Grande Seca
The Grande Seca, or the Brazilian drought of 1877–1878, was the largest and most devastating drought in Brazilian history. It caused the deaths of between 400,000 and 500,000 people. Of the 800,000 people who lived in the affected Northeastern region, around 120,000 migrated to the Amazon while 68,000 migrated to other parts of Brazil.
The Grande Seca was exacerbated by poorly managed agriculture. Overgrazing, sharecropping, and lack of sustainable agricultural practice compounded the effects of the drought. The majority of the sertão population were poor sharecroppers, who depended on the winter rains to provide water for crops and cattle. Without adequate preparation the peasants of the sertão were unprepared for extended drought and quickly began to starve.
Reactions to the disaster were almost nonexistent. Outside Brazil, news outlets briefly covered the drought. In the most-affected state of Ceará, many pleas for help were written to the Brazilian government, but these were mostly ignored because of political and social biases. When aid eventually arrived, it was poorly distributed. The eventual government response was a bureau to address future droughts in 1909 and building a reservoir.
Causes and contributing factors
Environmental factors
The Brazilian Northeast is an area where political and social development has been hindered by the harsh environment of the arid sertão. Characterized by the presence of nine major rivers, among which are the São Francisco and the Parnaíba, the sertão has an average annual temperature of between 20 °C and 28 °C and a maximum of 40 °C. The pluviosity of the area is a source of concern for farmers and local governments alike. Although the annual average precipitation is slightly lower than 1,000 mm, the rainy period, which usually lasts just two months a year, is unstable. Sometimes precipitation halts for one year or more, often causing regional droughts. Sustained occurrences of below average water availability can happen in all areas of the country as a consequence of abnormally low precipitation rates and high evaporation rates; but it is in the Northeast where they happen with greater frequency. The zona da mata, which runs along the Northeastern coast and in which major cities are located. In this sub-biome, rains are frequent and vegetation is plentiful. This area does not usually suffer from droughts, but the magnitude of the Great Drought was so great that even the coastal region was impacted. Since the rivers that flow to the coast almost always have their origin in the sertão, a drought in the semiarid and arid sub-regions can extend to the entire Northeastern area. Prior to Portuguese settlement in the 16th century, there were no pressing problems because the predominant caatinga ecosystem was adapted to the cyclical climate. Indigenous groups who inhabited the land were affected by extreme droughts, which forced them to move to the humid coastal region, but these rarely occurred.The Northeast is heavily influenced by the El Niño phenomenon and by the surface temperatures of the Atlantic Ocean. El Niño years are characterized by below-average rainfall in the semiarid zone, which typically averages at 800 mm annually but is concentrated in a brief time period sometimes shorter than two months. During extreme droughts, precipitation can decrease by more than 50%. As a direct consequence of variation in climatic patterns around the world in 1877 parts of Ceará witnessed four days of rainfall from March 18 to March 21. These rains allowed seeds to germinate, but it wasn't enough to sustain agriculture and cattle herds. Much of the vegetation quickly perished.
The situation created by increasing human migration to the Northeastern interior made the land more vulnerable to drought. The absence of water impacts agriculture first, but it also has economic, social, and environmental ramifications. Drought is now an integral part of the Northeastern environment and various episodes throughout history have caused serious damage to its states, though they are often forgotten once they pass. Agriculture and pasture outputs go back to normal, giving people a brief sense of security before the next drought arrives. This recurrence of events and behavioral stagnation was named the "hydroillogical cycle" by Professor Donald Wilhite of the University of Nebraska–Lincoln.
At the time of the Great Drought, agriculture in the Northeast consisted mostly of sugarcane, cotton, and subsistence farming. The economic prosperity of the early 19th century called for an increase in arable land, which led to more soil erosion and contributed to the catastrophe of 1877–79. Public officials and experts pointed out the rotinismo—the idea of blindly following tradition without seeking improvement—as an issue which worsened the impacts of the Great Drought. One example of rotinismo is the heavy reliance on single crops, sugarcane and cotton namely, which speeds up soil erosion. Another instance is the lack of attempt to commercialize manioc, which could provide additional income and decrease the need for land usage. Additionally, sertanejos could not take advantage of any functional irrigation systems which they could use to store and ration water, due to lack of both government interest in the region and agricultural knowledge on the part of the farmers. The intensive, ill-suited monoculture and the absence of a robust network of artesian wells, dams, and reservoirs rapidly exacerbated the issues the Great Drought created.
Another concern were the vast cattle herds. Before the sugar boom of the 18th and early 19th centuries, cattle herds were predominantly found in the zona da mata. When farmers moved to the coast, the herds were pushed into the sertão which, as Kenneth Webb has argued, “is not really very good for cattle” but was adapted to this use. The cattle population also increased from 1.2 million in 1860 to 2 million in 1876. Legislation was introduced to limit the number of cattle but was largely ignored by farmers who relied on it as a vital source of food. Many hectares of land were required by one cow, and over-grazing easily led to increasingly rapid erosion. In 1877, when winter rains were late, much of the cattle and many crops were destroyed, the soil quickly eroded and the land became drier as a consequence. Ironically, during the early stage of the Great Drought there was abundance of dried beef, but that was the case only because people were killing cattle before the animals became totally unusable.
Social climate
At the time of the Great Drought, the regional difference between Northeast and Southeast was a significant factor in Imperial Brazil and exacerbated the environmental disaster. The Northeast had been the epicenter of the sugar-led economic boom of the 18th century and had also seen an increase in cotton production, which became one of the biggest exports by the 1800s. The Southeast, on the other hand, had developed less recently, and the independent coffee industry had taken over the market, dictating exchange rates and surpassing the once fervent sugar industry and the equally important cotton industry of the Northeast.In 1870, the quality of life in the Northeast was similar to that of the South and Southeast; however, this changed very quickly as per capita income in the Northeast fell by 30%, whereas it remained virtually unchanged in the South. Unequal regional development in the 19th century can be seen in the appreciation and devaluation of products in the two regions. In Ceará, per capita product value went from £2.2 in 1872 to £0.8 in 1900, a change of -275%. In São Paulo per capita product value increased from £3.1 to £15.7, a +506% change in the same period.
In the 1870s, southern states turned their attention to immigration as a solution to the unavailability of labor for their fast-growing economy. Elites demanded that migrants be brought to the South not from Northeastern provinces but from European and Asian countries. The motivations behind this preference are not totally clear, but Leff and Deutsch blame the racial attitudes on the part of coffee planters who regarded sertanejos as lazy and less productive.
Infrastructure in the Southern regions was much more developed and efficient than in the poorer Northeastern states. The first railway was finished in 1854, connecting the Port of Mauá to Raiz da Serra in the province of Rio de Janeiro. By 1900, Brazil had some 20,000 km of track. As shown in Figure 1, the South had a more elaborate railway network which also contributed to the transportation of goods. In contrast, the Northeast's railroad complex was very limited, serving mostly coastal cities. By 1889, São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, and Minas Gerais—the major coffee-growing provinces—had 65% of the total railroad tracks, compared to only 35% of the rest of the country. The lack of extensive railways in the Northeast meant slower locomotion of goods and people and higher transportation costs. Combined with the low number of navigable rivers and the precariousness of roads in the Northeast, the disparities between the two regions led to the aggravation of the drought.
Further, most public officials in the South believed that sertanejos were unwilling to work, which to them explained the slow dynamic of the Northeast's economy. However, experiencing the absence of infrastructural development first-hand, sertanejos thought that the Imperial government favored Southern states and offered them few if any opportunities to work and better the infrastructure they so desperately needed. The unavailability of government investment in the Northeast is partly due to financial hardships, but for many Northeasterners it was seen as a malicious attempt to slow down economic growth in their land.
As a result of regional economic and social inequality, tension between the provinces contributed to the ineffective management of the problems created by the Great Drought.