Monteiro Lobato, “General do Petróleo”: controvérsias científicas, ficções e futuros em disputa na campanha pró-petróleo (1931-1941)

Abstract

This thesis aims understand activities of the writer Monsteiro Lobato in oil and gas industry, between 1931 and 1941. During the 30s, the author started a campaing pro petroleum in Brazil. His idea was to transmute the nation into a sovereign and rich country, just like the United States of America, through iron and black gold. However since the official speeches coming from the Ministry of Agriculture denied the existence of mineral oil in the national territory, Lobato was left with the constitution of private companies, based on the acquisition and sale of stocks. In addition, Monteiro Lobato was not an engineer, technician or geologist, in other words, he did not have, in himself, the necessary credentials for investments in the oil sector. How to attract shareholders and the economic resources that are essential to the progress of companies? To find allies in his cause, the writer appealed to his glory as a literate; he worded with the intention to transform oil into national interest. In this investigation, we are interested in understanding how the scientific discussions about “stone oil” were linked to the literary rhetoric of the creator of the doll Emília. How did he use literature in his mission? How did he link imagination and technology in this activity? In this way, we will analyze the letters, the interviews, the articles and the news in the newspapers, the texts of Monteiro Lobato and other “pioneers”, in sum, to achieve theses interlocks, the plots of a science fiction. Technoscience is not isolated from social tensions or even from the invention of stories, in this perspective; here, we will see the links between fiction and technology in the formation of the national oil industry, in which literature and science was intertwined in political disputes. In Brazil, the competition over the black blood from land created mirages that still move us today.