Memories of incipient citizenship: two perspectives on Brazilian urban people

Abstract

Abstract: 
The aim of this article is to present and analyze two objects of Brazilian social communication concerning the urban reality of the First Republic (1889–1930). These modern narratives, brought together as if in a documentary film, were constructed by the chronicler João do Rio and the photographer Vincenzo Pastore. Journalistic information of the time acted as if social problems had to be hidden, silenced, forgotten, and magically resolved. The authors’ interpretative approach highlights, through two cities—Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo—the activities of those excluded from Brazilian society, seeking to break with the hegemonic perspective of social communication (newspapers and magazines). The theoretical framework, which discusses Brazilian urban transformations, is structured around the references of Nicolau Sevcenko (1998), whose argument is that, in the modern context, the new cosmopolitan elites commanded political and capitalist management. The result of this retrospective gaze is the recovery of an empirical inventory, based on primary sources, aimed at unveiling meanings in light of the asymmetrical principles of Modernity proposed by Bruno Latour (1994): the rupture in the regular flow of time and the conflict between winners and losers. After the Bicentennial of Independence (1822–2022), the country remains a fragile point, synthesizing in its tropical lands the inhumanity frozen in time.