The aim of this paper is to understand how authorities and writers, who published in local newspapers from late nineteenth to early twentieth century, built an idea of progress and development for the state of Pará. It is about understanding, on one hand, the connections between rural areas, the forest and the city of Belém and, on the other, the ideas of progress and development through agriculture. In order to understand such connections, the article discusses three important problems: the "excesses" of nature, agricultural education and rural sanitation.
Pará; the Amazon; agriculture; nature; nineteenth and twentieth century