The birth of the drought industry: imperial and provincial response to the great drought in northeast Brazil, 1877-1880

Over the last century, Brazil's Northeast interior has developed an image of pervasive misery, social banditry and religious fanaticism, all related in some way to the periodic droughts which afflict the region. The building of this image accompanied the work of three generations of Northeastern politicians to extract from the governments of the Empire and the Republic a political definition of the drought region and a guarantee of federal funds to combat the drought problem. Although multi-dimensional regional planning has in recent decades eroded the emphasis on droughts, they remain in the popular mind the Northeast's most characteristic element, and they continue to receive ritual attention in the literature on the region. Paradoxically, perhaps because this drought literature so frequently has served to obscure the entrenched regional political interests and social systems, the droughts themselves have not received the close scrutiny which in recent years has beguin to illuminate many aspects of the Second Empire and Old Republic. This has left a serious gap in our understanding not only of the Northeast but Brazil as a whole. This generation needs to be reminded that the great droughts of the past were not figments of the Northeastern imagination, but genuine and profound crises to which the region and the nation repeatedly have been forced to respond. My paper deals with the worst of these, the Great Drought of 1877-1880. From February, 1877, to May, 1880, the social and economic dislocation generated by this drought devastated five Northeastern provinces and seriously affected at least six others. Because it defined naturally a problem region which transcended provincial lines, and because it posed major problems and decisions for the central government, the drought provides not only the opportunity to study a criticai phase in the formation of the regional consciousness in the Northeast, but a unique case study in the functions of the Imperial system as well..