Land issues in Western Brazil were marked by domination and violence during the history of the frontier's occupation. Unlike the classic text of F. J. Turner, where the availability of free land in the frontier motivated not only the occupation of the West, but also represented a key element for the construction of the North-American identity (individualism and democracy), this paper presents the characteristics of isolation, structural poverty and violence that marked the Brazilian Midwest frontier. Thus, based on Western History and on the classical concept of frontier, as well as its appropriations by the Brazilian historiography, we propose to study, through documentary analysis and secondary sources, the relationship between society, history and nature in the Goiás frontier, with emphasis on the cattle frontier and land dominance that marked the region between the second half of the nineteenth century and the first half of the twentieth century.
Goiás frontier; Midwestern Brazil; Livestock; Western history; Land domination