A inspetoria de obras contra as secas: uma instituição como produtora do espaço?

Abstract

In the year 1850, the Ministry of Agriculture, Commerce and Public Works was created. In 1877 the State began a change of actions in the Northeast: from "public aid" to "material improvements". The Inspection of Works Against Drought (IOCS) began operating in 1909, under federal direction to solve the problem of "droughts" from a regional perspective. This institution marked the beginning of the structuring of different policies and systematized actions in the realization of projects and actions of modifications of the Northeast region. Understanding that space, the quintessential object of geography, can be interpreted as the junction and inheritance of several distinct technical periods, the understanding of the action of this organ and the reasons that led to its creation is necessary to interpret the "fight against the droughts"of institutionalized form and the differential accumulation of wealth among the Brazilian regions. In this sense, the objective of this work is to understand the role of an institutional agent producer of the space in the national economic dynamics, starting from the North-Rio Grande reality, contributing to the discussion about the specificities of IOCS's performance in the Northeast. In order to reach this goal, we sought help in the collection of historical documents and a theoretical framework that would aid in the interpretation of their practices: especially those published in the reports of the Ministry of Public Works and Public Works and contained in the specialized journals of the studied period.The research has shown that the IOCS, while legitimizing itself as a state institution, can not be reduced and understood exclusively in this way, and the allocation of income differentially to distinct regions of the country was made possible by governmental measures. It was verified that state performance as a wealth-driving agency and facilitator of uneven development in Brazil happened even before the concept of "state planning" in the 1950s.