Expansion of the São Paulo Center-Southwest agricultural frontier in the second half of the nineteenth century: Indigenous presence and performance in lands craved for private appropriation, “an obstacle tha is hard to overcome”

ABSTRACT

This article presents a reflection on the specificities of the process of territorial occupation of the Center and Southwest of São Paulo in the mid-nineteenth century, seeking to identify how the forms of economic expansion and territorial occupation involved both official policies to concentrate Indigenous people in specific areas and the use of violence with a view to territorial appropriation, which was usually carried out in illegal way. The Imperial State and private enterprises built and subverted Indigenous territorial rights, in a double movement that proved essential to the construction of structures of privilege and land tenure standards.

Keywords:
Indigenous lands; Agrarian expansion; Agrarian conflicts; São Paulo