Conclusion

This concluding section briefly traces the shift in approaches to regional development that took place under Brazil’s military dictatorship during the late 1960s and 1970s, with increased focus on urban industrialization and reduced interest in smallholder irrigated farming. Critical perspectives on approaches to northeast development during and after the dictatorship, from Brazilian academics and intellectuals like Celso Furtado—first director of SUDENE (the Superintendencia de Desenvolvimento do Nordeste)—and others are emphasized. The book ends by evaluating the limits of technocratic solutions to problems rooted in social and political organization—of which drought in northeast Brazil is an exemplar—with reference to similar development projects elsewhere in the world.

Patronizing the Northeast

This chapter reviews the policy commitments and governing styles of the several national regimes led by Getúlio Vargas from 1930 to 1945, and it demonstrates how approaches to drought aid in the northeast were impacted by these changes. It focuses on the leadership of José Américo de Almeida as Minister of Transportation and Public Works (in charge of the department for Works to Combat Drought, among others) and discusses his eventual rift with Vargas in relation to Vargas’s unfulfilled promises to the northeast region. The devastating circumstances of the 1931-1932 drought are emphasized. Under Luiz Vieira’s direction, the drought works agency added an agronomy division in 1932 that grew in importance over subsequent decades but was often in conflict with the agency’s engineers over funding and priorities, particularly the construction of dams vs. irrigation networks.

Engineering the Drought Zone

This chapter traces the rise of civil engineers as federal employees within the Federal Inspectorate for Works to Combat Drought (Inspetoria Federal de Obras Contra as Secas), and the influence of August Comte’s positivism on their approach to sertão development. It outlines the priorities and accomplishments of IFOCS’s first director, Miguel Arrojado Lisboa, and the climate theories and regional development models that guided him—most notably the work of the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation. The analysis highlights that both elite and popular resistance to smallholder irrigated cultivation influenced the drought agency’s preference for dam-building over other development efforts. National resistance to aiding the sertão is emphasized, along with the need drought engineers felt to retain the support of northeastern legislators—by providing them the infrastructure landowners desired—in the face of southern Brazilians’ opposition to supporting the drought agency. The chapter closely examines the experience of engineers on the front lines of drought aid: their disillusionment in the face of extreme misery and inequality, and their negotiations on behalf of the men “enrolled” as workers on their public works projects. Two final sections focus on drought-related policy decisions and debates under northeastern President Epitácio Pessoa during the 1920s.

Civilizing the Sertão

This chapter contrasts the political interpretation of sertanejos’ endemic illnesses, promulgated by Brazilian sanitarians, with the approach to public health promoted by Rockefeller Foundation International Health Board (IHB) representatives who also worked in Brazil during the 1910s. These contrasting interpretations of the political and racial origins of endemic disease delineate two poles around which subsequent approaches to sertão development turned. Early in the chapter, public health infrastructure in the northeast region is evaluated in relation to states’ limited capacity to assist drought refugees or prevent epidemics in migrant camps, and the efforts of cearense physician Rodolfo Teófilo are emphasized. The remainder of the chapter focuses on a sanitary survey of the sertão undertaken by Belisário Penna and Arthur Neiva in 1912; subsequent public health projects engaged in by Penna (notably the Serviço de Profilaxia Rural, or Rural Sanitation Service) and the Rockefeller Foundation’s International Health Board in Brazil; and the establishment of a national department of public health stemming from these efforts. The analysis emphasizes the racism of IHB director Wickliffe Rose which led him to dismiss the modernizing potential of sertanejos and to attribute their diseases to racial weakness. This is contrasted with Penna’s rejection of racial and climatic determinism.

Modernizing a Region

This chapter examines the rise of economists as regional development experts with the establishment of new federal institutions in the 1950s, including the Banco do Nordeste do Brasil regional development bank and the Superintendência de Desenvolvimento do Nordeste (SUDENE), the latter modelled on the U.S. Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA). Economic expertise essentially displaced civil engineering for a brief period, in the face of continuing drought crises and DNOCS’s apparent inability to resolve them. The leading figure in the events that unfold is economist Celso Furtado, who led several analyses of the northeast’s development challenges at the request of President Juscelino Kubitschek and became SUDENE’s first director. As a result of rising political tensions in the early 1960s and the association of Furtado and SUDENE’s efforts with land expropriation (a measure promoted by more revolutionary groups like the “Peasant Leagues” of landless farm workers), elite and middle class sectors in Brazil supported a military coup in 1964 to overthrow President João Goulart, which undid much of the progress that Furtado and others had been working toward.

Watering Brazil’s Desert

This chapter focuses on the drought agency agronomists who established irrigated smallholder colonies and agricultural extension posts in the sertão, highlighting the challenges they faced from several quarters: civil engineers whose projects competed with theirs for federal funds; elites who opposed the land expropriation and empowerment of marginal farmers inherent in any irrigated smallholding project; and sertanejo farmers who did not readily embrace agronomists’ recommendations for more intensive cultivation methods. The leading figures in this story are IFOCS agronomists José Augusto Trinidade and José Guimarães Duque, a vigorous promoter of dry-farming techniques. Sources include folk poetry (cordéis) and folk songs from the mid-twentieth century about drought and development in the sertão—notably the popular ballads by northeastern musician Luiz Gonzaga—along with a range of reports and materials that were produced by drought agency agronomists to promote irrigated smallholding.

Climate and Culture

This chapter emphasizes the intersection of natural (environmental) and social factors that made droughts calamitous for the poorest sertanejos. It traces the construction of the northeast (nordeste) as an identifiable region within modern Brazil, perceived as a challenge to modernization efforts due to its environment and its citizens’ mixed racial heritage. The chapter introduces central aspects of the sertão’s geography and economy, briefly outlining changes from the colonial period to the twentieth century. The role of the Great Drought (1877-1879) in shaping landholding patterns is emphasized, along with the impact that the Canudos rebellion had on other Brazilians’ views of sertanejos. Brazilian racial ideologies of the late nineteenth century are analysed in relation to the marginalization of sertanejos. The dynamics of political patronage by Brazil’s rural coronéis are introduced to explain how drought aid was often funnelled to wealthy landowners rather than to the poor. Finally, popular views of twentieth century drought works are accessed through reference to folk poems known as cordéis.

Introduction

This introductory section provides a history of Brazil’s semi-arid sertão in relation to the northeast region and the country as a whole, with a central focus on drought and the establishment of federal agencies to address that recurrent crisis—most notably the Departamento Nacional de Obras Contra as Secas (DNOCS). The chapter encapsulates the book’s central argument regarding the assumptions and shortcomings of scientific and technological development during the twentieth century. It outlines the primary intellectual influences on this book, both in terms of academic fields and the work of specific scholars. It briefly situates technocratic development efforts in the sertão in relation to similarly vexed regional development efforts elsewhere in the world during the twentieth century, on which Brazil’s efforts to end drought and famine in the northeast were often modelled.