This article seeks to understand and interpret the process of implementing and imposing the São Paulo technological model on the country, mainly through an analysis of articles published at the beginning of the twentieth century by the Revista Politécnica of the Polytechnic School of São Paulo. Engineers from that publication viewed Brazil as a vast, wild, and lucrative field. For them, everything was in a state of latency or backwardness, just awaiting the powers of technology in order to achieve progress. Consequently, only engineers and São Paulo "modernity" were capable of taking on such an enterprise. However, numerous rural and colonial elements existing throughout Brazil, including São Paulo, often proved to be stronger than modern technologies.