Name: RODRIGO CARVALHO SANTOS LIMA
Publication date: 07/08/2024
Examining board:
Name |
Role |
|---|---|
| ANDRE RICARDO VALLE VASCO PEREIRA | Examinador Externo |
| PEDRO ERNESTO FAGUNDES | Presidente |
| RODRIGO PATTO SÁ MOTTA | Examinador Externo |
| UEBER JOSE DE OLIVEIRA | Examinador Interno |
Summary: This dissertation addresses anti-communism in Espírito Santo during the Vargas Era (1930-1937), examining how the historical conservatism of the people and elites in the region contributed to the spread and entrenchment of political cultures that favored local elite interests. The time frame is marked by two significant events in Brazilian political history: the rise of Vargas to power and the establishment of the Estado Novo. The study investigates the role of media in anti-communist propaganda, analyzing relevant newspapers and magazines from the period through Discourse Analysis. It also examines interviews with individuals who lived through the era, as well as sources such as police documents, pamphlets, and manifestos from the Ministry of Justice's Memórias Reveladas Database, the Delegation of Political and Social Order (DOPS), the Public Archives of the State of Espírito Santo (APEES), and the Brazilian Digital Newspaper Library. The research problematizes the relationship between the Catholic Church and João Punaro Bley's government, exploring how their respective ideological interests were propagated to consolidate political projects that also reinforced a preventive anti-communist habitus. Additionally, it investigates the role of organic intellectuals in constructing a hegemonic anti-communist consensus and the activities of the Brazilian Integralist Action (AIB) as one of the main anti-communist organizations in the state. On the other hand, it identifies and studies the actions of leftist organizations and communist elements in labor movements, party formation, strikes, and the cultural struggle against the "authoritarian reformism" of Bley’s government, political elites, and the Integralist Movement. To this end, the research analyzes the role of the Diário da Manhã newspaper during the 1935 strike of workers at the Brazilian Central Electric Company and its role in criminalizing the movement. The study considers the Espírito Santo branch of the National Liberation Alliance as a broad anti-fascist front. From these analyses, it argues that the anticommunist imaginary in Espírito Santo was used as a symbolic weapon to develop an ideological shield across various fields of society. It considers Espírito Santo’s anticommunism to be preventive, unspecific, and imported from other centers of such thought dissemination, as the local revolutionary left was still in an embryonic stage. Thus, anticommunist imaginaries and representations were used to attack any form of political and labor struggle that did not align with the interests of the historical bloc in the process of consolidation, thereby favoring the readaptation and consolidation of political and economic forces around the Vargas project and Bley’s administration.
