Idiosyncrasies of the allotment system in the Brazilian northeastern semiarid: visions, (di)visions and shaping of the agrarian and social structure

Abstract

The objective of this article is analyzing narratives which refer to the occupation settlement and of the Northeastern ‘Sertões’, using empirical evidence in order to problematize a methodological theoretical framework which became classic in Bra- zilian social theory. Assuming a critical position in relation to the views that took the “cattle-raising allotment myth” as an explanatory basis for social inequalities and land concentration in the Brazilian Northeast, we built new hypotheses and evidences from empirical and documentary research, supported by sources such as allotment’s letters, ‘post mortem’ inventories of landowners and oral history, having as an empirical cutting the ‘Serra do Teixeira’, in the state of Paraiba Brazil. The Data indicate there were other groups in the mentioned region, which, in the Eighteenth Century, made up different forms of land occupation and settlement.