11 - Political challenge to traditional hegemony

Summary

The celebrated study of Middletown by Robert and Helen Lynd has been the point of departure for most of the community studies that followed it, and this one is no exception. Middletown – Muncie, Indiana – itself has attracted scores of investigators and has even been portrayed in a public television series. Many studies of Middletown in transition have implied that families there and elsewhere in America are falling apart. My examination of Juazeiro and Petrolina suggests that while their families may be encountering problems in maintaining their hegemony, this does not necessarily imply any undermining of family cohesion in the sertão. Change in these communities in recent years is more a matter of response to the rise of merchant capital and the penetration of state and private corporate capital into the traditional local and regional economy. The demands for bourgeois democracy that usually accompany these developments affect the structure of community power, thereby sometimes stimulating capitalism and sometimes impeding it. Like the Lynds, I decided to return to the towns I had studied to note changes and assess my findings ten years later. Thus, this concluding part is based on my investigations during July and August 1982 and July 1983.

Juazeiro revisited

Juazeiro had grown in many ways during the decade of the seventies. Its population had doubled, reaching 120,372 (62,366 in the city and 58,016 in the interior) by 1980. A younger generation of activists, their university education completed in nearby Salvador or other urban centers, was making its impact.