Wikipedia

Sertanejos (traditional people)

The sertanejos are a people linked to livestock farming and agriculture in the Sertão region in the Northeast of Brazil, specifically in the Caatinga, a biome that covers much of the territories of the Brazilian states of Bahia, Ceará, Piauí, Pernambuco, Paraíba, Rio Grande do Norte, Sergipe and Alagoas, and the cerrado which covers parts of the states of Maranhão, Bahia and Piauí, in addition to the Agreste region, where a transition occurs between the Atlantic Forest and Caatinga.[1][2]The emergence of the sertanejos dates back to the 16th century in Bahia with the vaqueiros, driven by the advancement of livestock farming towards the interior.[3][4][5]

Tipos de Feira de Santana, Bahia - typos do norte 1880 by Thereza Christina Maria

The sertanejo people were basically formed by the miscegenation between Portuguese and indigenous people, especially speakers of macro-Jê languages. The African slave was little present in the Sertão, as livestock farming normally used the free labor of the vaqueiros.[6][7]

Many consider the sertanejo to be the stereotype of the man from the Brazilian Northeast, comparable to the caipiras or the gauchos.

Origin and culture

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Illustrated map; In red it shows the location where the sertanejos and their culture emerged in Bahia, starting from the 16th century.[3]
 
Sertanejos in the caatinga, state of Bahia, engraving from the 1810s.

Cattle were introduced on the eastern coast of northeastern Brazil just at the beginning of the sugar cycle and served as food and animal traction for the sugarcane plantations. Over the decades, the herds multiplied and caused inconveniences to the sugarcane fields. With that, groups of Portuguese and mamelucos without economic resources or political power were pushed, along with the cattle from the sugarcane fields, to the Sertão of Bahia in the 16th century. [8] These pioneers and their descendants were in constant conflict with the indigenous people, despite the strong miscegenation with them, and advanced throughout the Sertão of the northeast region of Brazil, populating it, following the course of the rivers.[9][10]

Originally, there were two large latifundia that dominated the Sertão: Casa da Torre ("House of the Tower" in Spanish), owned by the Garcia d'Ávila family, and Casa da Ponte ("House of the Bridge" in Spanish), owned by the Guedes de Brito family. These latifundia were divided into smaller estates, which were rented to the vaqueiros.

Life for the inhabitants of the Sertão was difficult. Only milk and meat were abundant, and curdled milk and cheese were used only for their own consumption. Cassava flour was added to the meat, thus originating paçoca, a typical dish of the Sertão. Various artifacts of sertanejo life, such as huts, canteens, backpacks, and clothing, were made from cattle hides. Droughts have always been present in the Sertão. The Brazilian anthropologist Darcy Ribeiro compared the sertanejo cowboys and farmers to the peasants in serfdom of feudal Europe, as both lived their entire lives, from birth, in the region of origin of their parents and grandparents, were tied to land they did not own, and had to pay high taxes to the landowners.[9][11]

Contacts between the Sertão and the coast were sporadic and occurred only at certain times of the year, through fairs where cattle ranchers and traders gathered, many of which gave rise to population centers, embryos of current cities such as Feira de Santana (Bahia), Campina Grande (Paraíba), Pastos Bons (Maranhão), Serra Talhada (Pernambuco), and Oeiras (Piauí).[11]

Location

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Map of the subregions of the Northeast Region, Brazil, with the northeastern Sertão being number 2 on the map.

See also

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References

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  1. ^ Aziz Nacib (1999). "Sertões e sertanejos: uma geografia humana sofrida" [Sertones y sertanejos: una geografía humana sofrida]. Estudos Avançados (in Portuguese). 13 (36): 7–59. doi:10.1590/S0103-40141999000200002. ISSN 0103-4014. Retrieved 2021-04-03.
  2. ^ Liliane Lemos Santana (2011). "Vida Sertaneja: edição e estudo de vocabulário dos males sertanejos" [Vida sertaneja: edición y estudio del léxico de los males sertanejos] (PDF). Anais do XV Congresso Nacional de Linguística e Filologia (in Portuguese) (5). Retrieved 2021-04-02.
  3. ^ a b Washington Queiroz. Bahia e vaqueiros: um débito 2010
  4. ^ IPAC - Ofício de vaqueiro
  5. ^ MATTA, Alfredo. Licenciatura em história - história da Bahia UAB/UNEB 2013
  6. ^ CUNHA, Euclides da (1905). Os Sertões [Los Sertones] (PDF) (in Portuguese). Laemmert e Cia. p. 92.
  7. ^ Tipos e aspectos do Brasil [Tipos y aspectos de Brasil] (PDF) (in Portuguese). Rio de Janeiro: IBGE. 1972. p. 259.
  8. ^ BARROS. F. Borges de. Arquivo Publico - Museu do estado da Bahia 1919.
  9. ^ a b RIBEIRO, Darcy (1995). O povo brasileiro [The Brazilian People] (PDF) (in Portuguese). São Paulo: Companhia das Letras. pp. 338–362. Archived from the original (PDF) on 22 March 2022. Retrieved 14 December 2022.
  10. ^ Rafael Aubert de Araújo; SOUZA, Luiz Eduardo Simões de (2016). "Manuel Correia de Andrade: a Pecuária no Desbravamento do Sertão Nordestino" [Manuel Correia de Andrade: Livestock in the Exploration of the Northeastern Sertão] (PDF). VIII Encontro de Pós Graduação em História Econômica (in Portuguese). Associação Brasileira de Pesquisadores em História Econômica. Retrieved 21 October 2022.
  11. ^ a b "MultiRio — A vida no sertão: fazendeiros de gado, vaqueiros e" [MultiRio - Life in the Sertão: cattle ranchers, cowboys and]. MultiRio (in Brazilian Portuguese). Retrieved 2022-10-15.
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