ECONOMIA, ÉTICA E POLÍTICA NA OBRA SÃO JORGE DOS ILHÉUS, DE JORGE AMADO

The purpose of this article is to demonstrate the importance of literature, especially the work of Jorge Amado, for social, economic, ethical, and political criticism of Ilheus society, based on the narratives of the book São Jorge dos Ilhéus, published in 1944. It describes Jorge Amado's sociological view of the relations between the countryside and the city, the large estates and the exploited workers during the golden age of cocoa in Ilhéus and Itabuna, showing the importance of cocoa production for the local economy and the progress of the city, and at the same time, the increase in social and economic inequality. As a result, we see that the political struggles between Fascism and Communism, as well as Conservatism and the violence of the cocoa colonels, broke with basic moral standards in order to triumph by any means, even the worst, establishing in the cocoa region a principle already present in Machiavelli's book The Prince and in despots such as Napoleon: the principle of triumph at any cost, in clear ethical confrontation with human beings.