In front of the luxury hotels on Porto de Galinhas beach in southern Pernambuco State, in Brazil, there is an ice cream vendor who turned 59 last year.  If this were still the time of slavery he would be set free this year under the 1885 Law of the Sixty-Year-Olds. 

Now, in the twenty-first century, this man continues as a slave, pushing a heavy ice cream cart nearly 12-1/2 miles every day on the soft sand of the beach to serve the tourists.

Since 1970 he has been at this job in different places.  He has worked for four ice cream factories very well known to past residents of Recife:  Daqui, Xaxá, Maguary and Kibon, where he still works.

He doesn’t grumble about the hot sun or the soft sand.  He complains about the reduced number of customers due to the region’s tourist development in the past few years. 

Before the large hotels were built, he set out early with his cart full, sold everything, and returned in the middle of the afternoon with an empty cart.  Now, he goes out with half as much ice cream and, in the middle of the afternoon, he has sold merely half of that.

To the consumer, it seems absurd that the development of the region could have made business worse for him.  But he explains:  The hotels brought tourists from elsewhere and installed their own ice cream stands. 

Inhibited, his former local customers started avoiding that beach, impeded by the location of the hotels or pressured by their security guards. 

And the tourists preferred the ice cream sold in the hotel, which they could purchase by simply signing their bill.  Business for ambulatory vendors, who push their carts on the sand of the beach, grew worse.

In compensation, the hotels created a greater number of jobs, with fixed salaries and less arduous work.  In place of some ice cream and beer vendors on the beach, there are now thousands of workers taking care of thousands of rooms in the hotel network. 

A similar number were employed in crafts, restaurants, transportation.  In a general reckoning there is no doubt that progress in tourism has the advantage of generating jobs, as opposed to what is occurring with the present progress in industry. 

Problems can occur with the ecological balance, with the risk of prostitution, with the destabilizing of families, but not with the level of employment.  The ice cream vendor is merely an obsolete worker in a profession in its terminal phase.

Even so, one cannot help lamenting that progress has dislocated its ice cream vendors.  From the point of view of ethics, progress should take into consideration persons like that vendor, who is approaching old age, whose work demands energy that he no longer has, and whose financial return for his labor is less than he received before progress reached the region.

Progress has its victims.  The populations expelled for the construction of the new hotels, the sharecroppers expelled for the installation of hydroelectric plants, the small businesspeople destroyed by the large shopping centers. 

No one thinks about reining in the progress that seduces the consumer and that also generates employment and income.  But Brazil needs a Law of the Sixty-Year-Olds to protect those whom progress has dislocated, like that vendor in Porto de Galinhas.  His name is Joaquim, but Severino better symbolizes the reality of his life.

He reminds one of the poem written by João Cabral de Melo Neto and turned into a song by the musical genius of Chico Buarque.  In it, a man leaves his land in search of survival in the capital city and succeeds only in obtaining a tiny piece of land for his grave. 

The changes in the last decades created new dislocations for new reasons, but they are equal to “Morte e Vida Severina.” 

That can be avoided.  In first place, with an educational system that permits the new jobs generated to be occupied by its children, which is not happening today.

In second place, with a support system that gives those dislocated workers access to a piece of the modern plantation called progress.

Note: The  long narrative poem written by João Cabral de Melo Neto called “Morte e Vida Severina” (Severino Life and Death) is the account of a poor Brazilian migrant named Severino who emigrates to Recife. 

The protagonist’s name is turned into an adjective because he represents all the displaced Severinos.  Several verses of the poem were set to music by Brazilian singer-songwriter Chico Buarque with the title “Funeral de um Lavrador” (Funeral of a Sharecropper).

Cristovam Buarque has a Ph.D. in economics. He is a PT senator for the Federal District and was Governor of the Federal District (1995-98) and Minister of Education (2003-04). You can visit his homepage – www.cristovam.com.br – and write to him at cristovam@senador.gov.br.

Translated from the Portuguese by Linda Jerome - LinJerome@cs.com.

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