From the point of view of an ambiguous State which generates insecurity, a framework for the understanding of the relation between processes of illness, suffering and health administration and phases of large development projects is presented. In these processes the presence of the State overshadows that of the other actors. The intensification and retraction of this presence brings to light a series of factors related to the generation of insecurity. For the case of the sub-médio São Francisco River Basin between Bahia and Pernambuco, the organization of agriculture of the resettled farmers guides this discussion. Three categories of insecurity generation are characterized: structural insecurity, related to State omission in dealing with poor; administrated insecurity, related to its intervention and super-inclusion, and local collective insecurity, related to daily local formation of power relations. The four resettlement project phases of preparation and communication, implantation, development and emancipation are examined in light of ethnographic data on resettled farmers, the Syndical Pole, the governmental administrator of the project (CHESF) and other agents, for the period from the seventies up to present day. The study reveals how changes in the vulnerability of the population are associated with changes in the specific set of interrelations of insecurity generation frameworks throughout the resettlement process. On the basis of these vulnerabilities and the shifting power relations, it is argued that the third phase, called "development," in fact should be designated as of "retraction", and that the profound and indelible changes make it impossible to think of any following phase of "emancipation.".
Farmers and Rural Workers; Resettlement; Vulnerability; Insecurity; Itaparica