Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
values, the food chain, and the human condition. Poor peasants who live in the Ilha
das Flores, in the state of Rio Grande do Sul, southern Brazil, are given the chance
to scavenge for leftover food after the owner of the garbage dump feeds his pigs. As
Goulart and his team put it, this vicious situation stems from the fact that “the poor
have no owner, no money, and are free.”
For the Guarani children of Itaóca, imagining and investing in the creation of a
better world are powerful and meaningful actions that end up undermining, to a large
extent, the legitimate authority of their parents to control them and the illegitimate
authority of the Brazilian government to protect them. “Illegitimate” because the
Brazilian state has not followed up on its commitment to respect and promote the
basic premises of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child - the
most widely accepted human rights instrument ever, protecting the rights of more
than two billion children worldwide - which Brazil has signed and ratified.
21
While
I agree that it is necessary to distinguish between the liberating or transformational
potential that is imagined and in some way created by children's play episodes
and the realities that bracket and even squelch that potential (Chin 1999), Guarani
children do exercise their competence at making the world a better place for the
reasons outlined above, as well as through their ability to learn from one another. In
other words, autonomy and strong peer interaction among Guarani children account
for the development of their competency in dealing with an increasingly risky and
cruel world.
Figure 3.12. Guarani children at the street market looking for food. By Basílio Silveira,
2000.
