Complexo agroindustrial do fumo e território : a formação do espaço urbano e regional no vale do Rio Pardo - RS.

Abstract

This thesis searches for apprehending the historical process of formation of Vale do Rio Pardo territory, area located in the center of Rio Grande do Sul estate and the principal area in the country of production, processing and commercialization of tobacco in leaf, besides this it is an strategic place of the agro industrial complex (CAI in Portuguese) of tobacco in Brazil. Our main objective was to analyze the relational dynamics between the constitution and the functioning of the CAI of tobacco and the production of the urban and regional space. Specifically, we searched to understand how historically the relationship was processed between the successive territorial divisions of the work and the formation of the regional urban net, identifying the way as it was processed the organization and the use of the regional territory. Methodologically, the analysis was elaborated through wide bibliographical review on the social­spatial formation, on the tobacco farming and the CAI of tobacco, through the consultation on the sources of secondary data concerning to the egion and the accomplishment of semi­structured interviews with representations of the different segments that integrate CAI of tobacco. We observed in each period of the formation of the regional territory a group of engendered variables and of events, from different geographical scales, that showed up and happened in the regional space configuring successive geographical means, with different organization manners and uses of the territory. The development and the consolidation of the agro industrialization of the tobacco under the hegemony of the monopolist multinational capital from the tobacco industries promoted in the territory an increasing and unequal technician­scientific and informational content, with deep reflexes in the organization dynamics and of evolution of the urban net. The prevalence of the rationality that guides the enlarged reproduction of the tobacco industries capital in relation to the other regional social agents started to orientate the modernization of the tobacco farming and the territory, and the regulate the internal space relationships to the area, and those involving the region and different and distant spaces of the tobacco industries’ spatiality in the world scale. The dynamics and the logic of configuration and operation of the space circuits of production and of the cooperation circles of tobacco and cigarette that reach the region became more and more decisive for the urban and regional development.