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A n a i s d o I HM T
helped them think, define and make sense of their past
experiences. On the other hand, discourses about suf-
fering harboured an ambivalent feeling. Such emotional
encounters between past and present produced narra-
tives that entwined praise, sorrowfulness and fatalism;
a critical and sometimes irate reflection about the in-
equalities, deprivations and repression; a nostalgia for
their young and active body; considerations about the
superiority of past values related to work; the nostalgia
for a more supportive and righteous community life;
and the notion of an unavoidable “social destiny”.
What is malaria?
Malaria made sense only as a transient bitter part of the
rural workers’ trying life.Therefore, its causes, modes
of transmission and cure were pragmatically perceived,
considered and explained according to the way the dis-
ease interfered with the workers’ performance of their
daily tasks; or the transitory discomfort that it caused.
Malaria was identified, described and dramatized ac-
cording to its physical symptoms. Calling malaria
sezões
(shakes) was (is) not just a reminiscent of a past desig-
nation common to medical literature and lay people; it
also illustrates the importance given to its impressive
physical traits, as well as the centrality of the body as
an instrument of work in the interviewees’ memories
of the disease:
D – That fever, that fever that we had, the all body
shook!
M – We wanted to stop shaking but we couldn’t; our
teeth clattered!
(Domingos and Marcolina, 2006).
We went to work [...] after an hour or so we started –
in midsummer! – we started shaking all over with an
unbearable cold and throwing
up.Wefelt weak and had
to go home.
(Dâmaso, 2006).
Malaria was also characterized by the different regu-
larities of fever bouts.Thus, after the first recognisable
symptoms, work could be carried out within the regu-
lar intervals of the predictable recurrences of the fever:
In those days, there were the seizures; people called it
the seizures.And it was every other day: we worked to-
day and tomorrow we rested. But we rested suffering;
it would not let us work [laughter]
(José, 2006).
I went [to work] with my mother and she was ill, poor
thing, with those seizures fevers. But because she had
so many children she wanted to do the most [work] she
could. She would lie down here and there.
(Elvira, 2006).
As for malaria causation, parasites and mosquitoes were
not the only recognised sources of the “shakes” although
the interviewees’ speeches evinced the influence of
the medical version. Other causes were admitted that
brought together contemporary and ancient medi-
cal models. Poisons transmitted by the mosquitoes or
venoms stemming from stagnant waters and putrefying
matter could also cause the “shakes”:
The mosquito hassled us during the rice weeding be-
cause we slept on the
fields.Wewere in the water all
day long weeding rice and when night came, when sun-
set came we went to where the camping place was – 30
to 100 people. Each of us took a handful of ferns and
made a little
bed.Weput a blanket underneath and an-
other over us and slept there all night. The other day
early in the morning back to rice again. And so, mos-
quitoes would bite us a lot. In those days mosquitoes
were poisoned and many people had the seizures. […]
mosquitoes have something poisonous that is on the
fields.
(José, 2006).
The origin of the seizures were stagnant waters [...],
swamps, rice. [To his colleagues] I don´t know if you
remember well but in those days we were weeding the
rice, we made [holes] and buried [the weeds] in the wa-
ter. They rotted and that’s what caused water´s putre-
faction.That was it and nothing else! I was there [in the
rice fields] three years; those were the worst years of
my life. I barely survived!
(Manuel, 2005).
Although mosquitoes were often mentioned as a nui-
sance, the DDT (Dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane)
sprayings that took place once or twice a year in the
malaria areas since the 1950s were not perceived as a
means of eliminating them. As a former DDT spray-
ing operator stated, “people thought that it was to kill
the houseflies. Nobody thought of mosquitoes.They let
us in because of the houseflies” (Oliveira, Benavente,
2007).The “letting them in” part means that the spray-
ings would not have been so promptly accepted if they
had not been perceived as a useful thing. Sprayings re-
quired moving or covering furniture and any foodstuffs.
It involved extra work for householders and would not
have been welcomed unless it was for a good cause.
Some of the interviewees knew the DDT spraying men
by name, as they were neighbours from town. Isilda,
one of the interviewees, stated that “when there were