Landmark’s transformation of the Metropolitan Region of Campinas in the light of territorial State history: centuries XVII-XX

Abstract

The territory of São Paulo contains, in its inland, different cultural landscapes, which were formed in the course of time and underwent profound changes in recent centuries in the face of: accelerated processes of replacement of the vegetation cover by the production of diverse goods, cattle rearing, and agriculture for export; massive influx of population groups coming from different regions of Brazil and of the world (about 70 ethnic groups); intensity of urbanization (within centuries XIX and XX); the complexity of the distribution systems (drovers roads, railways, highways, aviation), among others, which enabled the former captaincy, later a province and currently a state, to overcome the Serra do Mar mountain ridge (which had kept it isolated from the colonial dynamics over centuries XVI to XVIII), and to establish commercial and production bonds between rural regions and the coast. Particularly within the last 160 years, the intensity and strength of certain processes taking place largely outside the State area have proved themselves able to delete (ranging the boundaries between decimating and incorporating) the ancient presence of indigenous peoples, while diluting centenary marks of original enculturation (indigenous and european) to give rise to landscapes fully altered in their original economic, social, cultural and political bases. The portuguese expression "paulista", used to distinguish a population different due to its habits, language, customs and mixed ways of life, shortly started designating a population deformed by such an amount of cultural aspects, bonds and motivations now linked to transnational capital. In the study of the Metropolitan Region of Campinas we have found evidences of different landscapes.