Corumbá e seu papel como entreposto comercial de 1870 a 1914 na economia matogrossense

Abstract

When the city of Corumba was founded in the 18th century, it took a long time for finding its economic vocation. Thus, among the references herein revised, we found no evidence of a specific and relevant vocation at least until the first 50 years of the 19th century. From that moment on, the corumbaense economy took a direction towards the commerce of the extractions, articulated by the navigation growth and the communication among the main harbors of the Prata river basin, what differs from what happened to the city right after the war. The temporal limits herein established followed some criteria and the starting point of 1870 was chosen for marking the end of the War of Triple Alliance, whose event was strongly relevant for this Brazilian region because the troops’ occupation of the territories brought together a trail of destruction and desolation all over Corumba city, what happened when the economic vocation was being chosen. The year of 1914 closed the period of research. It coincided with the arrival of the railroad Noroeste do Brasil [Northeast of Brazil], which, at that time, reached the margins of Paraguay river, 70 km away from Corumba. The pantanalian climate favored the adaptation of livestock activity, which dated the beginning of the 18th century, especially in south of the Mato Grosso state, whose climate and ecologic conditions were propitious to reproduction, proportioning the formation of a new villages around the big livestock farms. Thus, the great wealth of this part of the state was based on livestock, which was the basis of the economy during the population settlement and were the main economic factor of the in both Pantanal and Corumba regions in a period which the agriculture was still restricted to the coastal areas of Brazil,whose articulation was bonded to other economic sectors. Thus, the primary sector consisted on the livestock itself. The secondary sector was formed by the charqueadas [area destined to jerk beef maturation] which, although showed no modification on the raw materials, added financial value to the meat. The tertiary sector was the distribution of the products to consume centers, firstly done by waterways and later by railways. Other products were commercialized on corumbaense harbor – the most important one was the rubber – and their destination were both the foreign market and the importation around Mato Grosso state.