THE POLICE NEWSLETTER OF PACOTILHA AND THE REPRESENTATIONS OF THE BLACK SKIN POPULATION IN POST-ABOLITION MARANHENSE (1888 – 1890) (Atena Editora)

Abstract

The newspaper Pacotilha had daily circulation in Maranhão immediately after abolition. It was a press outlet willing to deal with a variety of subjects such as politics, arts and events relating to the capital São Luís. This way, themes related to public security and police events had space in this periodical. The purpose of this article was to understand how the newspaper Pacotilha represented black-skinned men and women in texts designed to address issues related to public security and police incidents in the immediate post-abolition period (1888 – 1890). The editions of Pacotilha published between May 13, 1888 and 1890 and found in the collections of the Benedito Leite Library, Historical Archive of the State of Maranhão and Hemeroteca Digital constituted the documentary basis of this research. The texts present in the documentation in which the police and public security themes were present were indicated; In these, expressions that refer to people with black skin were discriminated against and put into dialogue with the literary and social context in which the Pacotilha newspaper was immersed. To this end, we also carried out bibliographical research on the social conditions in which Maranhão found itself in the historical context under analysis. The texts that dealt with the topic under discussion and that presented expressions that refer to the black-skinned population indicated a tendency not to directly indicate the skin color of the individuals, treating them through indirect expressions. The fear of vagrancy and the prejudice expressed in the indication of the inability of the black population to adapt to the status of citizen achieved through the promulgation of the Lei Áurea constituted the bases for the formulation of the Pacotilha texts that dealt with the topic under study.