Os sertões naturais sob as lentes de Oswaldo Lamartine de Faria (1960-1980)

Abstract

In this dissertation we examine nature as a subject of history and man as a geological agent acting in the natural environment. From a historical and spatial point of view, the nature that we analyzed is located in the region of Seridó potiguar, called sertão do Seridó, in the interior of Rio Grande do Norte. In this work, we intertwine the studies of the sertanist Oswaldo Lamartine de Faria on the Seridó region, bringing a reinterpretation of Serido's history and ethnography through the "nature and man" bias, approaching the concepts of environmental history, sertão and modernity. In this way, such concepts were investigated as characterizers and builders of the sertanejo space, configuring, thus, the praise of the original Brazilian biome (the caatinga) and the construction of a certain sertanejo identity from an idea of nature. From the examination of this relationship between humanity and a certain natural environment, we seek to demonstrate some of its consequences, in addition to pointing out solutions for the development of the region in question, making, therefore, a new approach to the texture of writing about the northeastern sertões.