Nature´s Revenge: War on the Wilderness during the Opening of Brazil´s ‘Last Western Frontier’

• In Event: Latin American Environmental History: New Insights from Guatemala and Brazil

Abstract

The geographical conquest of the Brazilian West included an ambitious challenge, one where a conception of nature as hostile played a fundamental role. The research behind this paper seeks to identify the key points of confrontation with nature present in the March to the West (Marcha para Oeste) speeches and in other documents during the first half of the twentieth century. Studies of the source materials follow the objective of identifying the representation of the frontiersman of the West, through the creation of the heroic image of Bernardo Sayão. The engineer Sayão held responsibility for building the highway that connected Brasilia, the new federal capital, to Belém, located in north of the country and within the Amazonian Forest region. In 1959, shortly before completing this major road, Sayão died in an accident; he was crushed by a tree. Symbolic of the frontiersman of the West, he was hailed a hero within the Brazilian media and in political speeches. The research for this paper was based on biographical studies combined with environmental history and environmental historical geography. The paper analyzes a broad range of primary sources around the theme of representations of nature within the Brazilian social imagination during the 1940s and 1950s.

Author

• Sandro Dutra Silva, State University of Goiás/UniEVANGELICA- Brazil/UCLA-United States