THE PLACE OF THE WILDERNESS

The word backlands has be used in Portugual and Brazil to talk of the 'unceretain", the "unknown", the "distant", the "interior" and the "uncultivated" in opposition to the point of view of the observer, who saw always the certain, the known, and the close and these are all the place of civilization. It is one of these words that bring the marks of the colonizing process. It reflects America from the point of view of the European while the Brazilian vegetation becomes the sign of Brazilian cultura: especially after the publications of the masterpiece Os sertoes. Following the registers of the chronicles and the travellers, the poets and the historians of literture, it brings us the dialogue between man and the backlands.