Lutas políticas e crise social: a elite política cearense na década de 1870

Abstract

The political elite of Ceará, in the decade of 1870, suffer changes in its composition and representation and changes in terms of speech and action as well. It is an active part of a process that marks significantly this period, that can be represented by the agricultural expansion of cotton, by the proximity of the province with the international market, by the quarrel concerning the Law of the Free Belly and by the trials provoked by the politics-crisis and the drought-crisis. The political elite of Ceará was accomodated in the most important elective posts and in the high posts of the executive, and joined a warlike battled choosing the liberal or the conservative troop. The battle had a privileged stage, the press. The favorite subjects of the debates were politics, the government and the unsuitable association of the public thing with the private one. At the end of the decade of 1870, the political discussions turned on the politics-crisis and the drought-crisis that during three years, 1877-79, devastated the province of Ceará and others of the north of the Empire. The drought provoked a differentiated relationship between the province of Ceará and the imperial government. Due to this differentiated proximity between the national thing and the provincial, images and spaces begun to be defined, marking the social elite, the people and its social, economical and political relations. The political elite of Ceará, to guide its action, articulates itself and chooses a strategic speech that emphasized the crisis.