Abstract
This article examines the works of two prominent Brazilian writers considered to be the leading exponents of the presence of a feudal system in rural Brazil during the first half of the 20th century. Based on an analysis of the writings of Nelson Werneck Sodré and Alberto Pasos Guimarães, the objective of this work is to identify Sodré and Guimarães main arguments with relation to the historical context in which their works were produced, based on an analysis of their writings. This leads to a discussion around the topics explored by these authors regarding the farmer and the landholding elites, the differences between them, their links to contemporary society, and the readings of the past that legitimated or seemed to legitimate the production of their historic writings.
Highlights
T his text re-examines the main works of two Brazilian authors who are considered to be the principal exponents in the interpretation of the existence of traces of feudalism in the Brazilian countryside during the first half of the 20th century
An understanding of the background of these authors and their main arguments helps us reflect on their reading of a feudal Brazil, which consolidated the notion of backwardness and of a country without a peasantry
Sodré’s insistence on using the concept of feudalism to explain the maintenance of social relations governed by extra-economic coercion in the countryside had, above all, the function of highlighting the dependent character of the Brazilian worker. He thought that the different paths of development taken by the United States and Brazil, both heirs to societies built on slave labor, made it obviously necessary to understand why Brazil had not experienced a bourgeois revolution, since it was generally accepted that capitalism reproduced “the double encumbrance of the latifundio and imperialist domination.”32 Sodré did not look at the dynamics of struggles by the rural poor more closely
Summary
Ï This article is one of the results of research developed on rural history and historiography in Brazil. Classic Works of Brazil’s New Rural History: Feudalism and the Latifundio in the Interpretations of the Left (1940/1964). Los clásicos en la historia rural en Brasil: el feudalismo y el latifundio en las interpretaciones de la izquierda (1940/1964). Resumen: En este artículo se examinan las obras de dos destacados autores brasileños, que se consideraron como los principales exponentes de la presencia del sistema feudal en el campo brasileño durante la primera mitad del siglo xx. Con base en el análisis de los escritos de Nelson Werneck Sodré y Alberto Passos Guimarães, el objetivo de este trabajo es identificar los principales argumentos de estos autores en su relación con el contexto histórico en el que fueron producidas sus obras. Palabras clave: Brasil, 1940-1964, historiografía, clase campesina, estructura agraria, reforma de la tierra
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