“O sr. Domingos Ribeiro Filho é, mas não quer ser anarquista”: political clashes in the pages of the Rio de Janeiro press (1919)

Abstract

In September 1919, the writer Domingos Ribeiro Filho (1875-1942) was denounced and persecuted for his political militancy. The episode led him to publicly renounce his support for anarchist ideology. The repercussions and the exploitation of the case by the press resulted in the writer's departure from the anarchist movement, as well as marking the end of his literary career as a novelist. This article seeks to understand the central role that the press played in this episode, constituting itself as a decisive agent in this process, giving it relevance and, ultimately, determining its outcome. To this end, we analyze news articles published about the case in different newspapers of the time, such as Correio da Manhã, A Noite and Gazeta de Noticias. By examining and problematizing an episode like this, it is possible to reveal the concrete limits of political action imposed on an anarchist militancy in Rio de Janeiro during the First Republic, by the material reality and the dilemmas of his respective context. Far from understanding the story of Domingos Ribeiro Filho as the immaculate and “heroic” trajectory of an anarchist, it is a matter of understanding it in light of its contradictions, ambiguities and often adverse conditions – in an approach typical of the field of social history and interested in the management of the historical process by an individual and his clashes in the pages of the press.