Arquitetura, gado e cativo : estâncias pastoris em Rio Pardo no final do século XIX.

Abstract

The cattle and the war are in the roots of the economic, social and cultural formation of Rio Grande do Sul (RS). Up until the beginning of the 19th century, confrontations happened due to disputes for land and livestock between luso-brazilians, Indians and Spanish people. The RS border position permitted unique characteristics, mostly by the occupation of huge areas given in land grants, with the intention to install cattle farms. These farms influenced, directly or indirectly, the organization of urban spaces, both from the structural and political, as the socioeconomic and cultural standpoints. The livestock was the flag-ship that drove the initial economic development of Rio Pardo and most of the surrounding regions. There important productive ventures started and its vestiges attest an era of great prospers. Given the significance of Rio Pardo in the historic formation of the RS territory, and the importance of the cattle in its economics, it was decided to take it as the locus of this research. The chosen period was the end of the Second Empire, a time when the RS livestock breeding was at its peak. The purpose of this research was to analyze the arrangement of the betterments and its purposes within the Rio Pardo farm´s complexes. The architecture of the farm-houses and its betterments were explored. From floor plans surveys and pictures it was possible to observe the operation and infrastructure on these ranches. It was found that over time there were changes in the construction of the houses/headquarters adapting them to new functions. The introduction of manufactured materials enabled improvements in the construction of the home/headquarters which became more and more weather-resistant and salubrious. The initial surveys have shown the presence of slave quarters in the ranches which indicate the presence of captive workers. Therefore, two specific objectives were formulated: First, to detect to what extent the slave labor force was present in the activities of livestock and second, to understand the composition of the country estates. For this research three properties were selected, all located in Rio Pardo. Besides the photographs, the post-mortem inventories of Mathias Joseph Elder, Estância da Vitória, owner, 1876; José Ferreira, Estância das Pederneiras, owner, 1882; and Luiz Francisco Newlands, Estância da Quinta, owner, 1909, were used. With the data found on the inventories, it was confirmed that there were 2 types of workers in the ranches, the captive and the free workers, both being of great importance in the farms. Regarding to the assets’ composition of surveyed ranchers, it was concluded that it wasn´t homogenous. There was a significant variation in terms of what represented the main asset. In the Vitória and Quinta farms, the land constituted the main patrimonial asset, while in the Pederneiras farm, the major asset was the livestock. Among the proposals made in this research, it can be considered that the cattle farms were greatly responsible for the first center of productive and rural activity of RS, thus exercising huge importance in the formation of the state borders that exist today.