A gramática do poder local: ciclos políticos, trajetórias e recursos sociais de lederança políticas em Acarape-CE

Abstract

The scope of this work was to understand the political grammar of Acarape (Ceará) based on the study of its political cycles, the trajectories of its main leaders and the local disputes by power. In the absence of homogeneous and hegemonic political groups in the new municipality, which became autonomous in the late 1980s, the aim of this work was to analyze the way and the mechanisms used by local political leaders to build and to strengthen their political power of command to achieve the chief of municipal executive. The focus was on how the medical doctor Franklin Veríssimo and why he inscribed himself in the political field, weakening a leadership power that lasted 20 years, which managed to keep away other and new actors from the political space of competition with practically no change of its leading cadres. The political period before Veríssimo covers the interval between the years 1988 (first municipal election of Acarape post-emancipation) to 2016. The objective of this work was to identify the composition of the political factions, their electoral strategies and the alternation in the local executive during this period. In addition to a bibliographical survey, the methodological approach involved the use of interviews, the follow-up of postings by politicians on social networks, the examination of data provided by the Regional Electoral Court, documentary analysis and the observation of public events and (pre) electoral scenarios in Acarape. The struggle for the emancipation of Acarape in the scenario of the Brazilian redemocratization emphasizing the actors who played a main in the political procedure was contextualized in the first chapter. Dialoging with the perspective of long-standing political cycles in the contemporary world, the second chapter traced the genealogy of power in Acarape by reconstructing the bases of electoral resources of the main leaderships and their political and symbolic strategies used to legitimize (and remain) in power. The last chapter addressed the operators of the doctor's entry into the political scene in Acarape and the inauguration of a new political cycle based on the construction of a new political leadership and a deep reorganization of the political factions. The example of Acarape can reveal general tendencies that points to the dependence of municipalities on the state government, transfigured in adhesism, interfering in the emptying of oppositions at the local level and in the production of cycles of domination by long-standing political groups. With this work it is hoped to contribute to the development of research agendas that contemplate the municipal political analysis, mainly in Ceará, in order to promote the update of categories that are expensive to the studies of the local power.