Permanências da Escravidão nas Narrativas sobre o Negro: jornal do Brasil e O Paiz (1888-1900)

Abstract

This thesis investigated, through journalistic representations, portrayals of various black characters who demonstrated the permanence of slavery and the precarious situation of the insertion of the black population in society in the period after the abolition. Starting from the newspapers in Rio de Janeiro, and specifically analyzing the news from the years 1888 to 1900, most of the representations found were in the city of Rio de Janeiro, but there are also news from other places in the state, Brazil and also from other countries in the world. Through content analysis we seek to understand the data collected mainly from two major newspapers in Rio de Janeiro, O Paiz and Jornal do Brasil. The research in the 1888 to 1900 editions of these two newspapers was quite feasible due to the electronic access through the Hemeroteca Digital da Biblioteca Nacional. In the editions, we come across a wide range of notes, news, chronicles and articles with narratives that help illustrate part of the daily life of the black population in Rio de Janeiro. Newspaper descriptions focused on health problems, urban violence, accidents and the deaths of different people in this group of society. In this context, one of the most significant data presented in this research points out that, although the stigma of blacks as criminals was strong in the newspapers, the number of cases of violence suffered by blacks was much more recurrent. Foreigners and police officers stood out as groups that, on several occasions, demonstrated violent practices against blacks in a way that was disproportionate to the reported injuries, resulting in the death of several black characters, which points to strong discrimination at the time by these groups. On the other hand, in relation to the role played by the press in the context of post-abolition, although newspapers had an important mediation role, there is no deep debate on the pages of the journals about the problems that black Brazilians were experiencing in the country. However, there was an understanding of the press that the black issue was a social fact of the time, the greatest difficulty of which was reported as experienced in other countries in Africa and America, with privileged comparison with the United States, presented as exemplary in many economic aspects, but also as worse in several other racial characteristics, such as lynching, segregation and discrimination against blacks. Finally, the investigation resulted in new possibilities for reading a phase of our history permeated by the press's view of the black as a subject who experienced various situations of need, violence and segregation, without any solid undertaking to insert this group in society, whose consequences of these absences of inclusion actions, permeated by silences, are still experienced today. In view of what was exposed, the thesis is located in the line of research Politics and Society, in the area of concentration in Political History, of the Postgraduate Program in History of Uerj.