"Caipira Was a Name they Gave Me": Considerations about the Construction of a Civilizational Model for the Paulista Peasant

The present study presents reflections on the civilizing models and projects that were offered in order to arrive at an archetype of nation as a proposal to modernize Brazil, starting with its own population. In order to understand such paths, we sought in the literature, and even in works of art, the social and compulsory inheritances of the rural condition, the construction of a social imaginary about the understanding of Brazilian rednecks permeated by the outline of racial research that gained strength in the beginning of the 20th century.