This article seeks to understand the construction of an intellectual view about the tragic events witch took place during the Great Drought of 1877-1880 in Ceará. We can evaluate, throught José do Patrocínio's writings, the symbolic impact that the refugees' misery caused in the Brazilian intelligentzia in the final years of the Empire. His chronicles expressed a moral view on the desegregation of the families and joined many writers and intellectuals that were thinking the drought as a social disruption, seen as the moral basis of the Brazilian nation.
Literature; Refugees; Drought