Cultura com data para acabar? : Trabalho humano-equino e as vertigens que assolaram carroceiros, veterinários e ativistas da libertação animal numa controvérsia no início do século XXI.

Abstract

Based on ethnographic research with cart-drivers, horses, bureaucrats and scientists, I discuss the way in which ideas about evolution and progress have been mobilized to implement governmental policies to end the use of carts in the city of Belo Horizonte, Brazil in the second decade of the twenty-first century. This article addresses the controversies around animal traction involving gypsies, maroon communities, veterinaries, biologists, anthropologists, parliamentary figures and animal rights activists of divergent ontologies. By exploring the description of a period that witnessed two attempts to criminalize horse-drawn carts and a dispute around the type of horseshoe to be used by working horses, I unfold the diverging concepts about work, animality and humanity put forth by different actors involved in these controversies. This text is the result of fieldwork, extension and assessment with cart-drivers and horses, from participant observation, compiling documents and laws, to the foundation of a social movement and recording a process of dispute escalating into laws being passed to criminalize horses, horse-driven carts and horse-driven cart-drivers.