The Making of Rural Middle Class: The Colonization Policy of the Corporate-Military Dictatorship

Abstract

The internal colonization policy in post-Independence Brazil was continuously activated and transformed throughout the 19th and 20th centuries in order to control unsubmissive populations and territories. From the bibliographic and documentary analysis of a set of colonization projects and experiences, it was possible to reconstruct the interpretative framework of this policy, emphasizing the period of the corporate-military dictatorship and its meaning of transformation of the traditional peasantry into the rural middle class. We sought to identify the main elements that constitute this stratum, its characteristics and expectations based on the set of values, interests and assumptions of the techno-corporate-mili-tary complex, highlighting the role of the colonization policy in its formation. The continuities and reconfigurations of this policy allow us to state that talking about colonizing while it is the hidden verb of the treatment given to the national agrarian question.