Projeto Baixo-Açu: uma análise sobre o discurso de modernidade no sertão potiguar (1975-1985)

Abstract

The present work focuses on the Baixo-Açu Project, a water work directed to the Açu Valley (RN) during the 1970s. The aim of the intervention was to boost land productivity, insert it into the industrial market, face the problems related to floods and droughts that attacked the region. To face adversities, the State implemented a set of actions considered modern and supported by the discourse of engineers and technicians, which can be characterized as an authoritarian modernization. The work deals with the analyses of political, technical and journalistic discourses between 1975 and 1985, which defended modernity for the Valley through the Baixo-Açu Project. The study allowed us to understand how the agents of power acted in the defense of the project and how the idea of modernity was used to strengthen the conception of progress and salvation. The displacement of the city of São Rafael, as well as its new urban structure was also analyzed from the discourses that praised the idea of modernizing the backland. The investigation also recovered the considerations about social manifestations during the implementation of the work, and found political persecution of union, ecclesiastical and teaching leaders. This study uses the journal The Christmas Diary (1975 - 1979); materials issued by the Federal Police Department - Regional Superintendence of Rio Grande do Norte; Ministry of Aeronautics; National Information Service; report and Propaganda Pamphlet of DNOCS and relies on correspondence directed to Bishop Dom Heitor and speech of the politician Moacyr Duarte. The narrative is based on the concepts: sertão, modernity, modernization and discourse.