Entre chocalhos e abôios : Zé Branco em vaqueiro sergipano

Abstract

The present work is divided on three parts. At first we will do a bibliographic review of what has already been written about the city of Aquidabã/SE, in order to collect data referring to the themes already addressed, and also bring references to the reader that can help him in possible researches that have the city as its theme, and situate him within the spatial universe of our research. Aquidabã is the location and historical space in which we will work. In a second moment in our research, we make our theoretical grounding and point out which methodologies we will use in the manufacture of our work. We rely especially on Verena Alberti texts to show how the manufacture of historical knowledge has going through changes over the years, and point out how the introduction of oral history was important to bring new approaches and perspectives within historical practice. It is relying on oral history as methodology that we will panning for the traces of the past and prepare our work. In the third part of our work we will cover aspects of life and routine of cowboy José Xavier de Santana (Zé Branco). We noticed that, while narrating facts of his life story, we can reconstruct some of the history of cowboys from that region. An important figure in the formation of our state in the colonial period, the cowboy has a fundamental importance in that area, since the economic base that still prevails is the livestock, and the cowboy labor still used for dealing with cattle. However what draws attention regarding to the cowboy Zé Branco is that, as many cowboys of his time, surrounded by the lack of opportunities, he traces a different way from the others between mid-1970 and 1980. Through his relationship network and his stance as human being and worker, he comes to achieving financial independence, ceasing of being employed and going to manage his own piece of ground.