This essay offers a preliminary outline of the main aspects of Pará intellectual José Veríssimo’s theses in the field of ethnography and social thought as addressed to the Amazon society in the latter decades of the nineteenth century and first fifteen years of the twentieth, under the influence of naturalism, evolutionism, and positivism. An analysis is offered of works and texts by Veríssimo that are characterized by their distinctly ethnographic content, based on their connections to the paradigms posited by the ‘men of science’ belonging to the famous Generation of the Seventies. The essay is particularly concerned with perceiving how Veríssimo saw the question of miscegenation as key to understanding reality in the Amazon.
miscegenation; naturalism; evolutionism; positivism; Amazon