ABSTRACT
This chapter analyzes Brazil’s large infrastructural projects built in the early twentieth century by focusing on the process of recruitment of workers, and particularly the role of concentration camps in the northeast region throughout these operations. Built between 1915 and 1932, these contested spaces officially served both to host and quarantine refugees from the droughts in Ceará State, and to secure cheap labor for projects across the country. Northeast Brazil faced severe drought periods between 1887 and 1932. The inland populations, which were the most affected, started abandoning their lives to look for help elsewhere. Refugees from the droughts directed to the camps were often allocated by the government in what was called the “drought industry,” taking advantage of their unstable situation. The concentration camps, built mainly in the outskirts of Fortaleza, were an idea pushed by influential colonial elites who dreaded the masses reaching their city. The camps were presented as a form of aid, but they were truly aimed at isolation, as well as recruitment centers. Forced and induced migrations were part of a nationalistic discourse in a recently independent country that was trying to secure its status and identity throughout its territory, attaining its borders, and “modernizing” and exploring its resources. National infrastructure, thus, is as much a social as a physical construction.
