This study aims to reflect on the national and international historical process that stimulated the implementation of technical education at the Federal University of Santa Maria, based on a bibliographic review and pertinent documentary analyses. The work is based on the principle of the correlation of historical facts, based on authors of historical-dialectical materialism, in order to establish reflections on the historical framework that influenced the implementation of technical education in UFSM, the first Federal University installed in the interior of Rio Grande do Sul, as well as comparing this line of thought with other thinkers representing other lines. In this sense, it is seen that the 1950s and 1960s were marked by the reorganization of the capitalist production model, being the time in which new parameters were established for global agricultural production, based on the high mechanization of crops, application of agricultural pesticides, seeds and the use of new cultivation techniques. Furthermore, it is observed that it was in this context of Cold War polarization that Brazil effectively defined its role in the face of the new demands of capitalism, resulting, for example, in the "MEC-USAID" agreement and the establishment of new educational guidelines, in a scenario of implementation of the civil-military dictatorship, whose governments articulated the mechanisms for the new relations between capital and labor.