Although the word sertão appears generally related to the area Nordeste of the Brésil, its original direction refers to a zone far away from the urban centres, or to the back-countries and campaigns. It can be compared with the Australian concept of Outback. The sertão of Nordeste is characterized by the prevalence of a semi-arid climate, with periods of occasional drynesses which make known this area like the " polygon of the sécheresses". Sertao extends on a million from square kilometers. Described by the climatologists like the polygon of the dryness, this semi-arid territory was formerly a prosperous area cattle-rearing. The catastophic drynesses of Sertao are not a fate: there exists in the basement of infiltrated water reserves. But they all are not exploited and the water points usable are often far from the villages. The breeding is, today, the economic main activity of the sertão.

The first process of conquest of the interior of the country proceeded in this area, between the 16th century and 17th century, with the displacement of the breeding the cattle which was done on the littoral, due to the pressure exerted by the expansion of the culture of the cane-with-sugar, the main thing produced of colonial export. The zone was conquered by colonists with scanty means and the breeding allowed the penetration of the sertões. The ways of displacements of cattle thus opened allowed the articulation and the exchanges between the littoral nordestin and the back-country, bringing to creations of several cities. The Rio São Francisco constituted a way of natural entry in the sertão, amplifying the extension of this surface. The prolonged periods of dryness are one of the main issues of the sertão nordestin and, since the Années 1940, the various governments try to solve the phenomenon by developing various programs of irrigation which aim mainly to the economic development of the area.

Because of the drynesses, the peasants temporarily leave the area towards the cities of the coast, which benefit from a hot and wet climate, like El Salvador, Recife, Natal or Fortaleza, and return for the rain season.

History

The term of sertão is attested as of the first historical document of the history of Brazil. Thus, in his report/ratio with King Manual Dom Ier dated May 1st 1505 on the " découverte" of this " island of Vera Cruz " from which Pedro Álvares Cabral came to take possession on behalf of the Portuguese crown, Pero Vaz de Caminha employs this word twice. And in both cases, it is obviously in the meaning that this term had at the time with the Portugal, namely that of ground of the interior in opposition to the littoral, with the detail close which they are this time unknown grounds in extreme cases incommensurable.

Thus for the " découvreur" Portuguese as for the adventurers who will undertake to penetrate this immense territory, the name of " sertão" - generally used in the plural, " bone sertões" - will be used for to qualify wild regions, far away from the hearths of civilization represented by the agglomerations in the course of constitution on the littoral. Under these conditions, the limits of these spaces virgin, at the same time worrying and attracting, move back progressively of colonization: as soon as the landscape is humanized, and for those which were fixed there, these interior grounds do not constitute any more the true sertão . In fact, and at least until the end of the 19th century, each great agglomeration on the littoral with its clean sertão . Thus compared to Rio de Janeiro, the area of São Paulo just like that of Minas Gerais is regarded as a sertão populated louts whose linguistic and behavioral dephasing ensures a good portion of comic in the theater of Martins Pena (approximately the years 1840 - 50), first representative of the dramatic literature authentically Brazilian. In the same way, on the plates of the center-south Mineiros (inhabitants of the State of Minas Gerais) of Ouro Preto, defined as sertão the vast territories of the valley of São Francisco just like always do it since the littoral of north and the North-East for their backlands respective the inhabitants of Fortaleza, Recife, Maceió or El Salvador. So much so that determinative is often necessary to specify the geographical reference: one speaks about the sertão of Mined or the sertões (plural of sertão ) of Bahia, of Ceará or Pernambouc, for example.

During the 20th century, and especially starting from the publication in 1902 of the fundamental work of Euclides da Cunha - " Os Sertões" - the term acquired a specificity: if it is always used nowadays to indicate especially in the center and the west, the rural back-country in opposition to the great agglomerations, it particularly applies to a phytogeographical landscape defined well, namely the field of the caatingas of Nordeste. In these uncultivated regions, on the stony ground strewn with thorn-bush, the hot climate and dryness where the rain season extends over the period from October at February, an intermittent river drainage lets remain of place in place some Oasis. Base of an extensive pastoral activity, the ox, introduced in 1535 into Pernambouc and being established then starting from the valley of the river São Francisco, the main wealth constitutes some.

Culture

On the cultural plan, the literature érudite as much as the popular tradition of the poetry of " colportage" - the Folhetos of cordel - then the Cinema and the Télévision worked out in one century and half a Mythologie which made sertão the center of a constellation essential symbolic system for the comprehension of the imaginary Brazilian collective dominated by three major mythical figures:

- the withdrawing expelled by the great drynesses towards the littoral and the industrialized south;
- the cangaceiro , highwayman resulting from the violence generated by a strongly uneven social system;
- the beato , leader Messianic subjugant the victims of this same system which await the safety of the advent of new times when the sertão will be the beach of a sea ensuring universal happiness.

Readings

• Highlands , Euclides da Cunha (edition of 1997) ISBN 2864242605 (French translation of Os Sertões ).

• the War of the End of the world , Mario Vargas Llosa (edition of 1987) ISBN 2070378233 (French translation of Guerra LED end LED mundo , fiction in Spanish language, inspired of Os sertões of Euclides da Cunha).
• Diadorim , João Guimarães Rosa (French translation of Large Sertão: Veredas , chief of work of the Brazilian literature of the XXe century, published in 1956 ).
• Sagarana , João Guimarães Rosa (French translation of the collection of accounts carrying the same title published in Brazil in 1946 ).
• Toutaméia , João Guimarães Rosa (French translation of the collection published in Brazil under the title of Tutaméia , in 1967 ).
• Dryness , Graciliano Ramos (French translation of the account published in Brazil under the title of Emptied Secas in 1938 ).