Known as the sertao, the arid backhands of Brazil's northeastern region have long been plagued by droughts. Reoccurring every few decades, major droughts have been catastrophic for sertanejos, as people of the region are known-driving famished families to refugee camps. Throughout the twentieth century, Brazil's government responded to these environmental and humanitarian crises by deploying a variety of technical and scientific experts to the region, a response characteristic of Brazil's penchant for technocratic solutions to social problems. In this regional case study, Eve Buckley asks a question of global and contemporary relevance: "to what extent scientific expertise can solve pressing social problems-particularly, glaring inequities in wealth and security" (p. 1). She finds that even after deploying a varied cast of experts and building hundreds of reservoirs over several decades, the government failed to substantially improve the condition of sertanejos. The fixation on technocratic solutions, deployed without accompanying socio-economic reforms, often benefited wealthy landowners on whose land infrastructure was built far more than poor sertanejos who became refugees during major droughts.
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