A paradise lost on the frontier: representations and interventions by Euclides da Cunha that marked the Brazilian Amazonntera

Abstract

Euclides da Cunha was a Brazilian outstanding in several areas of science, his description of the interior of the country being remarkable, having produced specific ways of looking at and intervening in the resources, territories and populations (nature and culture) of the Amazon throughout of the 20th century. The text presents Euclides and part of his work on the Amazon, analyzing the representations produced, seeking to understand the effects of his writings on the ways of seeing and intervening in the region, comparing a provocation about the notions of borders since then. The methodology was a non-systematic bibliographic review, both in Euclid's original works and in the texts of his commentators and critics. As main results, we can highlight the pioneering spirit and relevance of Euclides' work for the construction of a different representation of the Amazon, breaking with some views of previous expeditioners and producing new discourses and images that were used throughout the 20th century on several fronts of intervention.