Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

Artigo Produção Nacional Revisado por pares

BIBTEX RIS

The Powerful in the Outback of the Brazilian Northeast

2004; SAGE Publishing; Volume: 31; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1177/0094582x03261201

1552-678X

Manuel Domingos,

Rural Development and Agriculture

A large landowner, feared and respected for his achievements and wealth, a rural political boss and head of a large extended family who shares his authority with no one, an example of the complete overlapping of public and private interests, a model of traditional domination, a symbol of paternalism in a backward society, a deliverer of votes and other political services to the bourgeoisie, a mediator between state and society-all these are customary descriptions of the rural coronel, regarded as the key personality in Brazilian politics under the Old Republic. Opinion nowadays concedes that coronelismo is disappearing as the state is consolidated, the economy is modernized, and new elites are formed. In this article I shall argue that coronelismo was not a system of historically determined political dominance and that landownership was not its foundation. My field of study is the semiarid interior (sertdo) of the Brazilian Northeast, a vast expanse given over to the large-scale raising of beef cattle ever since colonial times.