Pau-brasil: os diferentes significados dos discursos de conservação - séculos XIX e XX

Abstract

This dissertation has analyzed texts, paper documents, from the beginning of the 19th century until the 1970s, and the records of the concerned thinking related to the preservation of the brazilwood/pau-brasil tree (Caesalpinia echinata) which social and political developments were also the object itself. The study aimed to understand the meaning (or meanings) of these concerns and the importance of preserving and maintaining that species of the Atlantic Coastal Forest. Source text that dealt exclusively with species like that tree in the forest has been analyzed. For three centuries of exploitation, the brazilwood was significant and commercially feasible, but at the beginning of the twentieth century, the wood was so rare that it got considered an extinct species. Its main usability and commercial application was dyeing, even so, the wood of the brazilwood got devalued by the application of artificial dyes on that. This tree had already guaranteed place in the history books, public spaces and, in the 1970s, occupied the post of national tree. The preliminary hypotheses were that in the 19th century, the brazilwood would be seen as just an item of exploration and trade, so that its conservation met with purely economic interests. In the speeches of the early twentieth century, the tree would be considered virtually extinct but it is now seen as a material that needs protection and preservation in public spaces for prosecuting the national memory. The governmental measures from the 1950s to 1970 would not have as the main argument the environment preservation. The brazilwood met a representative role of national wealth and it was historically important for Brazil. The speech analysis took into account the historical and symbolic evolution of the pau-brasil (Caesalpinia echinata) in different social contexts in which attempts to place its maintenance