O Brasil no mundo rural doente: A construção do agricultor na literatura em dois momentos da história brasileira (1914 e 1970)

Abstract

This article focuses on thematic and textual coincidences between the fiction of Monteiro Lobato (Jeca Tatu, 1914) and educational materials prepared by the Secretaria da Agricultura do Rio Grande do Sul (Cartilha do agricultor, 1970) in the construction of the character of the rural worker. Such parallels point to a persistent representation, on the part of the Brazilian elite, of rural areas as backward and “ill.” In order to provide a context for this discussion, I sketch the Western discourse on the body and illness and recapitulate influential Brazilian arguments concerning the backwardness of the countryside.