Full text
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| Author(s): |
Joana Medrado
Total Authors: 1
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| Document type: | Master's Dissertation |
| Press: | Campinas, SP. |
| Institution: | Universidade Estadual de Campinas (UNICAMP). Instituto de Filosofia e Ciências Humanas |
| Defense date: | 2008-08-22 |
| Examining board members: |
Silvia Hunold Lara;
Sidney Chalhoub;
Luís Augusto Ebling Farinatti
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| Advisor: | Silvia Hunold Lara |
| Abstract | |
This thesis focuses on a cattle-breeding zone in Bahia, in northeastern Brazil, during the last two decades of the nineteenth century, with the aim of investigating the cultural and ¿political¿ strategies of highly-skilled cowmen (vaqueiros) vis-à-vis their rancher employers. It uses sources that go the the heart of the relations between the two groups: trial records conceerning the stealing of animals, letters sent by cowmen to the Baron of Geremoabo and narratives in verse and prose regarding the courage of these workers in taming the ranchers¿ wild cattle. As a result, one obtains insight into the subtle forms of domination and resistance that existed in this particular context. In contrast to what some authors supposed ¿ including Euclides da Cunha, who visited the region of Canudos during the national government¿s ¿war¿ on that town in 1896 ¿ cowmen did not live in ¿unconscious servitude¿ to ranchers. Because of the prevailing absenteism of landowners, these skilled workers were able to devise ways of making themnselves respected and socially recognized, thereby gaining a status that differentiated them from ¿common¿ laborers. Reaffirmed on many occasions, this status was a counterpoint that put limits on ranchers¿ attempts to maintain total control over their properties and their workers. In sum, in this cattle-breeding region the negotiation by skilled cowmen of greater autonomy and better conditions of life and labor depended on their collective construction of values such as dignity, honor, freedom, and professional pride, and even on their cultivating an image of themselves in the social imagination as magical tamers of cattle in the wild (AU) | |