Quarta colônia: da fragmentação à integração

Abstract

In the general context of Italian immigration in Rio Grande do Sul, there is a set of colonies with common origin, however, they present different development processes. On the evidence of these differences, one discusses that Silveira Martins Colony trajectory in which one looks for reflecting on its development from a retrospective and documental analysis of its most significant moments: the fragmentation, the emancipations and the integration. Both the proposal and the relevance of this work lies therein. One starts from an unfavorable socioeconomic situation motivated by a number of reasons that explain its lowest development, and which began with its fragmentation, when it becomes the former Colony of Silveira Martins in the turn of the nineteenth to the twentieth century. From the mid-twentieth century a mobilization to emancipate it politically and administratively is formed, according to the intention of Priest Luiz Sponchiado, initially, as a whole which has proved unfeasible. Later, the emancipations of their nuclei were consolidated individually, in conformity to the model of development of the three Italian colonies of the Serra Gaúcha. Once this phase was overcome, from the last decades of the twentieth century under José Itaqui’s inspiration and leadership, successive projects, which have the integration as a new alternative of development, were installed. Their idea is the regional strengthening enhanced by natural, social and cultural resources, with the resurgence of a re-signified Fourth Colony.