Emigrados do sertão: secas e deslocamentos populacionais Ceará-Piauí (1877-1891)

Abstract

In the second half of the 19th century, some provinces in the North of the Brazilian Empire faced successive droughts, which caused the migration of the population residing in the affected areas to others where it was believed that there were resources that would enable survival. In 1877, a drought began in Ceará that lasted until 1879. At the end of the 1880s, the phenomenon once again visited Ceará, leaving its visible marks, mainly in 1888 and 1889. great was the displacement of men and women from Ceará to other Brazilian provinces, including the neighboring one, Piauí, which to a certain extent was already affected by drought in the form of a climatic phenomenon, starting to experience it as a social product. The objective of this thesis is to analyze the migration of people from Ceará to Piauí, between the years 1877 and 1891, considering these displacements an act of protagonism by men and women, poor and rich, who undertook the migratory journeys as a possibility of overcoming the difficulties imposed by the dry in its place of origin, choosing Piauí as route and also destination. As a basis for the time frame, the year in which the flow of people from Ceará became more intense towards the neighboring province, until the beginning of the 1890s, when welfare practices were still carried out through public assistance, and it was already possible to find people from Ceará constituting new families in Piauí. Among the sources defined for carrying out the research, there are the different newspapers published in Piauí and Ceará, as well as reports, messages, speeches, minutes, as well as letters and other documents from the Public Aid Commission. Thus, this thesis investigates the fact that, in addition to the migratory flows that occurred in the 19th century, already known in historiography, there were other migrant destinations undertaken by people from Ceará, including Piauí, which was also affected by droughts, seen as a receiving pole, either for those who were destined for that region, as it offered better conditions for survival than Ceará, or for those who were trying to cross to Maranhão and Pará. Because it was intense at many times, migration brought to Piauí the worsening of the consequences of the drought, requiring measures to combat its effects by the local government, which established the Public Aid Commissions, promoting welfare and moving part of the migrants to the fronts of work, either in public works or in Colonial Nuclei. Upon arriving in Piauí, migrants almost always found it difficult to survive, however, many managed to settle in that region and did not return to Ceará after the end of the drought. In this way, the thesis of the importance of Piauí in the migratory contexts of the 19th century is defended, as a receiving space for migrants from Ceará and a generator of multiple social experiences.