Pecuária semi-selvagem: ciência, natureza e tempo no Ceará do século XIX

Abstract

In the second half of the 20th century, the pastoral industry in Ceará started to be described as wild, commonplace and dependent on the forces of nature. The criticisms made by politicians, travelers, naturalists and intellectuals condemned the delay in the pastoral practices, the destruction of nature caused by the traditional processes, the absence of systematized work, the dependence on nature, and defended the necessity of modernization of the pastoral model, aiming at the economic progress and the political future of Ceará. Trusting in science, in techniques and in the capitalist market as elements that institute progress, the critics of cattle breeding defended the classification of cattle species, the observation of the animals, reproductive cycles, interference in mating, observation of the soil, weather and vegetation, the acclimatization of exotic species. The establishment of new relations between natural resources which are necessary to the cattle were also approached in those speeches, which in some moments condemned the practice of burning pastures, the removal of trees and the ignorance of farmers with relation to nature’s potential in Ceará’s countryside. This research aims at comprehending the construction of a speech which has put cattle breeding in Ceará between delay and modernization and also at discussing the emergency of what we have called an invention of the semi-wild pastoral activity. The categories ‘space of experience’ and horizons of expectation’ (Reinhart Koselleck) allows us to discuss the uses of time in the elaboration of the speeches of delay and modernization in the cattle breeding methods in Ceará. Reports made by presidents of provinces, newspapers, printed works, travel journals and literary texts compose the sources utilized in this research.