“Guiados pelo raciocínio e pela razão”: ciência e modernidade a serviço da agricultura paraense (1908-1929)

Abstract

This thesis seeks to discuss the implementation of a new development model designed for agriculture in Pará at the beginning of the 20th century. Especially from the second term of governor Augusto Montenegro onwards, a change of orientation is observed, no longer exclusively focused on the creation of colonial nuclei and their consequent occupation by foreign settlers, but also focused on the qualification of these agricultural workers. In other words, the quality of labor for the field gained more and more importance. With the help of science, public agents then sought the technical qualification of the farmer through agricultural education in institutions such as experimental stations and demonstration fields or through mobile agricultural education. This new methodology required the creation, in 1908, of a section dedicated exclusively to agriculture and livestock within the Secretariat of Public Works, Lands and Transport, showing a close approximation between the state and the agricultural elite of Pará, since the representative of this patronage, the Marajoara farmer José Ferreira Teixeira, took over the direction of the 4th Section of Agriculture. The publication of the magazine A Lavoura Paraense, which circulated between 1908 and 1912, portrayed this new moment well in its pages. One of the objectives of public agents was to overcome monoculture and develop other products, especially when rubber exports showed signs of crisis, making agriculture increasingly relevant to the Pará economy in the first decades of the 20th century. In addition to the fear of sustaining an entire economy based on a single product, we can point out not only the unsatisfactory results with the old model of agricultural development that had been adopted since the mid-nineteenth century, but also the entire increase that the Museum underwent. Paraense from the arrival of the Swiss Emílio Goeldi and his successor in the direction of this institution, the also Swiss Jacques Huber. However, the promising expectation regarding the modernizing wave for the countryside, based on the rationalization of agricultural practices from the current agronomic precepts of the time, did not actually materialize, since the extractive sector remained high compared to the agricultural sector, with highlights at the end of the 1920s for some products such as rice and cotton.