By STEPHEN BELL. xvi and 292 pp.; maps, diagrs., ills., bibliog., index. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1998. $55.00 (cloth), ISBN 0804731004. For better than twenty years, Stephen Bell has worked on topics drawn from uppermost thematic tributaries of historical geography, inspired, he writes, by spirit of H. Clifford Darby (p. 12). This detailed account of southernmost Brazilian state of Rio Grande do Sul chronicles formation of a distinctive ranching culture in temperate lowland Brazil, country physically of a piece with great grasslands and rolling hills (the pampas) that make up significant parts of Argentina, Paraguay, and Uruguay. Cattle ranchers of Brazilian Campanhas were landowners on a vast scale who populated their domains with herds that fed hides, tallow, and beef into a briefly prepotent segment of world economy. Bell's account is about conservatism and tradition on Luso-Hispanic frontier, a zone where, once an external (especially North American) market economy began to take hold in 1920, game of major profiteering was essentially over: A low return from something understood was preferable to an uncertain return from a new form of land use involving heavy investment costs. The 1887 county report from Sao Gabriel that complained so bitterly about excessive conservatism of ranchers also found an economic basis for their way of life, albeit one obscured beneath thick layers of cultural habit. Even on a ranch fractioned though property successions, offspring of ranching families continued in same occupation because it brought a riskless living. (p. 161) In this concise, consummately scholarly, but undeniably dense study, Bell strives for the elaboration of a more sophisticated historical geography of regional change in southern South (p. 206). And, to a degree, he succeeds. Experts will plausibly relish notes, bibliography, and integration of different developmental models, and who could fail to praise constant care in preparation? Bell's monograph is a testament to steady scholarship: solid, cautious, and credible. Cultural innovations of Campanha were borrowed from cowhands, or gauchos, across southern South America and sometimes from other parts of Brazil. They included fixtures of ranch-hand culture such as prodigious mate consumption from gourds through silver bomba (p. 61), use of lasso (laco) and bolas (each attributed to, and borrowed from, Guarani Indians) (p. 44), and a staggeringly large consumption of beef (in churrasco or assado). Ranch life was characterized by a marked separation between rural workers and owners, often absentee. A sprawling territory of relatively sparse population, Rio Grande do Sul included by middle of nineteenth century some truly huge holdings, working from a core of so-called sesmaria grants to estates of up to 3 square leagues (13,068 hectares) (p. 27). The largest, however, eventually grew in size to upward of 240,000 hectares. Hundreds of thousands of cattle were often brought in from adjoining countries to populate plains. Slaves were a notable and unlamented fixture of extensive livestock-raising system, and their function is tracked with some care in Bell's account. The roundup or rodeo (rodeio, in local parlance) was one means for livestock owners to check up on one another. Elaborate livestock associations were created to avoid and intercede in disputes. Bell does a thorough job of following technological innovations, including fencing, improved breeding stock, and exotic grasses. As he writes, Technology is rarely neutral in its economic and social implications. The changes in ranchin g technique that accompanied fencing had major labor implications. Fencing affected relations between landowners, but especially between landowners and their staff (p. 118). Campanha Gaucha sees into existence formation of a distinctive Vidalian genre de vie among hardscrabble ranchers who briefly reached big time. …
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Nov 1, 2002
Fytton Rowland + 1
Open Access
