The March to the West (Portuguese: Marcha para o Oeste) was a public policy engendered by the government of Getúlio Vargas during the Estado Novo (1937–1945) in order to develop and integrate the Center-West and North regions of Brazil, which until that moment had a low population density, quite different from what occurred in the Brazilian coastal region.[1] At the beginning of the 1940s, practically all of the country's 43 million inhabitants were concentrated along the coast and saw the interior of their own country as something exotic. The region was nothing more than a huge and unexplored spot in Brazilian geography.[2]
Apart from that, this policy also aimed at the creation of a feeling of nationality and belonging in these areas in the entire Brazilian population. The notion of territorial "void" updated the concept of "sertão", understood as an abandoned space that since Euclides da Cunha's denunciations had been worrying Brazilian elites interested in building a nation.[3]
- ^ "Marcha para o oeste do Brasil - História" (in Portuguese). InfoEscola. Retrieved 2020-06-05.
- ^ "A Marcha para o Oeste – A maior aventura do século 20 – Rota Brasil Oeste" (in Portuguese). Retrieved 2020-06-05.
- ^ Oliveira, Lúcia Lippi. "A conquista do oeste" [The conquest of the west]. CPDOC. O Brasil de JK (in Brazilian Portuguese). FGV. Archived from the original on 2010-11-13. Retrieved 2020-06-05.