Morro Grande

For generations, these farmers have toiled on land that does not belong to them—doing the hard labor while large landowners and multinational corporations reap the profits.

The author, Rodolpho, grew up in Morro Grande, where he and two friends formed a punk rock band called Formigas de Fogo, named after an invasive ant species. They sang about exploitation and pesticides (one of their songs was titled "Chemical Colonialism"). When his childhood friend Vaguinho takes his own life by drinking a bottle of Coca-Cola filled with agricultural poison, Rodolpho decides to tell his story. He pieces it together through oral accounts and photographs taken by another childhood friend, Jerry, who has spent years documenting the slowly withering farming community with his analog Nikon camera.

As we learn more about the enigmatic Vaguinho, the line between memory and imagination begins to blur. Perhaps not everything is strictly true, but every word rings with the truth.