Occupation and first uses of the territory in the area of Rio Pardo valley - RS: from the first indigenous inhabitants to the military appropriation of the fields in Rio Pardo

Abstract

The present article approaches the different moments that constituted the initial formation processes of occupation and of uses of the territory of the Rio Pardo valley, region located in the center-oriental part of Rio Grande do Sul state. Having as basis the theoretical-methodological referential developed by Santos (1996), Santos and Silveira (2001) and Silveira (2007), in a first phase we aimed to characterize, although shortly, the spatial organization and the use of the territory that the different indigenous societies developed in the regional space. In a second moment, we analyzed the reflexes of Brazil’s conquest and of the production of the colonial territory by the Portuguese and Spanish empires in the formation of the regional space. In that aspect, in a third and last phase, we approached the process of military domain of the lands located especially in the meridional part of the region that, while occupation and territorial appropriation strategy by the Luso-Brazilian of the South of Brazil, ended up resulting in the promotion and the expansion of the cattle farmer's latifundium.