Migrant Behavior and Elite Attitudes: Brazil's Great Drought, 1877-1879

Abstract

If banditry and mysticism represents one classic formula summarizing the historical reality of the Brazilian Northeast, its companion image is one of devastating droughts and concomitant migrations out from the parched backlands to regional capitals like Recife and Salvador and on to the great national metropolises of Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo. Reports of drought in the Northeast appear from the times of early settlement; succeeding centuries witnessed repeated dry periods. While some of these proved relatively moderate in intensity, others, sparing only the lush coastal strip, assailed the entire region and reigned for several seasons. Of this latter type, none provoked greater suffering than the so-called Grande Séca which embraced the winters from 1877-1879, devastating the cotton and cattle complexes, the mainstays of the backlands' economy, and setting in motion an enormous migratory stream which ranged from the Amazon rubber lands to those of the booming coffee culture in the Southeast. Moreover, with the outbreak of epidemic diseases, it generated a mortality estimated as exceeding two hundred thousand persons. By this measure, then, the Grande Séca stands as “the most costly natural disaster in the history of the Western Hemisphere.”