SISAL IN BAHIA - BRAZIL

ABSTRACT There is a space in the state of Bahia - Brazil, which has been historically differentiated due to the predominance of the productive process of sisal. The use of agave sisalana was able to establish a productive chain for export, which had sufficient impact to spatially differentiate a large portion of the semiarid in Bahia, known as the Sisaleira Region. Our investigation identifies the origin of this process and proposes its analysis from the definition of periods that allow the temporal situation of the expansion and reduction of the planted area of sisal in order to identify the influence of this process on the economy and the politics of the municipalities involved. We present a characterization of the productive process of sisal and attempt to understand the formation of the Sisaleira Region from the following periods: the beginnings of the sisaleira crop; the creation of the productive system of sisal; the apogee of the green gold of the sertão; the lost decade of sisal; and the current period of restructuring. Our analysis seeks to understand how economics and politics are articulated in the process of differentiation that resulted in the formation of the Sisaleira Region.