Two articles in the current meteorological literattfre contain the estimate that 10 million people fled from Northeast Brazil as a result of the drought of 1958 (Namias, 1972;and Hastenrath and Heller, 1977). Although the exact number who fled this very severe drought is not known, the '10 million' figure (which apparently originated in a 1971 report prepared by Bernard and Wurtele on the meteorological services of the region) is, in this author's judgment, greatly inflated. He supports an estimate of 2 to 2 89 million out-migrants, temporary and permanent, essentially the number accepted by Robock (1963) andBrooks (1971).
The people of the Northeastern interior (the sub-region most susceptible to drought) are mainly sharecroppers on large unintensively farmed estates. Their flight from the recurrent droughts of the region l{as taken several forms including (1) temporary movements to federally sponsored work fronts or camps within the drought-stricken area, (2) temporary and permanent migration to the urban centers of the Northeast as a whole, and (3) migration (mainly permanent) to destinations outside the Northeast including the Brazilian South, Center-West, and North.
In 1958 the estimated total population of the drought-afflicted region was between 12 and 13 million (Robock, 1963). Of this number, according to Martins Pinheiro (1960), some 550,000 persons were put to work on various public projects as a result of the 1958 drought. Unfortunately the number of persons who became temporary or permanent migrants to the urban centers of the Northeast and other regions of Brazil as a result of the drought is less well known. It is known that abject poverty and lack of opportunity impel people to leave the interior of the Northeast, and the region altogether, even in non-drought years. Some migrants eventually return to the interior, many to their municipality of origin. Yet it is worthwhile to present a set of findings, based on the recent national censuses, regarding permanent intra-regional and inter-regional migrations'which sheds further light on the assumption that an exodus on the order of 10 million persons occurred.
A closer definition of the region affected by the 1958 drought is first necessary. The Bank of the Northeast of Brazil, using rainfall data, has identified four zones ranked by degree of drought severity (as cited by Martins Pinheiro, 1960):
Zone 1, the zone of greatest rainfall scarcity, included approximately 60 per cent of the states of Cear~, Rio Grande do Norte, and Parafba. In 1958 rainfall in this zone ranged from 20 to 40 per cent of the normal values.