Delmiro Gouveia: a schumpeterian entrepreneur and his legacy in the spatial organization of the Sertão Alagoano

Abstract

Delmiro Augusto da Cruz Gouveia was assassinated in 1917, in the old Vila da Pedra, a village where he developed his business of leathers and lines in Alagoas lands. Its pioneering action to build a hydroelectric power plant on the São Francisco river, years later, inspired the creation of the Hydroelectric Company of São Francisco (CHESF), not enough, its pioneerism is repeated when bringing to the hinterland a textile factory. One hundred years after the assassination, his initiatives with modernizing features were decisive for the current municipality of Delmiro Gouveia, which bear his name, to be the main municipality of the Sertão Alagoano mesoregion in population and economic terms. The work uses as theoretical reference the concepts of entrepreneur and enterprise of the economist Joseph Schumpeter; and in the spatial organization of the municipality, the categories of space analysis, by Milton Santos.