O Instituto do Ceará e a identidade regional a partir do movimento abolicionista cearense (1884-1956)

Abstract

In this paper we intend to understand how the abolitionist movement of Ceará, which culminated in the liberation of all slaves in the province of Ceará in 1884, four years before the Áurea Law, was later used by the Historical, Geographical and Anthropological Institute of Ceará in the formation of regional identity. A identity based mainly on elements such as the pioneerism in the abolitionist movement and a supposed special character of the people of Ceará, strengthened by the struggles of the environment from the drought; mainly the drought of 1877, that would have directly influenced the abolitionist movement. For that, we used as source the Revista do Instituto do Ceará and the newspaper Libertador, Organ of the Cearense Libertadora Society, Ceará's main abolitionist society. We also used as a source the book A Abolição no Ceará, by Raimundo Girão, first published in 1956, because we understand that it constitutes the crowning of the work undertaken by the Ceará Institute, especially since Raimundo Girão is one of its members. We sought to perceive in the Revista do Instituto how the abolitionist movement was passed on to posterity, seeking the formation of the regional identity. In this sense, we analyze its performance as a congener institution to the IHGB, based on the relation between center and periphery and the concept of otherness. We also sought these constituent elements of the regional identity of Ceará in the Libertador, at the moment when the abolitionist movement was unfolding and also in the book by Raimundo Girão, which consolidates these elements. Thus, we seek to understand the context of formation of the historical institutes, their purpose and its adaptations over time, mainlyin the transition from the monarchy to the republic and in the first republican decades.