Sertão and geography

Abstract

The sertões (backlands, hinterland) were conquered and occupied slowly, in a process characterized by the tension between myth and reality, which generated what we can designate as an “imagi­nary geography” in both sides of the Atlantic Ocean. This kind of geography, which lasted until the 18th Century, is marked by a cartogra­phic vacuum in what refers to the backlands. This vacuum began to be fulfilled at that time, in a process that was made possible by the coo­peration between Portuguese authorities and the sertanistas, as it was the case with territo­rial expansion itself.