A Colonização no município da Santa Rosa, estado do Rio Grande do Sul

Resumo

            Choosing as an example the "município" (district) of Santa Rosa, the author tries to show to which extent certain factors may positive or negatively influence the success of colonization: the distance of consuming markets, facility of access to the region, experience of the colonists, type. of land partition used, etc.

            These colonies were founded in different epochs. The first (Guarani), when initiated, did not have any access facilities available and the large distance between the colony and the effectively populated areas of the State constituted a difficulty that discouraged the colonists to produce.

            To other two colonies (Boa Vista and Santa Rosa), were settled on a zone of the Plateau where the relief is less uneven, and had easier ways of communications than Guarani when they were founded.

            The zone of the center of the State, in which colonization had begun years before, were completely occupied and the settlement flow directed itself to the valley of the Uruguai river bringing, since the very beginning, a lot of benefits to Boa Vista and Santa Rosa.

            A rational method of land partition was employed" in Santa Rosa, in which method the lots extend from the water divides (where the roads are located) to the bottom of the valleys (limited by the margin of streams).

            Boa Vista had its obsolete type of land partition compensated by other other conditions: easily accessible market, better topography, homogeneous nucleus of population, etc.

            Undeniably, one of the factors that contribute, nowadays, to the progress of Boa Vista and Santa Rosa is the presence of the railroad which, since 1940, ends its tracks in these cities, as well as the construction of a highway which connects them to Santo Angelo and to the rest of the State.

            The knowledge of what has happened in this region, constitutes, when it comes to colonization, a very useful lesson.

            It will lead us to recognize the importance of two factors: the system of property and access to markets.

            The combined action of these two factors decisively influenced, in one or the other way, the attempted colonization.

            The system of property primitively adopted was, as we above explained, pointed out as defective even by the authorities responsible for the colonization of the State. On the present case it became particularly improper because the relief, with its more abrupt forms, aggravated its inconveniences.

            The disadvantages may be also aggravated or attenua1ed by other not less important conditions to colonization: the distance of the area to be colonized and in initial facilities of communication with the consuming markets.