In the Northeast, some call it “Hiroshima”. Or immense plumes of smoke, rising very high into the sky over the fields, and which sometimes take on the appearance of mushroom clouds. In Brazil, the expression does not seem exaggerated when it comes to describing the violence of the destruction caused by the fires which are now devastating the Cerrado savannah.
On the outskirts of the city of Uruçui, in the very south of the State of Piaui, fire is everywhere. The edges of the roads are red with embers and black with ashes. The sparks frolic, leaping over the asphalt, often threatening trucks. Mid-August, when the WorldUruçui briefly held the title of city with the most fires in all of Brazil.
This unenviable “prize” was difficult to achieve, as the devastation of the Cerrado exploded. The Brazilian Institute for Space Research has counted more than 23,000 fires this year in the savannah, including at least 5,000 km2 were razed, an increase of 20% compared to the same period in 2022. An area equivalent to that of a French department… and unheard of for a decade.
Uruçui did not seem doomed to such a fate. Seen from the sky, this town with its indigenous name (“big bee” in Tupi), almost 1,000 kilometers from the coast, is just a lost point on the map of Sertao, this polygon of misery in the Northeast. Its 25,000 inhabitants are distributed between the placid rio Parnaiba, nicknamed the “old monk”, which flows to the Atlantic, and large plateaus perched at an altitude of 400 meters, the chapados, crushed by heat.
The city is also in the heart of the Cerrado, this savannah which once spanned 2 million square kilometers (half the size of the European Union). Only the Amazon surpasses it in size and wealth. This land of glowing soil and a warm climate, dotted with shrubs, bushes and waterways, is the home of the tapir, the jaguar, the giant anteater and 320,000 animal species. The one that still houses 5% of global biodiversity is also a vital watershed and a gigantic carbon sink… Which did not prevent its industrial destruction: in a few decades, half of its surface was razed.
Not a bush survived
All this gave way to the fields of fazendeiros, these large landowners and agro-negotiators. On the chapados from Uruçui, the plowing extends as far as the eye can see. Not a bush survived, in what was once a rich forest of thickets and shrubs. A landscape of desert plowing now typical of “Matopiba”, this region made up of the northeastern states of Maranhao, Tocantins, Piaui and Bahia. Brazil’s new agricultural frontier…
You have 82.19% of this article left to read. The rest is reserved for subscribers.