Terra, trabalho e resistência na fronteira agrária: história dos “povoadores pobres” em Guarapuava (Século XIX)

Abstract

This thesis seeks to understand the establishment and the resistance strategies of the poor peasants who migrated to or were born in Guarapuava, a town located in the west of the Paraná Province, during the 19th century. Being part of the territory of São Paulo until 1853, the first attempt of Portuguese occupation of the region occurred between 1765 and 1775, counting on the forced regimentation of poor peasants of the Campos Gerais of Paraná. After the failure of the attempt in the eighteenth century, the Portuguese occupation of Guarapuava was effectively resumed in 1809, with political and economic projects aimed at raising livestock and subsistence agriculture, also involving the creation of an indigenous settlement. In addition to the granting of sesmarias to the ranchers, the São Paulo government granted small land properties to the poor peasants, following the prerogatives present in the Royal Charter of April 1, 1809. From the 1840s, with the opening of the Missões Path, Guarapuava became part of the route of the troops, with fields for breeding, wintering and resting for the cattle coming from the region of Missões towards the Sorocaba. In this context, poor farmers established in the region developed strategies of social reproduction through food production and small-scale animal husbandry, eventually or permanently linked to the supply of troops. With this peculiarity of becoming an agrarian frontier, the region began to attract a greater number of the so-called "poor settlers" - migrant peasants behind the lands of Rocio and the Poverty Camp in Guarapuava, living with Kaingang natives, enslaved and freed, and composing a social group in struggle for survival against the great landowners. With the greater emphasis of research in the period between 1850 and 1889, we have seen how these populations were impacted - and how they reacted - to the measures taken by the government of Paraná since 1854, in the context of the Land Law of 1850, prohibiting new land occupations on the western border of the province. Also based on the Land Law and the interests of the large landowners, the Guarapuava City Council approved measures that limited the expansion of the plantations and livestock that these peasants had in the agrarian frontier. The expropriation of the lands of the indigenous settlement of Guarapuava also entered into the plans of the ranchers in the period, generating indigenous resistances connected with the discussion about the place of the poor peasants in the provincial Paraná. We consider that the resistance strategies of these poor peasants in Guarapuava were fundamental for the social reproduction of their means of survival acquired in the region since the beginning of the 19thcentury.