This dissertation explores an intellectual and political tradition that questioned the use of natural resources and the socioeconomic structures of rural Brazil in the early 20th century. “Organicist agrarianism” postulated an orderly transformation of the Brazil under the guidance of the state in the name of a natural and eternal “agricultural vocation.” This vision entailed the creation of a large class of small landholders that, thanks to the educational and technical improvements offered by the state, had the responsibility to enhance agriculture production and to hinder environmental degradation. Alberto Torres, a political writer active in the 1910s, was the major inspirator for the project, but also of the reactionary reading of Brazil’s rural identity that his follower Oliveira Viana produced in the 1920s. With the end of the First Republic and the rise to power of Getúlio Vargas in 1930, “organicist agrarianism” informed the agenda of a varied group of elite members who, in 1932, founded the Sociedade dos Amigos de Alberto Torres. Among its affiliates, activists who operated in the National Museum of Rio de Janeiro and in the Ministry of Agriculture emerged for their commitment to implement the principles of “organicist agrarianism,” especially between 1932 and 1934, in the realms of scientific research, education, conservation, and agrarian policies. This study uses the methods of intellectual and political history to delineate the origins and the characteristic of “organicist agrarianism” as a set of values and ideas, to reconstruct the specific conditions in which it became a viable political alternative, and to explain its defeat and eclipse from the Brazilian scene, in spite of the central role that rural and environmental issues have played in contemporary Brazil.

Creator

• Bottura, Juri

DOI

• https://doi.org/10.21985/n2-pkpx-9a43

Subject

• History
• Latin American history
• Latin American studies

Language

• en

Alternate Identifier

• http://dissertations.umi.com/northwestern:14522
• etdadmin_upload_639646

Keyword

• Political history
• Conservation
• Intellectual history
• Agrarianism
• History of ideas
• Brazil

Date created

• 2019-01-01

Resource type

• Dissertation

Rights statement

• In Copyright