Sertanias that die of water: apparitions and coparticipated sufferings in the Piauí winters

Abstract

When some the semi-arid sertanias and the cerrados of Piauí saw their rainy seasons reverse their order, and the long summers turn into big waters in less than a quadrennium, between 2019 and 2022, the inhabitants of the wetlands of the southwest of the state begin to reorder their coexistence with the appearances of an irregular climatic life. This is an ethnography on shared suffering between soils, armadillo, cows, cassava fields, and humans who suffer with the excess of water where before the drought seemed more parsimonious. Similar to the biosemiotic elaborations that the Piauí people make about these changes, we prefer to read the arrival of the great waters through the emotional associations of multi-species organisms that can only understand the unusual climate and its excessive humidity through a “suffering that is suffered together”.

Keywords:
biosemiotic; winters; coparticipated sufferings; brejeiros