Acaraú´s Cattle farms

Abstract

Cattle farms were one of the focal points of occupation in the Northern Hinterlands. Aligned with watercourses, devoted to breeding cattle, cotton cultivation and other genres, they were profuse. Portuguese crown organised them in administrative territories, Ribeiras, only recently studied. With support from FAPESP, Nathália Diniz and Esdras Arraes started this thematic alongside Clóvis Jucá. The documentation of these rural properties, in association with the identification of family trunks, allows us to understand exposing these hinterlands, exploring social and commercial networks, mobility and rooting logics, matrimonial ties, regional and intercontinental networks that conditioned the existence of a genuine rural architectural heritage, excluded from conservation policies. As an important junction between Ceará and Piaui, Ribeira do Acaraú is a region with a hybrid cultural profile, mixing social agents from different origins, articulating with the other zones through an intricate network of rivers and land paths, represented in historical cartography, which, intertwined with primary and secondary sources, allows us to assess this heritage. In line with the work guided by Beatriz Bueno in Landscape Archeology, this research aims to inventory the rural architectural heritage of the nineteenth century of Ribeira do Acaraú, still unexplored by historiography. The study of cattle farms and their buildings (chapels, Sugarcane mills, Manioc flour houses, cattle corrals) as well as its owners, will be carried out in interdependence with chapels, parishes, towns, and cities, through the spatialization of documentary sources, such as old maps, books genealogy of families from Acaraú, iconography, wills, post-mortem inventories, parish and notary documentation, and oral and traveller accounts. Simultaneously, it is proposed to carry out in situ architectural surveys of the farms, contributing to the list of inventories and the dissemination of this heritage and cultural landscape in the process of dilapidation.