Migratory policies and the formation of social identities in Nova Xavantina (Brazil)

Abstract

This article aims to discuss the migratory policies created for the Brazilian Legal Amazon, highlighting the groups involved in them and the formation of their social identities as migrants. For that purpose, it brings the town of Nova Xavantina as an empirical field. The municipality is located in the interior of Mato Grosso and is witness to different migration policies created to expand the Brazilian agricultural frontier. The first of them is the March to the West, a nationalist policy created during the Vargas administration to occupy the empty areas of the interior of the country, as it was then proclaimed. The migrants – who came mainly from the Northeast and from the state of Goiás – who participated in that undertaking later became known as Pioneers of the March to the West, which is an identity in which they recognize themselves and of which they are proud. The second policy was implemented during the military dictatorship, when colonization to the Brazilian Legal Amazon was encouraged. Gauchos were chosen as target candidates for that migration. They were getting organized in the south of the country to demand land distribution. In order to encourage migration, it was said that only Gauchos would be able to bring progress to the region, as they were children of Italian and German immigrants and therefore had a work ethos. Both policies directly affected the Xavante, an indigenous group that had inhabited the region since 1820 and whose territories were expropriated to occupy the demographic voids that both policies claimed to exist there, disregarding the group’s presence in the region.

Keywords: migration policies, March to the West, military dictatorship, Nova Xavantina.