Intra-Regional Inequalities in Zona Da Mata Mineira:Differentiated Socio-Spatial Production and Organization

Abstract

The expansion in the way of capitalist production in Zona da Mata Mineira, through an intense process of intra-regional socioterritorial division of the work, formed an unequal geographical development, materialized in two different territorial formations. The Center-South – composed by the micro regions of Juiz de Fora, Cataguases and Ubá – it drained the capital produced in the regional circuit and nowadays it exhibits an economy based on the secondary and tertiary sections, that is result from the surpluses monetary of the coffee accumulated by the agrarian-managerial elite and by the public investments which made possible the urban-industrial diversification. In other hand, the Center-North - represented by the micro regions of Viçosa, Ponte Nova, Manhuaçu and Muriaé – has not experimented with the diversification process, as the Center-South did, and nowadays it exhibits an economy based on an agrarian base, and of rural population, of poor and illiterate people’s high rates. While the regional geographical space indicates this unequal incorporation, the economic dependence will continue sustaining and enlarging the unequal intra-regional geographical development. Key words: Zona da Mata Mineira, Formation and Regional Organization, Unequal Intra-regional Geographical Development.