From tobacco to tourist flow - rural buildings as a sign of the tourist offer in the South of Brazil

Abstract: The rural environment is undergoing major changes, one of which would be the abandonment of tobacco farming as part of the socio-historical-economic process of Santa Catarina regions. Smaller or peripheral areas were swallowed by modernity and urbanization, contributing in this process with their best assets: land, natural and human resources. Tobacco farming has been decreasing, with the search for modern quality of life, which has generated changes in the market and the closure of cigarette factories. In Santa Catarina, many remnants of this history have been reconverted for tourist use, such as the barns used for drying tobacco leaves, built in solid bricks and with a peculiar architecture. This remaining industrial heritage is the focus of the research, which, based on mapping and field incursions, with direct interviews, identified revitalized specimens for tourist use, giving new life and a new flow to the spaces where the plant was once cultivated. The exploratory research, of a qualitative nature, was based on bibliographic analysis, field research and the use of interviews, and such methods proved to be able to validate the following assumption: territorial externalities, such as tobacco drying barns, represent new possibilites for a rural space rediscovered, as if rising from the ashes. The answers were analyzed based on content analysis, generating categories that presented new possibilites for the use of buildings that are being – or may be – revitalized for tourist purposes, telling the story of the heyday of tobacco farming in Santa Catarina.