Hinterlands “ON THE MOVE”: TRADE, MOBILITY AND THEFT OF OLD TRUCKS AND THEIR PARTS IN ALAGOAS AND OTHER NORTH-EAST
precarious markets; marginal mobilities; pickup trucks; sertão baiano; backwoods of Alagoas
In the high hinterland of Alagoas, mobility in the rural areas of the cities of Delmiro Gouveia, Água Branca and Pariconha, is done by used trucks with more than 30 years of manufacture. They are the basis of a peripheral transport trade that connects towns and cities. However, this base is based on an interstate, illegal and informal trade in auto parts, engines and trucks, in Feira de Santana, in the interior of Bahia. Through the mobilization of a series of marginal and state actors, the rural and the urban feed back into these movements, reconfiguring the experiences that are usually apprehended by both ideas. The mobility of pickup trucks, auto parts, people and cargo has its own market regulations, affective-political alliances and municipal and state regulations. Based on an ethnocartography of the movements in the back of these cars, combined with the research of secondary material and interviews, the objective is to understand how the illegal and informal market of auto parts, engines and trucks in the sertão of Bahia nourishes and mobilizes the base of the transport trade in the zone rural areas of three municipalities in the hinterland of Alagoas. I pursue two analytical threads: (i) the buying and selling relationships of a pickup truck and its parts (ii) the transport of people and students in rural areas, both phenomena typically involving a Chevrolet D-20. I dialogue with reflections and works inspired by actor-network theories to understand plots that support and are supported by these "precarious" "on the move" agencies.