“Life Is Losing its Meaning”: The Experiences of Fishing Communities During the Oil Disaster and COVID-19 Pandemic in Pernambuco, Brazil

The goal of this article is to examine how the confluence of the oil disaster and the new coronavirus pandemic had a negative impact on the work and livelihood of artisanal fishing communities in Pernambuco within a short span of time. Eighty people were interviewed (60 of them fishers) along the entire coastline of Pernambuco from October 2019 to February 2020, and through remote surveys from March to April 2020. The category “work culture” and its idea of experience as defined by E.P Thompson forms the basis of our analysis. Our results show that these two tragedies (the oil crisis – felt most strongly from October 2019 to January 2020 – and the ongoing coronavirus pandemic that began in March 2020) presented formidable challenges towards the reproduction of the work culture that is produced by artisanal fishers in Pernambuco. This is seen in the experiences that were lived and told by the same Brazilians who currently reside in these fishing communities.