Jump to full article: Tierramérica, 2005-08-01
Author: Marwaan Macan-Markar
Intro: For the world's anti-tobacco movement, a small town in southern Brazil has become a symbol of a silent tragedy unfolding among communities which have turned to tobacco farming for a livelihood.
What has contributed to such symbolism is the ''very high rate of suicides'' in that town, Venancio Aires, in the state of Rio Grande do Sul, says Angela Cordiero, an agronomist and a Brazilian activist in the movement. While the national average in Brazil has been three suicides per 100,000 people, in Venancio Aires it is seven times higher - 21 suicides per 100,000 inhabitants.
For Cordeiro, the suicide rate in Venancio Aires can be traced to the ''dangerous pesticides'' used by the tobacco farmers in that area.
''The organophosphate pesticides that farmers use in the tobacco fields have chemicals known to affect the neurological system. They often get depressed after exposure and try to kill themselves,'' she adds. . . .
Studies have revealed that a majority of those who committed suicide in Venancio Aires were farmers, and they had killed themselves during the months when organophosphate pesticides were used extensively in the tobacco fields.
For the tobacco-control movement, such a disturbing phenomenon is only one of a litany of problems that has been plaguing those who work on tobacco farms. In this country, for instance, the plight of the Huichol Indians working in the tobacco fields in the western state of Nayarit has become a cause for concern.
Says Patricia Diaz-Romo, a Mexican anti-tobacco activist, the most glaring as been the impact of pesticide poisoning on the pregnant Huichol Indian women who have worked in the fields.
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