Águia que rapina e bota que pisoteia: a chegada do capital internacional e a violência na região do Contestado

Abstract

This work aims to present a critical reflection on State violence in favor of economic interests in the conflict that involved small squatters, caboclos and indigenous people on one side, and members of local power, such as major political leaders and farmers on the other, called War of the Contestado between 1912 – 1916. The problem of this work is to understand the repressive dispositions of the State in the Republican period, a period marked by the modernization of the Armed Forces, both their military instructions, their war arsenals, combat tactics and the way in which soldiers were recruited. Furthermore, it is necessary to take into account the modernizing principies of the Republic based on progress and the search for a new vision of society regarding the armed forces, whose 19th century was circumscribed, leaving marks in the memory of populations that suffered from violence. In this sense, the criticism that is made is that the violence used by the armed forces against the most impoverished populations in society is nothing more than the legitimization of violence by the State itself and, in the case of the Contestado, it is largely due to interests in the Political economy.