A idade da terra em Paraty - Uma proposta de periodização histórica

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to call attention of historians and other scholars to Paraty, a now highly disturbed region of the State of Rio de Janeiro. The economic and social course of the area shows that its past and present are a result of the expansion of Brazilian capitalism in different moments. At first, as a commercial entrepôt, Paraty had its roads intensively used, a sign of the process of irradiation of the mercantile capital and its interests. The decline of the export economies (Minas and Vale do Paraíba) resulted in the suspension of these fluxes, resulting in the economic and social disarticulation of the region. During the fifties of the XXth century, local society and economy revived due to the development of new interests, again alien to the region, which activated the old roads, as well as the building of a new one, the Rio-Santos highway. To each moment of the described process corresponds a specific form of land and local labor appropriation and use, through mechanisms of valorization and 
devaluation of these fundamental goods, i.e., land and labor.