thomas Michael Lewinsohn, Leonardo Re Jorge & Paulo Inácio Prado, ‘Biodiversidade e interações entre insetos herbívoros e plantas’. In: Kleber Del-Claro & Helena Torezan-Silingardi (eds.) Ecologia das interações plantas-animais: uma abordagem ecológico-evolutiva. Rio de Janeiro, 2012, 275–89. See also Mairla Santos Colins, ‘Ecologia comportamental da interação inseto-planta’, Boletim PETBio-UFMA 42 (2017), 5–11.

3. 3. Arno Karlen, Man and microbes: disease and plagues in history and modern times. New York, G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1995; John Postgate, Microbes and man. Cambridge, MA, Cambridge University Press, 2000.

4. 4. The only exception is perhaps Diogo de Carvalho Cabral (although sugar is not the only or even the biggest of his research subjects), who drew attention to the fact that the sugar economy ‘was also made possible by the massape’s unwillingness to host nests of leaf-cutting ants’ since sugarcane is an ‘Asian grass species that prefers waterlogged soils and coincidentally the ones that most hinder the development of leaf-cutting ant nest’; see Diogo de Carvalho Cabral, ‘Into the bowels of tropical earth: leaf-cutting ants and the colonial making of agrarian Brazil’, Journal of Historical Geography 50 (2015), 92–105.

5. 5. José Marcelo M. Ferreira Filho, Arquitetura espacial da plantation açucareira no Nordeste do Brasil (Pernambuco, século XX). Recife-PE, Editora UFPE, 2022.

6. 6. Thomas D. Rogers, The deepest wounds: a labor and environmental history of sugar in Northeast Brazil. Chapel Hill, The University of North Carolina Press, 2010.

7. 7. Marcela Heráclio Bezerra, ‘Mulheres (des)cobertas, histórias reveladas: relações de trabalho, práticas cotidianas e lutas políticas das trabalhadoras canavieiras na Zona da Mata Sul de Pernambuco (1980–1988)’, unpublished master’s thesis, UFPE, 2012. See also Marcela Heráclio Bezerra, ‘ “Se é pra ir pra luta, eu vou. Se é pra tá presente, eu tou”: presença e atuação das trabalhadoras rurais da Zona da Mata de Pernambuco nos movimentos sociais (1979–1985)’. In: Marcília Gama da Silva & Thiago Nunes Soares (eds.) Pernambuco na mira do Golpe: mundo do trabalho e dos trabalhadores, volume 3, Porto Alegre, Editora Fi, 2021, 240–60.

8. 8. Christine Rufino Dabat, Moradores de engenho: estudo sobre as relações de trabalho e condições de vida dos trabalhadores rurais na zona canavieira de Pernambuco, segundo a literatura, a academia e os próprios atores sociais, 2nd edn, Recife-PE, UFPE, 2012.

9. 9. Pablo Francisco de Andrade Porfírio, ‘O tal de Natal: reivindicação por direito trabalhista e assassinatos de camponeses (Pernambuco, 1963)’, Estudos Históricos 29, no. 59 (2016), 745–66.

10. 10. Antonio Montenegro, ‘História política e cultura do medo’, Revista Esboços 16, no. 21 (2009), 23–40.

11. 11. Diogo de Carvalho Cabral, ‘ “O Brasil é um grande formigueiro”: território, ecologia e a história ambiental da América portuguesa parte 1’, Historia Ambiental Latinoamericana y Caribeña (HALAC) 3, no. 2 (2014), 467–89.

12. 12. For some attempts to understand the intricacies of nonhuman thought and their ways of reasoning, classifying, dialoguing, interpreting and representing, see for example Peter Wohlleben, A vida secreta das árvores. Rio de Janeiro, Sextante, 2017; Marc Bekoff, Colin Allen & Gordon M. Burghardt (eds.) The cognitive animal: Empirical and theoretical perspectives on animal cognition. Cambridge, MA, MIT Press, 2002; Robert W. Lurz (ed.), The philosophy of animal minds. Cambridge, MA, Cambridge University Press, 2009; Kristin Andrews & Ljiljana Radenovic, ‘Animal Cognition’. In: Hugh LaFollette, Sarah Stroud & John Deigh (eds.) International Encyclopedia of Ethics. Haboken, NJ, Wiley-Blackwell, 2013, entrance 050, PDF available at www.kristinandrews.org.

13. 13. Eduardo Gudynas, Derechos de la naturaleza: Ética biocéntrica y políticas ambientales. Buenos Aires, Tinta Limón, 2015.

14. 14. Felipe Süssekind, ‘Sobre a vida multiespécie’, Revista do Instituto de Estudos Brasileiros 69 (2018), 159–78.

15. 15. Tobias Rees, After ethnos. Durham, NC-London, Duke University Press, 2018; Stelio Marras, ‘Por uma antropologia do entre: reflexões sobre um novo e urgente descentramento do humano’, Revista do Instituto de Estudos Brasileiros 69 (2018), 250–66.

16. 16. Donald Hughes, ‘What does environmental history teach?’ In: Angela Mendonca, Ana Cunha & Ranjan Chakrabarti (eds.) Natural resources, sustainability and humanity. A comprehensive view. Dordrecht, Springer, 2012, 1–15.

17. 17. Ewa Domanska, ‘Posthumanist history’. In: Marek Tamm & Peter Burke (eds.) Debating new approaches to history. London, Bloomsbury, 2018, 327–52.

18. 18. Luc Ferry, A nova ordem ecológica: a árvore, o animal e o homem. Rio de Janeiro, DIFEL, 2009.

19. 19. Charles Berriat-Saint-Prix, ‘Rapport et recherches sur les jugements relatifs aux animaux’. In: Mémoiresde la Société des Antiquaires de France, vol. VIII, Paris, 1829; Léon Menabrea, De l’origine, de la forme et de l’esprit des jugements rendus au moyen âge contre les animaux. Chambéry. Puthod, Imprimeur-Libraire, Éditeur, 1846.

20. 20. Bruno Latour, Diante de Gaia: oito conferências sobre a natureza no Antropoceno. São Paulo-Rio de Janeiro, Ubu Editora, 2020.

21. 21. Diogo de Carvalho Cabral, Na presença da floresta: Mata Atlântica e história colonial. Rio de Janeiro, Garamond-FAPERJ, 2014.

22. 22. Warren Dean, With broadax and frebrand: the destruction of the Brazilian Atlantic Rainforest. Berkeley, University of California Press, 1995.

23. 23. John McNeill, Something new under the sun: an environmental history of the twentieth-century world. New York, Norton, 2001, 362.

24. 24. William Cronon, ‘The uses of environmental history’, Environmental History Review 17, no. 3 (1993), 1–22.

25. 25. Shepard Krech III, John R. McNeill & Carolyn Merchant, Encyclopedia of world environmental history. New York, Routledge, 2004.

26. 26. Richard C. Foltz, ‘Does nature have historical agency? World history, environmental history, and how historians can help save the planet’, The History Teacher 37, no. 1 – Special Feature Issue: Environmental History and National History Day 2003 Prize Essays (2003), 11.

27. 27. David Christian, Maps of time: an introduction to big history. Berkeley, University of California Press, 2004; Fred Spier, The structure of big history: from the Big Bang until today. Amsterdam, University of Amsterdam Press, 1996.

28. 28. On the concept of nature, see Clarence Glacken, Traces on the Rhodian Shore: nature and culture in Western thought from ancient times to the end of the eighteenth century. Berkeley, Berkeley University Press, 1967; Robert Lenoble, História da idéia de natureza. Rio de Janeiro, Edições 70, s/d.; Raymond Williams, Keywords: a vocabulary of culture and society. London, Famingo, 1983; Philippe Descola, Outras naturezas, outras culturas. São Paulo, Editora 34, 2016.

29. 29. Enrique Leff, ‘Construindo a história ambiental da América Latina’, Esboços 13 (2005), 11–30.

30. 30. Chris Philo & Chris Wilbert, ‘Animal spaces, beastly places: an introduction’. In: Chris Philo & Chris Wilbert (eds.) Animal spaces, beastly places: new geographies of human-animal relations. London, Routledge, 2000, 1–32.

31. 31. Milton Santos, A natureza do espaço: técnica e tempo. Razão e emoção. São Paulo, EdUSP, 2006.

32. 32. Richard White, The organic machine: the remaking of the Columbia River. New York, Hill & Wang, 1995; Martha Few & Zeb Tortorici (eds.), Centering animals in Latin American History. Durham, NC-London, Duke University Press, 2013.

33. 33. Caio Prado Júnior, Formação do Brasil contemporâneo: colônia. São Paulo, Brasiliense, 1922.

34. 34. According to Thomas ‘When they gazed at their plantations the planter class saw a laboring landscape – encompassing both human and non-human elements, it was a space to be commanded into material and symbolic productivity’, Thomas D. Rogers, ‘Laboring landscapes: the environmental, racial, and class worldview of the Brazilian Northeast’s sugar elite, 1880s–1930s’, Luso-Brazilian Review 46, no. 2 (2009), 22–53.

35. 35. Christine Rufino Dabat, ‘Sugar cane “plantations” in Pernambuco: from “natural vocation” to ethanol production’, Review (Fernand Braudel Center) 34, no. 1/2 (2011), 115–38.

36. 36. Gilberto Osório de Andrade & Raquel Caldas Lins Andrade, Pirapama: um estudo geográfico e histórico. Recife, Editora Massangana, 1984, 18.

37. 37. Sidney W. Mintz, Sweetness and power. New York, Viking Penguin, 1985.

38. 38. Zhi-Qiang Zhang, Animal biodiversity: an outline of higher-level classification and survey of taxonomic richness. Auckland, New Zealand, Magnolia Press, 2011; Nigel E. Stork, ‘How many species of insects and other terrestrial arthropods are there on earth?’, Annual Review of Entomology 63, no. 1 (2018), 31–45.

39. 39. Wilhelm Piso & Georg Laet Marggraf, Historia naturalis Brasiliae … Lugdun. Batavorum; Amstelodami: Franciscum Hackium; Lud. Elzevirium, 1648. 2 v. em 1, Seção de Obras Raras | Biblioteca de Manguinhos, https://www.obrasraras.fiocruz.br.

40. 40. André João Antonil, Cultura e opulência do Brasil. Rio de Janeiro, Casa de Souza e Comp., [1711] 1837, 50–51.

41. 41. Henry Koster, Viagens ao Nordeste do Brasil. São Paulo-Rio de Janeiro-Recife-Porto Alegre, Companhia Editora Nacional, [1817] 1942, 427–8.

42. 42. Matthew Mulcahy & Stuart Schwartz, ‘Nature’s battalions: insects as agricultural pests in the early modern Caribbean’, William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd ser. 75, no. 3 (2018), 433–64.

43. 43. Mike H. Bowie, ‘Effects of distance from field edge on aphidophagous insects in a wheat crop and observations on trap design and placement’, International Journal of Pest Management 45, no. 1 (1999), 69–73.

44. 44. Donald R. Strong, Jr., Earl D. Mccoy & Jorge R. Rey, ‘Time and the number of herbivore species: the pests of sugarcane’, Ecology 58, no. 1 (1977), 167–75.

45. 45. de Carvalho Cabral, 2014, 45.

46. 46. Carlos A. Joly, Jean Paul Metzger & Marcelo Tabarelli, ‘Experiences from the Brazilian Atlantic Forest: ecological findings and conservation initiatives’, New Phytologist 204 (2014), 462–3.

47. 47. Alice Canabrava, ‘A grande lavoura’. In: Sérgio Buarque de Holanda (ed.) História geral da civilização brasileira, tomo I, volume 2, Rio de Janeiro, Difel, 1963, 198–206.

48. 48. José Clóvis de Andrade, Escorço histórico de antigas variedades de cana-de-açúcar. Maceió, Associação dos Plantadores de Cana de Alagoas, 1985.

49. 49. Begonha Bediaga, Marcado pela própria natureza: o Imperial Instituto Fluminense de Agricultura (1860–1891). Rio de Janeiro, FGV, 2014.

50. 50. Frederico Maurício Draenert, ‘Moléstia da cana de açúcar na Bahia’, Jornal da Bahia, 20 de janeiro de 1870.

51. 51. Ladislau Netto, ‘Investigações sobre a cultura e a moléstia da cana de açúcar’, Revista Agrícola 1, no. 3 (1870), 5.

52. 52. Alois Krauss, ‘Relatório sobre a doença da cana-de-açúcar na província da Bahia’, Revista Agrícola 1, no. 4 (1870), 22–7.

53. 53. Adrião Caminha Filho, ‘Doenças da canna de assucar no Brasil’, Rodriguésia. Número especial: annaes da primeira reunião de phytopathologistas do Brasil (1936), 191–6.

54. 54. Diario de Pernambuco, 12 de junho de 1926.

55. 55. José Vizioli, ‘O Mosaico e outras moléstias da canna em São Paulo’. In: Relatório apresentado ao Dr. Gabriel Ribeiro dos Santos, Secretário da Agricultura. São Paulo, Secretaria de Agricultura, Commercio e Obras Públicas do Estado de São Paulo, 1924.

56. 56. Carta do senhor A. M. S. enviada ao Diario de Pernambuco, 15 de novembro de 1915.

57. 57. Carlos Moreira, ‘Os besouros da canna de assucar’. Rio de Janeiro, Ministério da Agricultura, Indústria e Commercio, 1916, 17.

58. 58. Geraldo F. de Queiroz, ‘A praga dos besouros da cana-de-açúcar’, Recife, Comissão de Combate às Pragas da Cana de Açúcar, Publicação no. 18 (1962).

59. 59. Bento Dantas, ‘O cupim dos rebolos da cana de açúcar’, Recife, IAA, Comissão de Combate às Pragas da Cana de Açúcar, Publicação no. 3, 1957.

60. 60. Bento Dantas, ‘Melhore a germinação e aumente a produção com o tratamento fungicida dos rebolos’, Recife, Comissão de Combate às Pragas da Cana de Açúcar, Publicação no. 4, 1957.

61. 61. P. Pimentel, ‘Levantamento fitossanitário da cana adulta da safra de 1954/5: relatório da parte estatística’, Recife, Comissão de Combate às Pragas da Cana de Açúcar, 1956.

62. 62. Carlos Antônio Albert, ‘A posição atual da broca da cana de açúcar (Diatraea saccharalis, Fab) no estado de Pernambuco’, Recife, Comissão de Combate às Pragas da Cana de Açúcar, Publicação no. 15 (1962). See also Adrião Caminha Filho, A broca da cana de açúcar (Diatraea saccharalis, Fabricius). Rio de Janeiro, Ministério da Agricultura, 1940.

63. 63. Abdon Pereira da Silva, ‘Compensa o tratamento térmico em cana-de-açúcar’, Recife, Comissão de Combate às Pragas da Cana de Açúcar, Publicação no. 17 (1962). See also, Rev. D. Bento Pickel, ‘Lista das moléstias e dos fungos parasitários das plantas cultivadas em Pernambuco’, Rodriguésia. Número especial: annaes da primeira reunião de phytopathologistas do Brasil (1936); Arsène Puttemans, ‘Alguns dados para servir à História da Phytopathologia no Brasil e às primeiras notificações de doenças de vegetaes neste paiz’, Rodriguésia. Número especial: annaes da primeira reunião de phytopathologistas do Brasil (1936), https://rodriguesia.jbrj.gov.br.

64. 64. Clóvis de Andrade, 1985, 113.

65. 65. Bento Dantas, ‘Plano quadrienal para o estudo das principais doenças e pragas da cana e açúcar em Pernambuco’, Recife, Instituto do Açúcar e do Álcool – Comissão de Combate às Pragas da Cana de açúcar no Estado de Pernambuco, 1956.

66. 66. Diario de Pernambuco, 11 de outubro de 1953.

67. 67. Diario de Pernambuco, 3 de outubro de 1954.

68. 68. José Alexandre Ribemboim, Aluízio Ferreira Baltar Filho and Djalma Martins Santa Rosa, ‘A cigarrilha da cana-de-açúcar (“Mahanarva indicata” Distant, 1909) em Pernambuco – Primeiros passos para seu controle’. Recife, Comissão de Combate às Pragas da Cana de Açúcar, Publicação no. 20, 1965.

69. 69. Ofício 239/65 da Comissão de Combate às Pragas da Cana de Açúcar no Estado de Pernambuco à Fundação Açucareira de Pernambuco, 1965.

70. 70. Ata da seção extraordinária da Comissão de combate às pestes da cana-de-açúcar no estado de Pernambuco de 10 de março de 1967.

71. 71. Pietro Guagliumi, Pragas da cana-de-açúcar: Nordeste do Brasil. Rio de Janeiro, Instituto do Açúcar e do Álcool, 1972/3.

72. 72. Rogers Williams, ‘Relatório preliminar sôbre o contrôle da Cigarinha (Maranava indicata) da cana de açúcar’. Recife, 23 de fevereiro de 1967.

73. 73. Pietro Guagliumi, ‘Combate à cigarrinha dos canaviais’. Instituto do Açúcar e do Álcool, agosto de 1966.

74. 74. Marcos A. B. Fiqueiredo, ‘Prácticas campesinas agroforestales para incrementar la biodiversidad. El caso de Pernambuco, Brasil’, LEISA, Revista de Agroecologia 35, no. 4 (2019), 5–8.

References

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• Andrews, Kristin & Ljiljana Radenovic, ‘Animal Cognition’. In: LaFollette, Hugh, Sarah Stroud & John Deigh (eds.) International Encyclopedia of Ethics.
• Bediaga, Begonha, Marcado pela própria natureza: o Imperial Instituto Fluminense de Agricultura (1860–1891). Rio de Janeiro, FGV, 2014.
• Bekoff, Marc, Colin Allen & Gordon M. Burghardt (eds.), The cognitive animal: Empirical and theoretical perspectives on animal cognition. Cambridge, MA, MIT Press, 2002.
• Bezerra, Marcela Heráclio, ‘Mulheres (des)cobertas, histórias reveladas: relações de trabalho, práticas cotidianas e lutas políticas das trabalhadoras canavieiras na Zona da Mata Sul de Pernambuco (1980–1988)’, unpublished master’s thesis, UFPE, 2012.
• Bezerra, Marcela Heráclio, ‘ “Se é pra ir pra luta, eu vou. Se é pra tá presente, eu tou”: presença e atuação das trabalhadoras rurais da Zona da Mata de Pernambuco nos movimentos sociais (1979–1985)’. In: Silva, Marcília Gama da & Thiago Nunes Soares (eds.) Pernambuco na mira do Golpe: mundo do trabalho e dos trabalhadores, volume 3, Porto Alegre, Editora Fi, 2021.
• Bowie, Mike H., ‘Effects of distance from field edge on aphidophagous insects in a wheat crop and observations on trap design and placement’, International Journal of Pest Management 45, no. 1 (1999), 69–73.
• Canabrava, Alice, ‘A grande lavoura’. In: Sérgio Buarque de Holanda (ed.) História geral da civilização brasileira, tomo I, volume 2, Rio de Janeiro, Difel, 1963, 198–206.
• Christian, David, Maps of time: an introduction to big history. Berkeley, University of California Press, 2004.
• Colins, Mairla Santos, ‘Ecologia comportamental da interação inseto-planta’, Boletim PETBio-UFMA 42 (2017), 5–11.
• Cronon, William, ‘The uses of environmental history’, Environmental History Review 17, no. 3 (1993), 1–22.
• Dabat, Christine Rufino, Moradores de engenho: estudo sobre as relações de trabalho e condições de vida dos trabalhadores rurais na zona canavieira de Pernambuco, segundo a literatura, a academia e os próprios atores sociais, 2nd edn, Recife-PE, UFPE, 2012.
• Dabat, Christine Rufino, ‘Sugar cane “plantations” in Pernambuco: from “natural vocation” to ethanol production’, Review (Fernand Braudel Center) 34, no. 1/2 (2011), 115–38.
• Dean, Warren, With broadax and frebrand: the destruction of the Brazilian Atlantic Rainforest. Berkeley, University of California Press, 1995.
• de Carvalho Cabral, Diogo, ‘Into the bowels of tropical earth: leaf-cutting ants and the colonial making of agrarian Brazil’, Journal of Historical Geography 50 (2015), 92–105.
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• de Carvalho Cabral, Diogo, Na presença da floresta: Mata Atlântica e história colonial. Rio de Janeiro, Garamond-FAPERJ, 2014.
• Descola, Philippe, Outras naturezas, outras culturas. São Paulo, Editora 34, 2016.
• Domanska, Ewa, ‘Posthumanist history’. In: Tamm, Marek, & Peter Burke (eds.) Debating new approaches to history. London, Bloomsbury, 2018.
• Ferry, Luc, A nova ordem ecológica: a árvore, o animal e o homem. Rio de Janeiro, DIFEL, 2009.
• Few, Martha & Zeb Tortorici (eds.), Centering animals in Latin American History. Durham, NC-London, Duke University Press, 2013.
• Figueiredo, Marcos A. B., ‘Prácticas campesinas agroforestales para incrementar la biodiversidad. El caso de Pernambuco, Brasil’, LEISA, Revista de Agroecologia 35, no. 4 (2019), 5–8.
• Filho, José Marcelo M. Ferreira, Arquitetura espacial da plantation açucareira no Nordeste do Brasil (Pernambuco, século XX). Recife-PE, Editora UFPE, 2022.
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• Gudynas, Eduardo, Derechos de la naturaleza: Ética biocéntrica y políticas ambientales. Buenos Aires, Tinta Limón, 2015.
• Hughes, Donald, ‘What does environmental history teach?’. In: Mendonça, Angela, Ana Cunha & Ranjan Chakrabarti (eds.) Natural resources, sustainability and humanity. A comprehensive view. Dordrecht, Springer, 2012, 1–15.
• Joly, Carlos A., Jean Paul Metzger & Marcelo Tabarelli, ‘Experiences from the Brazilian Atlantic Forest: ecological findings and conservation initiatives’, New Phytologist 204 (2014), 462–3.
• Júnior, Caio Prado, Formação do Brasil contemporâneo: colônia. São Paulo, Brasiliense, 1922.
• Karlen, Arno, Man and microbes: disease and plagues in history and modern times. New York, G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1995.
• Krech III, Shepard, John R. McNeill & Carolyn Merchant, Encyclopedia of world environmental history. New York, Routledge, 2004.
• Latour, Bruno, Diante de Gaia: oito conferências sobre a natureza no Antropoceno. São Paulo-Rio de Janeiro, Ubu Editora, 2020.
• Leff, Enrique, ‘Construindo a história ambiental da América Latina’, Esboços 13 (2005), 11–30.
• Lenoble, Robert, História da idéia de natureza. Rio de Janeiro, Edições 70, s/d.
• Lewinsohn, Thomas Michael, Leonardo Re Jorge & Paulo Inácio Prado, ‘Biodiversidade e interações entre insetos herbívoros e plantas’. In: Del-Claro, Kleber & Helena Torezan-Silingardi (eds.) Ecologia das interações plantas-animais: uma abordagem ecológico-evolutiva. Rio de Janeiro, 2012.
• Lurz, Robert W. (ed.), The philosophy of animal minds. Cambridge, MA, Cambridge University Press, 2009.
• Marras, Stelio, ‘Por uma antropologia do entre: reflexões sobre um novo e urgente descentramento do humano’, Revista do Instituto de Estudos Brasileiros 69 (2018), 250–66.
• McNeill, John, Something new under the sun: an environmental history of the twentieth-century world. New York, Norton, 2001.
• Mintz, Sidney W., Sweetness and power. New York, Viking Penguin, 1985.
• Montenegro, Antônio, ‘História política e cultura do medo’, Revista Esboços 16, no. 21 (2009), 23–40.
• Mulcahy, Matthew & Stuart Schwartz, ‘Nature’s battalions: insects as agricultural pests in the early modern Caribbean’, William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd ser. 75, no. 3 (2018), 433–64.
• Philo, Chris, & Chris Wilbert, ‘Animal spaces, beastly places: an introduction’. In: Philo, Chris & Chris Wilbert (eds.) Animal spaces, beastly places: new geographies of human-animal relations. London, Routledge, 2000, 1–32.
• Porfílio, Pablo Francisco de Andrade, ‘O tal de Natal: reivindicação por direito trabalhista e assassinatos de camponeses (Pernambuco, 1963)’, Estudos Históricos 29, no. 59 (2016), 745–66.
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• Rees, Tobias, After ethnos. Durham, NC-London, Duke University Press, 2018.
• Rogers, Thomas D., The deepest wounds: a labor and environmental history of sugar in Northeast Brazil. Chapel Hill, The University of North Carolina Press, 2010.
• Rogers, Thomas D., ‘Laboring landscapes: the environmental, racial, and class worldview of the Brazilian Northeast’s sugar elite, 1880s–1930s’, Luso-Brazilian Review 46, no. 2 (2009), 22–53.
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• Spier, Fred, The structure of big history: from the Big Bang until today. Amsterdam, University of Amsterdam Press, 1996.
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• Süssekind, Felipe, ‘Sobre a vida multiespécie’, Revista do Instituto de Estudos Brasileiros 69 (2018), 159–78.
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