Private agricultural colonization on a Brazilian frontier, 1970–1980

Journal of Historical Geography 32 (2006) 839e863www.elsevier.com/locate/jhg

Private agricultural colonization on aBrazilian frontier, 1970e1980

Wendy Jepson

Department of Geography, Texas A&M University, 803B Eller O&M Building,

3147 TAMU, College Station, TX 77843-3147, USA

Abstract

Private colonization is the use of companies and cooperatives to survey, demarcate and occupy land,build infrastructure, open roads, plan urban areas, and provide health services and education. Althoughstate-directed colonization projects are strongly implicated in recent environmental and social changes inthe Brazilian Amazon, areas settled by private colonization were larger than state-led settlement. The paperconsiders this poorly examined aspect of the region’s recent settlement history by focusing upon a coloni-zation cooperative and private company that settled smallholders from southern Brazil to eastern MatoGrosso State between 1970 and 1980. The analysis emphasizes how private colonization cooperativessuccessfully secured land title, setting the stage for subsequent commercial agricultural development.This study rejects prevailing interpretations of private colonization as a tool of authoritarian governmentin Brazil. Rather, private colonization secured land tenure and organized an economically viable produc-tion system in a frontier environment of unpredictable state bureaucracies, high transaction costs, risk, andprecarious markets.� 2005 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Keywords: Brazil; Private colonization; Frontier expansion; Land title; Mato Grosso

Introduction

Private colonization transformed the Brazilian Amazon in myriad ways, yet it is poorly under-stood within the broader literature on frontier expansion.1 While the use of companies and coop-eratives to survey, demarcate and occupy land, build infrastructure, plan urban areas, and providehealth services and education has a long history in southern Brazil, little has been written on its

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840 W. Jepson / Journal of Historical Geography 32 (2006) 839e863

role in Amazonian settlement. Yet private colonization in the Amazon Basindand particularly inthe state of Mato Grossodmerits closer inspection in the context of regional development andenvironmental change. Private colonization projects supported the first major thrust of organizedsettlement into Mato Grosso, a state that has developed into Brazil’s leading soybean region,rivaling the best agricultural production in North America.2 In many ways, settlement throughprivate companies or cooperatives sets the stage for Mato Grosso to lead the great transformationof the country’s agro-industrial economy. Not only did production from this region elevateBrazil’s place in the global food system, but it also significantly altered the natural landscape.3

An analysis of private colonization also challenges the dominant model of Brazilian frontierdevelopment in the Amazon. Evidence and analysis presented in this paper support the argumentthat private colonization and colonists involved in the expansion of the frontier were motivatedprimarily by economic considerations rather than a political imperative. Their relationship tothe authoritarian state was tenuous and ambiguous, not complicit as many scholars of Amazo-nian frontier expansion have argued.

Four major sources of evidence provided documentary information on settlement in easternMato Grosso: private archives of the colonization cooperative, COOPERCOL (ArlindoSchwantes Private Collection, Canarana, Mato Grosso); private documents from the agriculturalcooperative, COOPERCANA (COOPERCANA Office, Agua Boa, Mato Grosso); private docu-ments from a company responsible for private settlement, CONAGRO (Gertrudes Schwantes Pri-vate Collection, Brasılia); and documents in the Division of Private Colonization (Divisao deColonizacao Particular, DCP) at Brazil’s colonization and land-reform institute (Instituto Nacio-nal de Colonizacao e Reforma Agraria, INCRA) headquarters in Brasılia.

Documents consulted in private archives and collections provided detailed information oncolonization and agricultural development. In the case of three private collections, proprietorsparticipated in colonization. Their help was invaluable to provide perspective on the documents.However, one needs to acknowledge the limitations of these unique resources as well. Majordrawbacks were poor categorization of the material, incomplete records, and limited accessibility.In some cases, access to rare items was restricted. For example, Gertrudes Schwantes did not per-mit the use of photographs, slides, film, and audiotapes. COOPERCANA’s collections presentedsome logistical difficulties. The office had been abandoned in 1992, leaving boxes, files, maps andother documents piled in backrooms and corners without any organization. The building’s care-taker and former cooperative executive helped me sift through some material, but overall, thepoor categorization and condition of the material were considerable obstacles to analysis of thematerial. Despite the difficulties and problems, the private documents remain a rich source ofmaterial for settlement on Brazil’s frontier in Mato Grosso.

This paper is a first step to assess private colonization using new empirical data to explorea poorly understood, but hugely significant, aspect of Brazil’s frontier historical geography.The paper opens with a discussion of the political or ‘authoritarian’ frontier, paying particularattention to the interpretation that explains all colonization as an authoritarian act to subvertmeaningful agrarian reform. The section also presents an alternative analytical framework devel-oped from new institutional economics to reinterpret Brazil’s frontier historical geography. Thisapproach explores how private organizations, not the state, mediated access to land, land title andresources. Drawing from archival data, the paper’s second section provides an overview of privatecolonization’s geography to illustrate its scale and extent, an area larger than state-led

841W. Jepson / Journal of Historical Geography 32 (2006) 839e863

colonization in the Brazilian Amazon. The third section allows for a closer exploration of the pri-vate colonization process. It begins with a review of the origins of private colonization in RioGrande do Sul and is followed by a discussion of ‘Project Canarana’, the first private colonizationproject in Mato Grosso. The final substantive section draws from archival data to explain howcolonists’ decisions to settle on Mato Grosso’s frontier followed an economic logic rather thanpolitical agenda. Collectively, the evidence and analysis offer an alternative view of colonizationthat focuses on the economic logic rather than state political agenda in explaining the movementof small farmers to the agricultural frontier in Mato Grosso.

Political economies of frontier colonization

Although private colonization transformed Brazil’s frontier geography, many scholars haveoverlooked or omitted further analysis of this type of frontier settlement expansion because ithas been associated with the authoritarian military regime (1964e1985). Modernization and au-thoritarianism have traditionally defined frontier expansion in the Brazilian Amazon. Beginningin the late 1960s, the Brazilian state reoriented agricultural policies to expand mechanized, export-oriented agriculture.4 The authoritarian military government also promoted large nationalist in-tegration projects by building trunk roads.5 New roads attracted poor migrants from rural areasand satisfied military’s geopolitical vision for regional development. Numerous scholars have de-scribed the Amazonian frontier as a consequence of hegemonic state power; and, in turn, theyhave interpreted the region’s agricultural colonization as an authoritarian process. Thus, studieson frontier expansion developed into critiques of the military regime’s modernization schemes andchallenged the ‘unprecedented breakneck speed to end the region’s [Amazonia’s] geographical andeconomic isolation’.6

The authoritarian state and colonization

Joe Foweraker’s The Struggle for Land outlined a political economic interpretation offrontier colonization and expansion, which became ‘the most influential approach’ to explainingAmazonia’s frontier history.7 Foweraker built upon the work of Brazilian scholars to describethe sequential economic integration of frontier regions through a three-stage expansion fromnon-capitalist to pre-capitalist with the final convergence of capitalist social relations in thesubordinated periphery.8 A central component in The Struggle for Land was the concept of ahegemonic ‘coordinating axis’ of development supported by an alliance of the state and largemonopoly capital.9

Evidence of a strong link between the state and capital has been elucidated in past research onfrontier expansion in the Amazon region. Fervent militaristic nationalism, geopolitical consider-ations, government fears of massive social unrest in the rural northeast, and developmentalistdreams to exploit natural resources and restructure the rural economy inspired plans to integratethe territory and bring the Amazon Basin under government control and administration.10 TheBrazilian military government implemented its ‘blueprint’ for Amazonian development policyby creating the ‘Legal Amazon’, a region that includes the states of Acre, Amapa, Amazonas,Para, Roraima, Mato Grosso, Tocantins, and Maranhao west of the forty-fourth meridian.The law also created two regional superintendencies, the Superintendency of the Development


of the Amazon (SUDAM) and Superintendency of the Development of the Center West(SUDECO), to implement fiscal incentives and policy initiatives. SUDAM, for example, allowedranchers to deduct over 50% of their income tax payable on all operations throughout the coun-try, provided that the money was invested in an approved industrial, farming, or infrastructureproject in the Legal Amazon. With the creation of SUDAM, the government initiated more in-frastructure projects, land redistribution programs, tax incentives and concessions to supportthe mining and livestock sectors and expand into the ‘resource frontier’.11

But for all the insights past research has shed on many aspects of frontier expansion in the re-gion, private colonization, particularly settlement in Mato Grosso, is notably absent from the po-litical economy literature. In part, private colonization was viewed as a failure and assumed to be‘relatively new and small compared to the Transamazon and Rondonia colonization’.12 More sig-nificantly, private colonization was absent from the purview of scholars because the process wasviewed as another example of capital and corporate interests conspiring with the military govern-ment to control resources. This view was advanced by an influential Brazilian scholar, OctavioIanni, a sociologist who argued that agricultural colonization in the Amazon was a political act.13

For Ianni, authoritarian capitalism conspired to develop state-led or private colonization. Anyform of colonization was a mechanism for the state to expand into the physical reaches of thefrontier, consolidate its geopolitical claims, and subordinate more land under its control. In ad-dition, Ianni advanced a ‘counter-agrarian reform’ idea, which held that Amazonian agriculturalcolonization undermined land-reform policies. State-led colonization favored the migration ofmarginalized populations and continuation of large landholdings and unequal relations of pro-duction. Agricultural colonization co-opted rural classes and removed the population demandingsocial change and radical agrarian reform from their area of origin, particularly the south andnortheast regions of Brazil. Of particular relevance to this paper is Ianni’s interpretation of pri-vate colonization from the country’s most southern state, Rio Grande do Sul. He posits that col-onization from this region undermined radical agrarian reform by enticing or co-optingsmallholders to migrate to the Amazon.14 Subsequent writings on colonization, especially studiesof private colonization, refined Ianni’s dual claim about authoritarian capitalist frontier expan-sion and ‘anti-land-reform’ policy.15 Collectively the political economic approach outlined by Fo-weraker and Ianni precluded analysis of private colonization as a distinct phenomenon to bestudied for its intrinsic contribution to settlement and regional development.

New institutional economics and the frontier

An alternative perspective advanced in this paper draws from new institutional economics(NIE), which stresses the relationship among opportunity costs, land title, and resource use toreconsider the role of private colonization in Amazonian historical geography. NIE explainshow institutions and organizations reduce information asymmetries, costs, and risk in economictransactions in areas of frontier settlements.16 Opportunity costs describe what economic actorshave to lose and what better opportunities are foregone when engaging in a transaction. Trans-action costs are the costs of negotiating, monitoring, supervising, coordinating and enforcing con-tracts. Another important element of the NIE framework considers individual choice andtransaction costs within imperfect markets.17 The ‘imperfect information’ school of NIE theory,which addresses risk and transaction cost in the organization of rural sector, is particularly


relevant to frontier settlement.18 Investigations of these costs encourage analysis of how institu-tions and organizations mediate economic decisions of individuals rather than simply react to,or comply with, authoritarian regimes.

Recently historical geographers have drawn from NIE to explain the relationship among op-portunity costs, property rights, and resource use in Brazilian frontier settings. For example,a study of labor relations and land access during the Amazon rubber boom concluded thatwhat many historians had identified as ‘pre-capitalist labor relations’ were, in fact, organizedaround rational economic considerations in a context of high transaction costs and risk.19 NIEalso helps explain the historical geography of deforestation in western Sao Paulo’s early twenti-eth-century frontier, where land use (and contracts for clearing land) created land title on thefrontier rather than land title causing land use.20

Economists also have applied NIE to Amazon frontier development.21 Demand for propertyrights and subsequent rent streams figure centrally into this model. Property rights on the Brazil-ian frontier are notoriously tenuous, institutionally complex, and contradictory, often leading torural violence.22 Squatters, who have relatively low opportunity costs, create local informal landmarkets that develop in the absence of secure land title. This informality leads to land competi-tion, struggle and often violence over land resources. Insecure land tenure causes low investment,low productivity, and a reliance on extractive economic activities. When land claimants, with rel-atively higher opportunity costs, enter into the land market they are aware that long-term invest-ment is required to raise productivity; therefore, they demand secure land tenure.23

In Mato Grosso, private colonization played a key role in mediating (and thus reducing thetransaction costs) to access land, land title and resources on a high-risk frontier. This reductionof transaction costs, rather than state policy, made it possible for the colonists to settle in this re-gion. The analysis of private colonization in the paper breaks from the literature describing pri-vate colonization as an instrument of the state. Instead, the following analysis portrays privatecolonization as a strategy to secure land title for smallholders with relatively high opportunitycosts, not as a state strategy to maintain land tenure inequities in the southern countryside.This paper demonstrates that private colonization was not a tool of state power to undermine rad-ical social change. Rather, private colonization can be better understood as a means to organizean economically viable colonization project in a frontier environment of unpredictable statebureaucracies, high transactions costs, risk, and precarious markets.

Geography of private colonization in Mato Grosso

Private colonizationdthe use of companies and cooperatives to survey, demarcate and occupyland, build infrastructure, open roads, plan urban areas, and provide health services and educa-tiondtransformed the Brazilian Amazon. While private settlement projects have a long history insouthern Brazil, little has been written on its role in Amazonian colonization.24 Private colonizationin the state ofMatoGrosso merits closer inspection in the context of Amazon settlement because ofits scale, extent and environmental impact.

Thirty-five private enterprises organized 104 settlement projects to colonize 3.9 million ha ofland in Mato Grosso between 1970 and 1990.25 Private colonization in Mato Grosso represented39% (or 3.9 million ha) of the total area colonized in the Legal Amazon. The area of private


colonization projects in Mato Grosso was greater than the combined areas of official settlementalong the Transamazon highway (1.2 million ha) and in Rondonia’s integrated settlement pro-grams projects (2,565,440 ha) (Table 1). Private firms and cooperatives settled in the Cerrado(46 projects), the dry tropical forests (13 projects) and humid tropical forests (45 projects) (Fig. 1).

Private colonization enterprises in Mato Grosso may be placed within one of four categories:(1) Colonization cooperative: cooperative venture whose sole purpose is to settle its members ina new region by pooling capital resources and investing in community projects; (2) Agriculturalcooperative: agricultural cooperative that collectively decides to settle and develop land with mem-bers and outsiders; (3) Colonization firm: an enterprise whose sole purpose is to execute coloniza-tion projects; (4) Colonization subsidiary: colonization firm owned by larger corporation, often anagro-business operation.26 This paper will deal specifically with a colonization cooperative andfirm in eastern Mato Grosso.

Table 1Major colonization projects in the Legal Amazon, 1970e1990

State Date No. of lots Total area (ha) % Total area

Type of colonization (name, if applicable)

Amazonas

State-led colonizationa 1973e1981 1004 99,640 1

Acre

State-led colonizationb (PADs) 1977e1987 n.a. 936,000 9

Mato Grosso

Private colonizationc 1970e1990 22,150 3,946,889 39

State-led colonizationa 1980e1981 3100 549,982 5.5

Para

State-led colonization (Transamazon)e 1970e1974 12,800 1,280,000 12

Private colonizationd (CAG) 1981 n.a. 400,000 4

Private colonizationf (Contrijui) 1980e1985 n.a. 370,000 4

Rondonia

State-led colonizationg (PICs) 1971e1981 21,972a 2,565,440 25.5

Total 61,026 10,075,951 100

a D. Kinzo, Small producers and the state: agriculture on the Amazon frontier, unpublished PhD thesis, Manchester,1986.b K. Bakx, Planning and agrarian reform: Amazonian settlement projects, 1970e1986, Development and Change 18

(1987) 535e555.c Division of Private Colonization, Instituto Nacional de Colonizacao e Reforma Agraria (Brasılia) compiled data

from files on private colonization for the years 1970e1990.d M. Schmink and C. Wood, Contested Frontiers in Amazonia, New York, 1992, 200, 210.e J. Browder, Public policy and deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon, in: R. Repetto and M. Gillis (Eds), Public Pol-

icies and the Misuse of Forest Resources, Cambridge, 1988, 279, area estimated using 100 ha per family.f S. Branford and O. Clock, The Last Frontier: Fighting over Land in the Amazon, London, 1985, 104.g G. Martine, Recent colonization experiences in Brazil: expectations versus reality, in: F. Baribira-Scazzocchio (Ed.),

Land, People, and Planning in Contemporary Amazonia, Cambridge, 1980, 28; G. Martine, Colonisation in Rondonia:continuities and perspectives, in: P. Peek and G. Standing (Eds), State Policies and Migration, London, 1982, 156.


Private colonization’s geography differed considerably from that of the typical state-ledcolonization or spontaneous settlement in the Brazilian Amazon. First, a majority of privatecolonization projects in Mato Grosso were not tied to new infrastructure projects and, in manycases, occupied land beyond major trunk roads (Fig. 3). Of the private enterprises along theCuiabaeSantarem highway, a major project named ‘SINOP’ was initiated before road construc-tion.27 Second, unlike state-led colonization, which was standardized around centralized rural set-tlements and 100 ha agricultural lots, individual projects in Mato Grosso varied in size, lotallocation, or spatial configuration (Table 2). Irregular lot sizes and layout, many following rivercourses and general topography, and centrally-defined urban areas are in stark contrast against

Fig. 1. Private colonization projects in Mato Grosso, 1970e1990.


the rigid fishbone pattern of state projects and chaotic land uses evident in the region’s spontane-ous settlements.

Third, the physical environment was a variable in the different forms of private colonization inMato Grosso. Differences in overall project size, lot allocation and spatial organization among pri-vate settlements relate to three main vegetation types, the Cerrado, dry tropical forest and humidforest. For example, the average project size for Cerrado private colonization was small(19,591 ha) compared to the average project size (50,000 ha) in dry tropical and humid forests.Cer-rado projects allocated between 200 and 600 ha per agricultural lot. Allotments in the dry tropicalforest and humid forest regions were between 100 and 400 ha and 20 and 100 ha, respectively. Thisexplains why over 44% of the colonization projects were implemented in the Cerrado, yet the proj-ects represented only 23% of the total area under private colonization. Moreover, settlement in theCerrado represented only 18.5% of the total number of agricultural lots under private settlementschemes (Table 2).

Private colonization from Rio Grande do Sul

Mato Grosso’s great transformation began on the plateau of Brazil’s most southern state, RioGrande do Sul. Smallholders, squeezed by pressure from agricultural modernization, migratednorth toMatoGrosso to increase their farming area.28 In the late 1960s a technical team, sponsoredby the Lutheran Church (Igreja Evangelica de Confissao Luterana no Brasil, IECLB), responded torapid agrarian transformation by investigating the possibility of colonizing new regions outside ofnorthwestern Rio Grande do Sul. The formation of a colonization cooperative, Cooperativa deColonizacao 31 de Marco Ltda. (COOPERCOL), illustrates key processes of private colonization,especially the importance of opportunity costs and land-title demand in the colonization of easternMato Grosso. From this perspective, private colonization is seen ‘from below’, with emphasis oneconomic imperatives of the colonist household: secure land title.

Community development in Tenente Portela

In the mid-1960s, Lutheran pastor Norberto Schwantes, born in Sao Leopoldo (Rio Grande doSul), and his wife Gertrudes, originally from Mondaı (Santa Catarina), arrived in the Tenente

Table 2Mato grosso private colonization projects, 1970e1990

Region No. % Total area

(ha)

% Average area (ha)/

Region

Total lots % Lot area (ha)/

Project

Cerrado 46 44.4 901,216 23 19,591 3987 18.5 350e400

Dry tropical forest 13 12.4 752,592 19 57,891 5179 24 100e400

Humid forest 45 43.3 2,293,081 58 50,957 12,384 57.4 50e100

Total 104 3,946,889 21,550

Source: Division of Private Colonization Files, Institute Nacional de Colonizacao e Reforma Agraria (Brasılia), com-piled data from files on private colonization for the years 1970e1990.


Portela parish of the IECLB. The Schwantes, concerned about the health and declining socio-eco-nomic conditions of small farmer in their new community, began various development programsfor smallholder agriculture and the indigenous Kaigangue and Guarani families who lived on themunicipality’s ‘Guarita’ reserve. In 1964 the Schwantes began the Escola Normal Indıgena ClaraCamarao, later to be known as the Missao Indıgena (Indian mission school), to train indigenousteachers and other community leaders. The missionary couple also began a high school for ruralchildren in Tenente Portela.29

The IECLB development initiatives went beyond missionary work and children’s education.Projects targeted smallholder agriculture for improvement.30 Schwantes’ travels and training inGerman seminaries helped formulate his plan to implement ‘integrated economic development’for poorer farmers in the municipality.31 The Lutheran pastor’s integrated economic developmentscheme centered upon improving the quality of rural extension for over 5000 smallholder house-holds in the Tenente Portela region. The church marshaled local agricultural resources, includingthe rural extension office and rural credit and agricultural assistance association, to increase farm-ers’ access to information and new agronomic techniques that would improve production.

The IECLB continued to expand its outreach and concientizacao (consciousness-raising) pro-gram by lobbying the military government for a radio license. After considerable difficulty, thedevelopment initiative secured permission from military officials and municipal government to be-gin the 250 kW ‘Radio Municipal’.32 Radio Municipal, headquartered in Tenente Portela, wenton air 1 December 1970. Supported financially by the IECLB, Radio Municipal reached a radiusof between 50 and 150 km, and provided information on agriculture, home economics, nutrition,hygiene, current events, cultural activities and music to more than 30,000 people, of whom 60%were illiterate. A technical team available at Radio Municipal included five agronomists, a veter-inarian, two social assistants, and three radio technicians.33

On a visit home to Tenente Portela, Orlando Roewer, a young agronomist trained at a localagricultural college, met with Norberto Schwantes at Radio Municipal offices. Schwantes triedto recruit Roewer to join the integrated development program’s technical team, highlighting theimportance of providing rural assistance and extension to the region’s small farmers, especiallyin soil conservation and fertilization techniques. Roewer pointed out what he considered a majorproblem with the Radio Municipal strategy. Even if a technical assistance program was successfuland smallholders integrated more efficient and productive strategies into their agricultural systems,80% could not economically benefit from the scheme.34 The families had to cultivate more than theaverage of 25 ha. Roewer argued that the region’s agricultural development trajectory should moveaway from small-scale farming. According to Roewer’s assessment, consolidation of smallholderfarms paralleled by emigration would better support social and economic development for boththe local community and the migrants. It was during this conversation that Roewer suggestedthe idea of agricultural colonization. After completing his agronomy degree in January 1971,Roewer joined the technical team to develop a nascent colonization plan in response to the rapidagrarian transformation and drive for mechanization.35

Colonization project: Canarana

Radio Municipal and the community development technical team began to investigate the pos-sibility of colonizing new regions outside northwestern Rio Grande do Sul. In early 1971 Radio


Municipal contacted the coordinator for Brazil’s colonization and agrarian reform institute(Instituto Nacional de Colonizacao e Reforma Agraria, INCRA) in the state, Paulo Brandao Re-belo, to discuss improving the region’s land tenure system. By March 1971, Brandao sent two rep-resentatives, agronomists Flavio Quintana and Jose Pavao, who suggested the idea that RadioMunicipal organizers could form a colonization cooperative.36 While Brazilian law provided thejuridical basis to form colonization cooperatives, it was an option that had yet to be realized byany organization in Brazil. The technical team agreed that this option provided for the best meansto implement their colonization scheme, and at the meeting they drew up statutes for the coloni-zation cooperative. At the same meeting, Schwantes met Sergio Bertoni, a lawyer and ex-directorof a land registry office at INCRA, who became a legal advisor for the nascent colonization coop-erative. Within days the technical team went on Radio Municipal and invited interested families toan inaugural assembly, where they would officially establish the colonization cooperative and electits directorate. On 31 March 1971, more than 190 farmers attended the meeting at the local cinemato elect leaders and form the Cooperativa de Colonizacao de 31 de Marco Ltda. (COOPERCOL).They discussed future colonization projects for Dourados in southern Mato Grosso, a regionknown for its agricultural potential. COOPERCOL membership levels, at the cost of US$79 perfamily, rose to a peak of over 430 families later that year.37

COOPERCOL, following the statutory requirements under Brazilian Law, applied to INCRAfor approval. In the first instance, INCRA bureaucrats in Brasılia rejected their registration, stat-ing that colonization was not an acceptable objective for cooperativism. In May 1971, COOPER-COL leaders met with INCRA’s president, Jose Francisco de Mauro Cavalcanti, in Porto Alegre.At that meeting, Mauro Cavalcanti leveraged a compromise from the new cooperative to secureapproval. INCRA would support and approve COOPERCOL’s colonization project only afterthe cooperative facilitated INCRA’s showcase colonization project along the Transamazon High-way. The government instructed COOPERCOL to act as the technical and recruitment team totransfer the region’s rural landless to the Altamira colonization area in the Amazon Basin.38 Laterthat month, Roewer, Schwantes, a German agronomist Tomforde Bericht von Wolf, and twojournalists, Edemar Ruwer and Joao Batista Scalco, journeyed to Altamira on a reconnaissancetour.39

Using audioevisual materials recorded in Altamira, COOPERCOL quickly mounted a cam-paign on Radio Municipal and in its printed supplement, Jornal da Terra, to promote the Trans-amazon Highway colonization plan, in which the government would offer 100 ha of land perhousehold, but would not confer immediate title.40 On 14 July 1971, 76 men from Tenente Portela(38) and Ibiruba (38) and two Radio Municipal representatives left Rio Grande do Sul for aneight-day journey by air and land to Altamira. Three weeks later, on 13 August 1971, 21 individ-uals returned to Tenente Portela; they were discouraged by the precarious living conditions, dis-tance, and hardship.41 Overall, COOPERCOL realized that they must send families in order toreduce attrition. In October 1971, 25 families left for Altamira. Twenty more families had leftin November, and by September 1972, 72 families had joined the others along the Transamazon.COOPERCOL helped settle over 200 families from the Alto Uruguai region to Altamira.42

After fulfilling its obligation to assist Transamazon settlement, COOPERCOL returned to itstop priority: colonization of Dourados in southern Mato Grosso. Using capital from membershipdues, COOPERCOL inaugurated the search for land. By the late 1960s, the agricultural frontierhad moved into southern Mato Grosso, which was seen as the next major soybean producing


region.43 In late 1971, COOPERCOL’s technical team made preliminary visits, established con-tacts, and identified properties that could serve as a location for colonization.

COOPERCOL’s technical team proposed to transfer 300 families on lots of 100 ha each on Fa-zenda Campanario in Dourados because the region offered many benefits for the cooperativemembers.44 Land was cheap. Initially, the technical team identified land priced at 10%(US$18e28 per ha) the value of land in Tenente Portela (US$183e365 per ha). The area wasmuch closer to Rio Grande do Sul than the Transamazon Highway. But most importantly, Dour-ados was an incipient soybean frontier. By the late 1960s, Dourados had become a target formechanized commercial agricultural production by southern Brazilians.45 Acidic and nutrient-poor soils could be farmed profitably with proper agronomic techniques and agricultural inputs.

In January 1972, COOPERCOL’s technical team returned to Dourados; however, they encoun-tered four major obstacles that forced them to abort the plan to colonize the region and almostcaused the cooperative to collapse. First, the IECLB refused to finance the project. Second, whileCOOPERCOL later secured alternative capital to finance land purchase, the entire transactioncould take as long as 180 days. Many sellers of rural land units large enough for the colonizationproject refused to be locked in a deal for six months. In addition, landowners interested in joiningthree or more registered land units in one sale had to pay a 30% tax.46 Finally, the 1972 soybeanharvest in Rio Grande do Sul and Parana provided many larger southern farmers with enoughcapital to expand their operations to southern Mato Grosso. Land values in Dourados skyrock-eted from approximately US$27.42 per ha to US$146e183 per ha in a matter of weeks. These fac-tors made it impossible for Tenente Portela’s smallholders to enter the region’s land market.47

Disappointed by the failed land deal in Dourados, COOPERCOL visited 40,000 ha for sale inthe county of Barra do Garcas.48 The team realized that the land was best suited for cattle, butsome thought that crops, such as upland rice, could be cultivated. According to their calculations,the sale transaction could take six months. But without an inflationary land market, such as themarket in Dourados, sellers were willing to make a deal. In March 1972, the COOPERCOL teamreturned to Mato Grosso and in the same month learned of the PROTERRA, a government cred-it program to purchase land in the Legal Amazon and Northeast region of Brazil. The programoffered a 12-year, 12% interest (without monetary correction) loan with a two-year grace period.The plan covered 80% of land costs. COOPERCOL technicians concluded that their only optionfor colonization would be to move the project to Barra do Garcas and named it ‘Projeto Canar-ana’. In addition to the 480 ha, each family received a small two-hectare lot in one of the threerural neighborhoods (agrovilas), and a small lot in the urban area.49

A majority of the cooperative’s associates refused to migrate to northeastern Mato Grosso de-spite cheaper land prices, lucrative fiscal incentives, and the cooperative’s promotional film. Mem-bers articulated positions similar to those leveled against the Transamazon project. Little wasknown about the region, it was too far north and crop suitability was unknown. Concerns ex-pressed by COOPERCOL’s technical team member, Tomforde Bericht von Wolf, the Germanagronomist who visited Barra do Garcas compounded the anxiety. He argued that it was irrespon-sible to transfer families to a region lacking basic infrastructure, housing and roads. Moreover, heemphasized that the high acidity of the nutrient-poor soils made farming impossible, and that thecolonists would have to raise cattle.50 Minutes from the meeting reveal the position of NorbertoSchwantes, pastor and cooperative president, who bluntly stated: ‘It doesn’t matter; what’s impor-tant is that the activity generates money, isn’t it? If raising rats were profitable, I would raise


rats’.51 However, cooperative members could not be persuaded and most voted with their feet.Nearly 300 demanded their shares back from the cooperative, while 110 intended to move toBarra do Garcas, and another 25 resolved to move to the Transamazon.52 Despite this major set-back, remaining members decided to execute the plan and COOPERCOL moved forward. Theremaining membership paid another US$885 into the cooperative to fully finance initial workon the project.53 Some cooperative members decided to wait for the later projects, so the cooper-ative had to look beyond Tenente Portela to find other participants. New recruits, many with fam-ily links to Tenente Portela and others who learned of the project through Radio Municipal,joined the cooperative from western Parana and western Santa Catarina.54

On 11 June 1972 INCRA approved the pre-project plan, and the final version was approvedlater that month just as the first group left for a two-week overland journey to Canarana. Despitea lack of infrastructure and housing, COOPERCOL wanted to accelerate migration to facilitateland acquisition and gain agricultural credit as soon as possible. The plan was that colonistswould secure land title and credit in time for the planting season, which would begin in Septem-ber.55 The first 11 families arrived at an area 35 km west of BR-158 in mid-July 1972, followinga recently opened trail. Without any homes ready for occupation, the families made camp on Su-curi Creek, named after the feared boa constrictors that lived along its banks. They built tempo-rary shelters out of black plastic sheeting and tree branches. Families cleared the land surroundingwhat they thought was to be their temporary camp but which became their home for at leasta year. By January 1973, 81 families settled in the project area.

Producing secure land title

Mato Grosso, similar to other Brazilian frontiers, was rife with land title fraud and competingland claims. Between 1930 and 1970 Mato Grosso’s Department of Land and Colonization cededmillions of hectares of public lands (terras devolutas) to the private sector in 10,000-ha land tracts.The most egregious example of the public land free-for-all and land speculation in Mato Grossowas under the administration of Governor Fernando Correa da Costa (1950e1956).56 Over 4.2million ha in northern Mato Grosso transferred to private ownership, and more than one-thirdof the land was located in the county of Barra do Garcas. Bureaucratic irregularities compoundedthe erratic privatization of public lands. For example, different government institutions processedland titles for the same land, and the land registry office obliged by recording all land claims. En-forcement was impossible for many of these lands because they existed only on paper. Some areasbecame targets of dual, or even triple, claimants. Today, Mato Grosso’s land bonanza has onlybegun to be regularized by the government. A recent white paper that reported systemic Brazilianland fraud prompted INCRA to cancel over 228,000 km2 of illegal land deeds in Mato Grosso, anarea that exceeds all the state’s total pasture land and represents seven times the area in agricul-ture for the state.57

In this context of land title fraud, what factors contributed to the expansion of private coloni-zation at the scale of 3.9 million ha? What motivated small farmers to sell assets, move 2500 kmand open an entirely new region for agricultural production? The following discussion exploreshow an economic logic of land-title demand rather than the state cooptation encouraged familiesto join the cooperative and move to Mato Grosso. While the analysis does not quantify the


economics of colonization, it draws upon transaction costs and risks as heuristic devices to explainthe economic logic of colonization from the point of view of the colonist household. Two neces-sary factors played a role in the colonist participation and the production of secure land title: (1)smallholders’ demand for land title and (2) the cooperative’s promise and capacity to lower thecosts of and secure land title on the frontier.

Opportunity costs and land-title demand

Rural families in Rio Grande do Sul faced an economic squeeze because of agricultural mod-ernization. Landholdings less than 35 ha were not economical under the new rural regime ofmechanized wheat and soybean production. Yet, land ownership and other assets suggest thatsmallholders from Tenente Portela had higher opportunity costs than the region’s landless work-ers, a population viewed as targets for state colonization projects in the Amazon. Smallholderhouseholds possessed capital assets (land) that had to be liquidated before migrating. This re-quirement presented considerable risks. For example, smallholder households selling a 25-hafarm for between US$4442 and US$6637 had to move cash quickly into a capital good to avoidinflationary loss or theft.58 These households with higher opportunity costs also had other optionsbesides migration to Mato Grosso. For example, smallholders could sell their land and opena small business or opt for colonization to a more desirable region. This is clear from the enthu-siasm of the population to COOPERCOL’s initial plan to colonize land in Dourados, a regionthat supported better production possibilities and accumulation opportunities. A better pictureof a smallholder’s higher opportunity costs can be illustrated by exploring the socio-economicdata of COOPERCOL’s membership.59 Table 3 summarizes the descriptive statistics of 211COOPERCOL members’ landholdings, land value and family composition from 1971.60 Anotherdataset includes similar information about a sample of COOPERCOL’s membership (N Z 56)(Table 4). Thirty of these families moved to eastern Mato Grosso in one of the early projects be-tween 1973 and 1976 (Table 5).

Families who migrated to Canarana had financial resources to sustain their households duringthe transitional period of settlement when they could not produce any crops and generate revenue.These resources allowed them to survive in the face of economic hardships presented during un-productive years in Mato Grosso. The average landholding in Rio Grande do Sul ranged from 20to 26 ha. Value of assets is difficult to compare because measurement units differ in the data. Thelarger sample only provides information on land value while the smaller sample quantifies totalassets (land, house, livestock, etc). However, to provide a general idea about land value for thesmaller sample, a column on the average price per hectare at US$230.00 is included. Early colo-nists tended to be older families, measured by the age of household heads (43 males; 40 females)and average number of children (4.7).

The difference between small farmers and landless workers in relation to opportunity costs issignificant because it suggests that each group would have a different economic logic in relationto colonization. As previous scholars have demonstrated, higher opportunity costs increased de-mand for secure land title in order to maximize land rent through farming.61 Farming also re-quired credit. Land title was the only means to secure credit for commercial cultivation.Therefore, the option to join a state-led project, in which the state did not immediately conferland title, was more risky than private colonization. Private colonization, with the promise of


immediate and secure land title, provided smallholders with a means to manage and preserve thevalue of their assets for future investment in agricultural modernization. In other words, privatecolonization offered secure title that would serve to protect their capital gains and offer the house-hold a future of agricultural production based on state credit.

Reducing transaction costs

As previously stated, government created the large-scale problem of insecure land title throughits unregulated distribution of public lands in the mid-twentieth century. The 2500 km separatingBarra do Garcas and Rio Grande do Sul, compounded by inaccessibility during six months of theyear, exacerbated the information problems and risk inherent to land-based transactions. Acquir-ing land on the frontier in Mato Grosso exemplifies the costs of colonization; it was a region dis-tant from the national integration highways, notorious for land title fraud, and in an environmentknown for its poor agricultural productivity. While the promise of land title attracted many fam-ilies to private colonization, how did the cooperative fulfill the promise of secure land title in thisrisky context?

COOPERCOL reduced the information costs on land markets, and with more information, re-duced the risks that the land deal would be based upon fraudulent titles. Project Canarana waspremised upon government financing for land title to obtain rural credit. PROTERRA financedthese smallholders to acquire property in the Legal Amazon. However, offering lucrative land and

Table 3COOPERCOL membership, 1971e1972 (N Z 211)

Landholdings in Rio

Grande do Sul (ha)

Land value

(US$)

Family composition

(no. of children O20)

Mean 20.04 4635 4.2

Median 18.85 3986 4

Maximum 50.7 15,961 11

Minimum 3.4 965 0

SD 10.504 2440 2.75

Source: COOPERCOL folder, Arlindo Schwantes Private Archive, loose material, Canarana, MT; Exchange rateCr$5.65ZUS$1.00, January, 1972.

Table 4COOPERCOL families, 1971e1972 (NZ 56)

Landholdings

in Rio Grande

do Sul (ha)

Total assets,

including land

value (US$)

Approximate

land value

(US$)

Family


Heads of household age profile

Male Female

(n Z 55)

Average 24.24 10,212 5577 4.48 43 40

Minimum 7.5 1593 1725 0 25 25

Maximum 59 28,318 10,796 10 66 67

Source: Radio Municipal Box, Gertrudes Schwantes Private Archive, loose material, Brasılia; Exchange rateCr$5.65ZUS$1.00, January, 1972.


production credit schemes set the stage; capturing the subsidies and securing land title were notguaranteed. Private colonization firms were more successful than state agencies or individuals,negotiating the four main points of potentially high transaction costs: searching land markets,negotiating with state agencies, purchasing and demarcating land, and occupying land. Eachtransaction to obtain title entailed an expenditure of time and money to gain information,negotiate contracts, and monitor transactions.

As outlined in the previous sections, COOPERCOL searched for land markets. Techniciansknew of opportunities in Dourados; the administrative team, funded by membership dues, trav-eled to southern Mato Grosso and negotiated the land sale. Skyrocketing land values, tax disin-centives, and delayed land credit, however, precluded the entry of a private colonization projecton the scale of Canarana. Despite the delay, the organization was able to monitor other land mar-kets, visit Barra do Garcas, survey land for sale, and gather important geographic information onthe proposed site for settlement. The cooperative also learned of key credit markets includinga government program (PROTERRA) for land purchases in the Legal Amazon and lobbiedfor financial support from the Lutheran Church.

The cooperative reduced individual costs expended in negotiating and monitoring the entangledstate bureaucracy and credit schemes. INCRA’s demanding bureaucracy required a series of certif-ications andapprovals at each step of the colonizationprocess.62 Toacquire credit for landpurchase,the cooperative acted on behalf of each colonist by taking responsibility for each member’s applica-tion. The cooperative collected notarized photocopies of all personal identification including birthcertificates, marriage licenses, identification card, tax numbers, military service documents, nota-rized statements from home municipality of non-ownership of property, and notarized police re-ports. The technical team also took these documents to register each colonist with INCRA, whichsecured an identification number so that they could benefit fromgovernment credit programs. In ad-dition, the cooperative applied for PROTERRA credit on behalf of each household.

COOPERCOL negotiated complex certifications and registrations required by the governmentto legalize land transfers. Large land deals, such as colonization more than 10,000 ha, requirededicts from INCRA that recognized COOPERCOL’s status as a private colonization projectand cooperative. The government also demanded certifications from the Indian bureaucracy(FUNAI) that the land was not claimed by any indigenous community. COOPERCOL had toillustrate that its operations followed the legal norms and regulatory codes elaborated for privatecolonization.63

Table 5MT colonist families, 1971e1972 (N Z 30)

Landholdings

in Rio Grande

do Sul (ha)

Total assets,

including land

value (US$)

Approximate

land value

(US$)

Family


Heads of household age profile

Male Female

(n Z 29)

Average 25.88 11,113 5937 4.7 43.7 39.8

Minimum 10 3717 2300 0 30 26

Maximum 47 28,318 10,796 10 61 59

Source: COOPERCOL folder, Arlindo Schwantes Private Archive, loose material, Canarana, MT; Exchange rateCr$5.65ZUS$1, January, 1972.


Good information was critical if the cooperative was to secure a geographically correct and ju-ridically sound deed (escritura) free of competing land claims. It required the technical team tosurvey and demarcate lots and work intimately with the land registry office (cartorio), as all prop-erty transactions and deeds had to be registered in this office to obtain legal status.64 Land units,which were normally between 10,000 and 30,000 ha, followed a highly unreliable metes-and-bounds measurement system. As this system introduced large error, the cooperative decided tofind land contiguous with streams or rivers to clearly demarcate property boundaries. The coop-erative’s agronomist used the surveys together with aerial photographs of the region to create pre-liminary maps for colonization. This also allowed the cooperative to avoid making an offer onland near areas that had been divided up into small units, which suggested a high concentrationof land conflict.65 In order to monitor the project’s progress and land titling process, the cooper-ative invested in a new office that was located in the municipality seat Barra do Garcas soon afterthe first colonists arrived in the project area. The proximity also allowed the technical team con-tinuous access to the land registry office to research the juridical history of titles and access infor-mal information networks on land conflicts and competing claims. Monitoring the land titlecontext provided suitable information to ensure that the projects were not located in areas ofhigh conflict. But this practice was not sufficient to ‘clean’ the title and discourage possible counterclaims. Tapping into the information network at the land registry office, COOPERCOL officersbought off individuals who had either fraudulent titles or competing land claims. One COOPER-COL representative, who claimed to have ‘lived in the cartorio’, was responsible for purchasingmany smaller competing land claims or fraudulent titles for Project Canarana land.66 Thus, theland upon which COOPERCOL built its colonization project had been purchased many timesover.

Subdividing the newly purchased land into INCRA-approved lots required considerable tech-nical and survey knowledge to overcome profound gaps in regional geographical information.COOPERCOL’s cost to conduct various surveys was estimated early in the project. To properlysubdivide an area, maps larger than 1:20,000 were required. But no government map existed atthat scale. Consulting materials in Gertrudes Schwantes’s Private Archive (Brasılia), it is possibleto reconstruct how the technical team solved this geographical information gap. COOPERCOL’stechnicians used the government’s aerial photos (1:20,000) of the region. Technicians createda mosaic without stereoscope rectification. From that uncorrected mosaic they created a basemap. The Schwantes Archive includes three large aerial photo mosaics from AST10/USAF(1:20,000 and in two cases 1:60,000).67 Technicians most likely placed transparent paper directlyon the mosaic and plotted the allotment of properties. The next step was to reduce the large photomosaics to the scale of approximately 1:40,000 or 1:50,000. The next step was to map the lots.Inevitably, error of 10% was introduced because of the unstable paper on which the lots weremapped and the aerial photos were not rectified. However, a 10% error (20e50 m) on the groundwas acceptable when the technicians had no other option. Technicians estimated that the totalcost would reach US$28,940, almost four times the price of one lot. This calculation includedUS$6430 to map 40,000 ha, another US$6010 to measure the urban lots, US$3697 for roads,and US$12,861 to map the individual lots (Fig. 2).68

The private colonization cooperative secured title, but the process was delayed. Indeed, thetwo-year interim period between colonist arrival and acquisition of definitive land title hasbeen elevated to legend Canarana. The government required that INCRA certify individual deeds


in the colonization projects. But INCRA blocked and then delayed land title approval for twoyears, preventing the colonists from drawing upon rural credit to finance their first crop. In addi-tion, the manager of Banco do Brasil in Barra do Garcas refused to extend credit because hisagronomist did not agree with the assessment that the region could produce annual crops. Thestate agency considered the land suitable only for cattle ranching. These hurdles delayed the ac-quisition of land titles and agricultural production for two years, from June 1972 to May 1974.

While the cooperative and colonists were trying to certify ownership, many families sufferedmalaria and dengue, which plagued the settlement during the early years. The summer’s torrentialrains and rising waters submerged bridges and flooded dirt roads, blocking all transport south toBarra do Garcas. Only the foolish or desperate traveled beyond the project’s borders during thesemonths. Snake bites and agricultural injuries also required medical attention. Decent health carecould only be found in Barra do Garcas, and many could not afford the travel time or the expenseof medical treatment. Using axes, scythes, and hoes, men worked collectively to open the firsttrails, which later were to be developed into roads, while others helped the surveyors demarcatethree agrovilas and designate allotments. As colonists cleared land, many others began to builda social infrastructure. One colonist, a trained school teacher, immediately began classes forthe many children in the project. After one year, some colonists built shacks in the agrovilas,and the cooperative erected a school.

Encounters with previous habitants did not interfere with land settlement. The colonists en-countered between seven and 15 squatter families who lived along the river banks in the projectarea. Many squatter families came from interior regions of Maranhao and Goias states. They of-ten worked for large cattle ranchers or raised a few head of cattle in the standing Cerrado. Mostsquatters, displaced by the colonists, left the region; only one family moved to the urban center.69

67

50

72

73

76

75

7463

55

56

57

58

64

54 53

48

47

15

1625

28

3

61

62

2729

32

31

8 9

14

24

2326 30

35

36 42

4137

40

68

77

79 7881

70

80

5249

51

461

2

4

5

11

33

4344

4513

12

10

6021

65

66

67

69

71

22

20

19

18

17

38

39

34

Project Canarana

Allotment (avg. 480 ha)No.

Reserves/Urban area

U.

Barra do Garças

BR-158

RiodasMortes

RioAraguaia

RioKuluene

GOIÁSSTATE

Fig. 2. Allotment map for Project Canarana, Mato Grosso (40,000 ha). Source: COOPERCOL, Ante-Projeto Canarana I, project re-

port, Arlindo Schwantes Private Archive, Canarana, MT, 1972; also found in the files for COOPERCOL at the Division of Private

Colonization, INCRA, Brasılia.


Land occupation and title provision delays cost the colonist families two harvests, but the co-operative actively worked to support them during this time by arranging credit lines with the gro-cers in Barra do Garcas, collecting funds from wealthier settlers to redistribute, and employingcolonists who had exhausted their savings. The cooperative also provided machines to clearland while colonists provided the labor. COOPERCOL hired colonists to build some basic infra-structure, including the school and some houses. They were remunerated through credit for sup-plies and food during the first two years. Others worked on road infrastructure, grading the trailsand opening lands for rice cultivation on the individual allotments. COOPERCOL also hireda colonist to drive the cooperative’s Ford 400 to Barra do Garcas each month to procure foodand medical supplies.

Lack of agricultural credit weighed on the minds of cooperative leaders and colonists alike. Thebank’s refusal to extend credit because of the land’s apparent unsuitability almost undermined theentire project. Although Canarana had included cattle ranching as a possible activity, most fam-ilies intended to farm annual crops. In late 1973, COOPERCOL bought two tractors for the set-tlement and began opening land to experiment with upland rice. COOPERCOL agronomists andthe colonists, many of whom never used machines for agriculture, tried their first communal har-vest of rice. The first harvest (1972/1973) produced 400 sacks (60 kg) of dryland rice on about20 ha of land. The following year (1973/1974), COOPERCOL provided five tractors to openthe Cerrado (50 ha per colonist) for cultivation. The colonists produced over 80,000 sacks ofrice on 4000 ha, an average of 20 sacks per ha.70 After the successful 1974 harvest, COOPERCOLadministrators insisted that the manager of Banco do Brasil visit Canarana. They transported himto the new settlement to demonstrate that the sandy, acidic soils of this region could produce rice.

Private colonization responded to various challenges of migration and settlement. COOPER-COL reduced the individual costs of migration at the same time secured land title. Private colo-nization provided the means for smallholders from Rio Grande do Sul to obtain land titles andsecure property rights. In addition, the cooperative guided the sequential process of land and ag-ricultural credit acquisition and supported colonists during two unproductive years. Thus, onecan conclude that the cooperative reduced the overall transaction costs of frontier settlementand secure land title.

The process of securing land and agricultural credit became the model for continued coloniza-tion under private firms.71 COOPERCOL executed seven projects, with 440 households, on160,700 ha in eastern Mato Grosso. Nine more projects on 193,700 ha would be settled by the pri-vate firm, Colonizacao e Consultoria Agraria S.C., Ltda. (CONAGRO), which developed fromCOOPERCOL (Fig. 3). COOPERCOL’s administrators would be prominent consultants on othercolonization projects throughout the state.72

Conclusion

State-led colonization and spontaneous migration along rainforest corridors have defined, inlarge part, the recent historical geography of Brazil’s Amazon. Scholars in many disciplineshave explained this regional transformation through an interpretive framework of authoritariancapitalism. Within this perspective, agricultural colonization was implicated as a handmaidenof the military regime’s attempt to expand the frontier, consolidate its geopolitical claims, and


subordinate more land and labor under its control. Colonization not only aided the state’s ex-panding reach within the Amazonian interior, but it was understood as helping the regime preventradical agrarian reform in the migrants’ sending communities, particularly in southern Brazil.

This paper drew from new empirical data, especially private archives, and interviews to explorean alternative interpretation to frontier expansion. This approach stressed the significant role ofprivate colonization in frontier expansion and challenged the exclusively political explanation of

Fig. 3. Private colonization projects in eastern Mato Grosso, 1973e1980.


colonization. Private colonization, a process whereby 3.9 million ha of land was settled in MatoGrosso, can be best explained from an economic perspective. Rather than focusing on state pol-icy, the paper drew insights from NIE, particularly land-title demand, property rights, and trans-action costs to illustrate the centrality of colonists’ economic rationale and the role of privatecolonization in reducing the transaction costs of frontier expansion.

Evidence from eastern Mato Grosso illustrates that state incentives were, in fact, insufficient tocause the frontier expansion. Central to Brazil’s frontier historical geography are private coloni-zation cooperatives and firms, both of which developed into critical organizations in the processof agricultural expansion. This is not to say that the state was completely removed from influenc-ing the trajectory of frontier advancement. Rather, the paper highlighted the transformative roleintermediary organizations and individuals played in Brazil’s frontier expansion. Private coloni-zation projects provided the initial conditions of settlement by securing property rights. More-over, private colonization lowered the risk and transaction costs of frontier settlement. It wasthe promise of secure title and the lowering of these high costs combined with state loans thatmade it economically feasible for smallholders to invest in commercial agriculture in a frontierregion. Arguably, private colonization set the stage for Mato Grosso to lead the great transfor-mation of the country’s agro-industrial production in soybeans. Shifting the analysis of Brazil’sfrontier colonization from state policies to the private sector opens new avenues for studyingthe recent historical geography of leading-edge soybean producing regions, an endeavor whichmay offer a variety of dynamics that refine further the analysis presented in this paper.

Acknowledgements

I am grateful to the National Science Foundation (Geography and Regional Science Program,Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Grant, SBR-99485), the Organization of American States(PRA-1328) and the Latin American Center at the University of California, Los Angeles for sup-porting the in-country travel and fieldwork. I would like to thank my Brazilian colleagues, Don-ald Sawyer at the Institute de Sociedade Populacao e Natureza, Gertrude Schwantes, ArlindoSchwantes, and Euclides Salamoni. I also want to thank John Agnew, Stephen Bell, ChristianBrannstrom, and Judith Carney.

Notes

1. The ‘Amazon’ can be defined in terms of watershed or policy region. The ‘Legal Amazon’ includes the states ofAcre, Amapa, Amazonas, Para, Roraima, Mato Grosso (north of the sixteenth parallel), Tocantins, and Maranhao

(west of the forty-fourth meridian).2. P. Warnken, The Development and Growth of the Soybean Industry in Brazil, Ames, IA, 1999.3. W.E. Jepson, A disappearing biome? Reconsidering land-cover change in the Brazilian Savanna, Geographical Jour-

nal, 171 (2005) 99e111; C.A. Klink and A.G. Moreira, Past and current human occupation and land use, in: P.S.Oliveira and R.J. Marquis (Eds), The Cerrados of Brazil, New York, 2002, 69e90; J.A. Ratter, J.F. Ribeiro andS. Bridgewater, The Brazilian cerrado vegetation and threats to biodiversity, Annals of Botany 80 (1997) 223e230.

4. P. Warnken, Development and Growth; J. Carvalho, Agriculture, industrialization and the macroeconomic environ-ment in Brazil, Food Policy 16 (1991) 48e59; V. Leclercq, Aims and constraints of the Brazilian agro-industrialstrategy: the case of soya, in: D. Goodman and M. Redclift (Eds), The International Farm Crisis, London, 1989,


277e278; A. Soskin, Non-traditional Agriculture and Economic Development: The Brazilian Soybean Expansion,

1964e1982, Westport, CT, 1988.5. S. Hecht and A. Cockburn, The Fate of the Forest: Developers, Destroyers and Defenders of the Amazon, New York,

1990, 104e141.

6. D. Cleary, After the frontier: problems with political economy in the modern Brazilian Amazon, Journal of LatinAmerican Studies 25 (1993) 335.

7. J. Foweraker, The Struggle for Land: A Political Economy of the Pioneer Frontier in Brazil from 1930 to the PresentDay, Cambridge, 1981; Cleary After the frontier. Joe Foweraker’s monograph remains the conceptual cornerstone

for subsequent works on Amazonian development, rural social conflict, development and environmental change;see D. Mahar, Frontier Development Policy in Brazil, New York, 1979; S. Branford and O. Glock, The Last Fron-tier: Fighting over Land in the Amazon, London, 1985; S. Bunker, Underdeveloping the Amazon: Extraction, Unequal

Exchange, and the Failure of the Modern State, Chicago, 1985; D. Kinzo, Small producers and the state: agricultureon the Amazon frontier, unpublished PhD dissertation, Manchester, 1986; H. Rattner and O. Udry, Colonizacao naFronteira Amazonica: Expansao e Conflitos, Sao Paulo, 1987; J. Lisansky, Migrants to Amazonia: Spontaneous Col-

onization in the Brazilian Frontier, Boulder, 1988; B. Becker, M. Miranda and L. Machado (Eds), Fronteira Ama-zonica: Quest~oes sobre a Gestao do Territorio, Brasılia, 1990; A. Ozorio de Almeida, The Colonization of theAmazon, Austin, TX, 1992; M. Schmink and C. Wood, Contested Frontiers in Amazonia, New York, 1992; S. Gar-field, Indigenous Struggle at the Heart of Brazil: State Policy, Frontier Expansion, and the Xavante Indians, 1937e1988, Durham, 2001; P. Fearnside, Soybean cultivation as a threat to the environment in Brazil, Environmental Con-servation 28 (2001) 23e38; A. Wright and W. Wolford, To Inherit The Earth, Oakland, 2003.

8. O. Velho, Frentes de Expansao e Estrutura Agraria, Rio de Janeiro, 1972; O. Velho, Capitalismo Autoritario e Campe-

sinato, Sao Paulo, 1976; J. Souza deMartins,Capitalismo eTradicionalismo: Estudos sobre asContradic~oes da SociedadeAgraria no Brazil, Sao Paulo, 1975.AsCleary aptly points out, the differences amongVelho,Martins andFoweraker are‘more a function of the level of detail in their accounts than theoretical disagreement, ’ see Cleary, After the frontier 333.

9. Foweraker, The Struggle for Land, 165.10. P. Fearnside, Human Carrying Capacity of the Brazilian Rainforest, New York, 1986; Hecht and Cockburn, The

Fate of the Forest.

11. D. Mahar, Frontier Development Policy in Brazil, New York, 1979; S.G. Bunker, Underdeveloping the Amazon: Ex-traction, Unequal Exchange, and the Failure of the Modern State, Chicago, 1985; S. Hecht, Environment, develop-ment, and politics: capital accumulation and the livestock sector in eastern Amazonia,World Development 13 (1985)663e684; J. Browder, Public policy and deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon, in: R. Repetto and M. Gillis (Eds),

Public Policies and the Misuse of Forest Resources, Cambridge, 1988, 247e297; D. Mahar, Government Policies andDeforestation in Brazil’s Amazon Region, Washington, D.C., 1989; A. Hall, Developing Amazonia: Deforestation andSocial Conflict in Brazil’s Carajas Programme, Manchester, 1991.

12. Foweraker, The Struggle for Land, 129; J. Browder, Public policy and deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon, in:R. Repetto and M. Gillis (Eds), Public Policies and the Misuse of Forest Resources, Cambridge, 1988, 283.

13. O. Ianni, A Luta pela Terra, Petropolis, RJ, 1978; O. Ianni, Colonizacao e Contra-Reforma Agraria na Amazonia,

Petropolis, RJ, 1979; O. Ianni, Ditadura e Agricultura: O Desenvolvimento do Capitalismo na Amazonia, 1964e1978,Rio de Janeiro, 1979.

14. O. Ianni, Colonizacao e Contra-Reforma Agraria na Amazonia.15. Ianni influenced subsequent studies on state and private colonization, see Branford and Glock, The Last Frontier;

D. Kinzo, Small producers and the state: agriculture on the Amazon frontier, unpublished PhD dissertation, Man-chester, 1986; I. Ribeiro, Pioneiros Gauchos: A Colonizacao do Norte Matogrossense, Porto Alegre, 1987; P. Lena,Diversidade da fronteira agrıcola na Amazonia, in: C. Aubertine (Ed.), Fronteiras, Brasılia, 1988, 90e128;

M. Miranda, Colonizacao e reforma agraria, in: Becker, Miranda and Machado (Eds), Fronteira Amazonica,61e74; M. Miranda, Colonizacao oficial na Amazonia: O caso de Altamira, in: Becker, Miranda and Machado(Eds), Fronteira Amazonica, 47e62; M. Miranda, O papel da colonizacao dirigida na expansao da fronteira na Am-

azonia, in: Becker, Miranda and Machado (Eds), Fronteira Amazonica, 35e46; M. Miranda, Os projetos de colo-nizacao, in: Becker, Miranda and Machado (Eds), Fronteira Amazonica, 33e34; J. Tavares dos Santos, As novasterras como forma de dominacao, Lua Nova 23 (1991) 67e82; J. Tavares dos Santos, Formes de domination et

syndicalisme rural au Bresil, Cahiers du Bresil Contemporain 18 (1992) 35e68; J. Tavares dos Santos, Camponeses


e trajetorias migratorias: do sul para a amazonia ocidental, Anuario Antropologico 91 (1993) 61e86; J. Tavares dos

Santos, Matuchos: Exclusao e Luta do Sul para a Amazonia, Petropolis, RJ, 1993; J. Tavares dos Santos, Coloni-zacao de novas terras: a continuidade de uma forma de dominacao, do Estado Novo a Nova Republica, ReformaAgraria 25 (1995) 39e64. See also how this interpretation of colonization has been incorporated into the history of

Brazil’s landless movement (MST), A. Wright and W. Wolford, To Inherit the Earth, Oakland, 2003, 1e115.16. J. Stiglitz, The new development economics, World Development 14 (1986) 257e265; J. Stiglitz, Rational peasants,

efficient institutions and a theory of rural organization: methodological remarks for development economics, in:P. Bardhan (Ed.), The Economic Theory of Agrarian Institutions, Oxford, 1989, 18e29; P. Bardhan, Alternative ap-

proaches to the theory of institutions in economic development, in: P. Bardhan (Ed.), The Economic Theory ofAgrarian Institutions, Oxford, 1989, 3e17; J. Harris, J. Hunter and C. Lewis, Introduction, in: J. Harris, J. Hunterand C. Lewis (Eds), The New Institutional Economics and Third World Development, London, 1995, 1e13.

17. D. North, The new institutional economics and third world development, in: J. Harris, J. Hunter and C. Lewis(Eds), The New Institutional Economics and Third World Development, London, 1995, 14e26.

18. Bardhan, Alternative approaches, 4e5.

19. B. Barham and O. Coomes, Wild rubber: industrial organisation and the microeconomics of extraction during theAmazon rubber boom (1860e1920), Journal of Latin American Studies 26 (1994) 37e72; B. Barham andO. Coomes, Prosperity’s Promise: The Amazon Rubber Boom and Distorted Development, Boulder, CO, 1996.

20. C. Brannstrom, Producing possession: labour, law and land on a Brazilian agricultural frontier, 1920e1945, Polit-

ical Geography 20 (2001) 859e883.21. L. Alston, G. Libecap and B. Mueller, Titles, Conflict, and Land Use: The Development of Property Rights and Land

Reform on the Brazilian Amazon Frontier, Ann Arbor, 1999.

22. Branford and Glock, The Last Frontier; J. Lisansky, Migrants to Amazonia: Spontaneous Colonization in the Brazil-ian Frontier, Boulder, 1988; Hecht and Cockburn, The Fate of the Forest; M. Schmink and C. Wood, ContestedFrontiers in Amazonia, New York, 1992.

23. L. Alston, G. Libecap and B. Mueller, Titles, Conflict, and Land Use: The Development of Property Rights and LandReform on the Brazilian Amazon Frontier, Ann Arbor, 1999, 15e16.

24. P. Monbeig, The colonial nucleus of Barao de Antonina, Sao Paulo, Geographical Review 30 (1940) 260e271;

C.L. Dozier, Northern Parana, Brazil: an example of organized regional development, Geographical Review 46(1956) 318e333; J.P. Augelli, Cultural and economic changes of Bastos, a Japanese colony on Brazil’s Paulistafrontier, Annals of the Association of American Geographers 48 (1958) 3e19.

25. Private colonization projects accounted for in this paper were registered by Brazil’s national colonization and agrar-

ian reform institute (Institute Nacional de Colonizacao e Reforma Agraria, INCRA). Private colonization data arebased upon composite information from files found in INCRA headquarters in Brasılia. INCRA files can be foundin the defunct Division of Private Colonization (DCP). The database created for this project consists of basic in-

formation from each project, including name, total area, environment, place of origin, approval date, number ofrural lots, costs per hectare, average area per lot, area of public space, airport, and infrastructure. The databasewas compared to secondary sources, including D. Kinzo, Small producers and the state: agriculture on the Amazon

frontier, unpublished PhD dissertation, Manchester, 1986; and V. Pereira, Colonizacao e reforma agraria no estadode Mato Grosso, unpublished undergraduate thesis, Cuiaba, MT, 1992. I relied on secondary information when, forexample, I needed to disaggregate a company’s development plan into individual projects or when a file wasincomplete.

26. This categorization is based on a survey of company files and reports in the DCP, INCRA, Brasılia.27. M. Coy, Pioneer front and urban development, social and economic differentiation of pioneer towns in northern

Mato Grosso (Brazil), Applied Geography and Development 29 (1992) 7e29.

28. O. Conceicao, A Expansao da Soja no Rio Grande do Sul, 1950e1975, Porto Alegre, 1984; G.A. Banck and K. denBoer (Eds), Sowing the Whirlwind: Soya Expansion and Social Change in Southern Brazil, Amsterdam, 1991.

29. Early history of COOPERCOL gleaned from N. Schwantes, Uma Cruz em Terra Nova, Sao Paulo, 1989, and inter-

views with major figures in the community including members of the Schwantes family and participants of the co-operatives, January to August 2000.

30. E.M. Dunck, Canarana: Um Projecto de Colonizacao Cooperativa, unpublished Master’s thesis, Universidade Fed-

eral de Goiania, Goiania, 1997.


31. N. Schwantes, Uma Cruz em Terra Nova, Sao Paulo, 1989, 71.

32. Schwantes, Uma Cruz em Terra Nova, 47e53.33. Radio Municipal, Breve relato expositivo da experiencia dum servico de desenvolvimento integrado em Tenente

Portela com a participacao da IECLB, Box ‘‘Radio Municipal,’’ Gertrudes Schwantes Private Archive, unpublished

manuscript, Brasılia, 1972.34. O. Roewer, Assim Surgiu Canarana: Relato de Orlando Roewer, Arlindo Schwantes Private Archive, unpublished

manuscript, loose document, Canarana, 1978; O. Roewer, Personal Communication, Cuiaba, MT, May 2000.35. Schwantes, Uma Cruz em Terra Nova, 68; O. Roewer, Assim Surgiu Canarana: Relato de Orlando Roewer, Arlindo

Schwantes Private Archive, unpublished manuscript, loose document, Canarana, 1978; O. Roewer, Personal Com-munication, Cuiaba, MT, May 2000.

36. Radio Municipal, Breve relato expositivo da experiencia dum servico de desenvolvimento integrado em Tenente

Portela com a participacao da IECLB, Box ‘Radio Municipal,’ Gertrudes Schwantes Private Archive, unpublishedmanuscript, Brasılia, 1972.

37. O. Roewer, Assim Surgiu Canarana: Relato de Orlando Roewer, Arlindo Schwantes Private Archive, unpublished

manuscript, loose document, Canarana, 1978. Exchange rate Cr$5.06 Z US$1.00 as of May 1971.38. Radio Municipal, Breve relato expositivo da experiencia dum servico de desenvolvimento integrado em Tenente

Portela com a participacao da IECLB, Box ‘Radio Municipal,’ Gertrudes Schwantes Private Archive, unpublishedmanuscript, Brasılia, 1972; various conversations with Gertrudes Schwantes (Brasılia) and Arlindo Schwantes

(Canarana) confirmed written accounts of a deal between COOPERCOL and INCRA; see also Schwantes, UmaCruz em Terra Nova, 74e84; E.M. Dunck, Canarana: Um Projecto de Colonizacao Cooperativa, unpublished Mas-ter’s thesis, Universidade Federal de Goiania, Goiania, 1997, 75.

39. Dietrich Tomforde Bericht von Wolf, Entwicklungsarbeit -in Tenente Portela das Transamazonica Projekt, dasMato Grosso Projekt, Gertrudes Schwantes Private Archive, unpublished manuscript, loose material, Brasılia,1971; Arlindo Schwantes Private Archive, Canarana, MT, 1971; Dietrich Tomforde Bericht von Wolf, Das

Mato Grosso-Projekt des Entwicklungssenders ‘Radio Municipal’ in Tenente Portela/Rio Grande do Sul/Brasilien,Gertrudes Schwantes Private Archive, unpublished manuscript, loose material, Brasılia, 1972; Arlindo SchwantesPrivate Archive, Canarana, MT, 1972; Schwantes, Uma Cruz em Terra Nova, 76. Audioevisual material and select-

ed Radio Municipal recordings are stored in the Gertrudes Schwantes Private Archive, Brasılia. I was not givenpermission to access these materials.

40. Jornal da Terra, see complete collection for 1971, Gertrudes Schwantes Private Archive, Brasılia; Schwantes, UmaCruz em Terra Nova, 75e77. Insufficient titling of land and the issuance of only ‘authorization of occupation,’ or

land permits, severely limited access to credit and created disincentives for agricultural improvement for small hold-ers, see S. Bunker, Underdeveloping the Amazon: Extraction, Unequal Exchange and the Failure of the Modern State,Chicago, 1988,149e179, 222e237.

41. Schwantes, Uma Cruz em Terra Nova, 2; J. Tavares dos Sants, Matuchos: Exclusao e Luta do Sul para a Amazonia,Petropolis, RJ, 1993, 70; Radio Municipal, Breve relato expositive da experiencia de um servico de desenvolvimentointegrado em Tenente Portela com a participacao da IECLB, Box ‘Radio Municipal,’ Gertrudes Schwantes Private

Archive, unpublished manuscript, Brasılia, 1972; see also loose papers in Box ‘Radio Municipal,’ GertrudesSchwantes Private Archive, Brasılia. I listen to one poorly preserved tape recording of a report from Canarana(1972) in the Arlindo Schwantes’s Private Archive. In 2000 I visited Tenente Portela to consult the Radio Municipalarchives. Employees of the mayor’s office informed me that all master tapes and documents were destroyed when

the local government took over the radio station in 1976.42. Schwantes, Uma Cruz em Terra Nova, 5e6.43. M. Coy, M. Freidrich and R. Lucker, Town and countryside in the Brazilian Mid-West, in: P. van Lindert and

O. Verkoren (Eds), Small Towns and Beyond: Rural Transformation and Small Urban Centres in Latin America,Amsterdam, 1997, 31e52.

44. O. Roewer, Assim Surgiu Canarana: Relato de Orlando Roewer, Arlindo Schwantes Private Archive, unpublished

manuscript, loose document, Canarana, 1978; O. Roewer, Personal Communication, Cuiaba, MT, May 2000. In-terviews with colonists, January to August 2000.

45. In the 1940s, Dourados, which was a previously cattle-raising region, was the place for a government implemented

‘Colonia Agrıcola Nacional de Dourados’ for small farmers, see P. Lena, Diversidade da fronteira agrıcola na


Amazonia, in: C. Aubertine (Ed.), Fronteiras, Brasılia, 1988, 104e108; Coy, Freidrich and Lucker, Town and coun-

tryside in the Brazilian Mid-West.46. COOPERCOL, Ante-Projeto Canarana I, project report, Arlindo Schwantes Private Archive, Canarana, MT,

1972; also found in the files for COOPERCOL at the Division of Private Colonization-INCRA, Brasılia.

47. O. Roewer, Assim Surgiu Canarana: Relato de Orlando Roewer, Arlindo Schwantes Private Archive, unpublishedmanuscript, Canarana, 1978.

48. In 1960 Barra do Garcas’s vast territorial claim equaled three times the size of Scotland, extending an area of121,000 km2 with a population of 28,403.

49. COOPERCOL, Ante-Projeto Canarana I, project report, Arlindo Schwantes Private Archive, Canarana, MT,1972; also found in the files for COOPERCOL at the Division of Private Colonization-INCRA, Brasılia.

50. Dietrich Tomforde Bericht von Wolf, Das Mato Grosso-Projekt des Entwicklungssenders ‘Radio Municipal’ in

Tenente Portela/Rio Grande do Sul/Brasilien, Gertrudes Schwantes Private Archive, unpublished manuscript,loose material, Brasılia, 1972; Arlindo Schwantes Private Archive, Canarana, MT, 1972.

51. Untitled document in Radio Municipal Box, Gertrudes Schwantes Private Archive, Brasılia.

52. COOPERCOL, Ante-Projeto Canarana I, project report, Arlindo Schwantes Private Archive, Canarana, MT,1972; also found in the files for COOPERCOL at the Division of Private Colonization-INCRA, Brasılia; Membersdid not receive refunds.

53. The families received funds from PROTERRA to pay an additional US$8,580 to purchase the 480 hectare lot.

54. Interviews with early colonists, January to February 2000.55. Interviews with early colonists, January to March 2000; Schwantes, Uma Cruz em Terra Nova, 88.56. Garfield, Indigenous Struggle at the Heart of Brazil, 94e97.

57. Government of Brasil, O Livro Bronco da Grilhagem de Terras no Brasil: Balanco Fina, Brasılia, 2000.58. Exchange rate Cr$5.65 Z US$1.00, January, 1972.59. COOPERCOL folder, Arlindo Schwantes Private Archive, loose material, Canarana, MT; Exchange rate

Cr$5.65 Z US$1.00, January, 1972; Radio Municipal Box, Gertrudes Schwantes Private Archive, loose material,Brasılia.

60. COOPERCOL folder, Arlindo Schwantes Private Archive, loose material, Canarana, MT; Radio Municipal Box,

Gertrudes Schwantes Private Archive, loose material, Brasılia.61. L. Alston, G. Libecap and B. Mueller, Titles, Conflict, and Land Use: The Development of Property Rights and Land

Reform on the Brazilian Amazon Frontier, Ann Arbor, 1999, 1e16.62. The bureaucratic requirements are evident in the bulk of documentation found in COOPERCOL’s papers on Can-

arana in Brasılia. One loose sheet found in Arlindo Schwantes’s private collection is a ‘checklist’ for variouscertifications.

63. The colonization project had to follow the Land Statute (1964), Decree 59428 (1966), and the regulatory statute,

Normativa 13, 1967, which elaborates the ‘methodology’ of colonization.64. The land upon which COOPERCOL organized Projeto Canarana was four contiguous 10,000-hectare lots

(‘Campina do Santo’; ‘Santa Lucia’; ‘Santa Lucia II’; ‘Santa Genoveva’). COOPERCOL, Ante-Projeto Canarana

I, project report, Arlindo Schwantes Private Archive, Canarana, MT, 1972; also found in the files for COOPER-COL at the Division of Private Colonization-INCRA, Brasılia.

65. Interview, Gertrudes Schwantes, Brasılia, June 2000.66. Interview, Gertrudes Schwantes, Brasılia, June 2000; according to G. Schwantes, only a few colonists in the Can-

arana project knew that these competing claims were purchased.67. Uncorrected aerial photos are in the archive but unusable for geographical analysis because of their poor condition.68. COOPERCOL, Ante-Projeto Canarana I, project report, Arlindo Schwantes Private Archive, Canarana, MT,

1972; also found in the files for COOPERCOL at the Division of Private Colonization, INCRA, Brasılia.69. L. Oliveira, Colonizacao e differenciacao: os colonos de Canarana, unpublished Master’s thesis, Universidade Fed-

eral de Rio de Janeiro, Rio de Janeiro, 1981. Evidence from field and archival research did not uncover information

that suggested violent interaction between colonist and squatters. However, disagreements arose, particularly overindemnity for the losses incurred by the squatters. While the cooperatives and a few colonists offered small cashpayments to the squatters, others refused to pay compensation as they placed little value on the rather precarious

shelters.


70. CONAGRO, Programa: Colonizacao de Cerrados do Nortematogrossense, Barra do Garcas, MT: Colonizacao e

Consultoria Agraria CONAGRO S.C., Ltda., Gertrudes Schwantes Private Archive, Brasılia, 1978; ArlindoSchwantes Private Archive, Canarana, MT.

71. Schwantes, Uma Cruz em Terra Nova, 179e225.

72. Colonization files from the Division of Private Colonization, INCRA, Brasılia; Schwantes, Uma Cruz em TerraNova, 179e225.