A natureza contra o progresso: mitos e narrativas do “destino bandeirante” na expansão desenvolvimentista

Abstract

This article discusses how narratives of occupation and colonization of the Western region of Brazil were related to discourses of development of the 1940’s and 50’s. Such discourses considered nature and the environment as opposite to progress and stimulated confrontation and destruction in justification of national greatness. Our emphasis is on narratives and ideological discourses on the Run to the West in different periods of the Brazilian history, especially the last period of Juscelino Kubsticheck’s government. Our sources were the literature about the Run, political discourses and other texts in honor of Bernardo Sayão, an engineer who died while constructing the Belém-Brasília road. The elements and symbolic references were taken from historical sources with the objective of identifying the imaginary constructions reinforced by those narratives at that time.