O poder local e a institucionalização da República Rio-Grandense (1836-45)

Abstract

With a documental and bibliographical research, we aim to demonstrate the importance of the city for the institutionalization of the Rio-Grandense Republic (1836-1845), for which there was a need to investigate the villages and cities as centers of power relations and local institutions as legitimization places of the Rio-Grandense State Republic. This research is based on the context of Political History combined with notions of Political Geography, especially when it comes to the distinction between space and territory, as well as the role of social actors as protagonists in the territorialisation process. Through the analysis of the Farroupilha Revolution, we present a historical research on the role of the city as a place of institutionalized power, political center of actuation and representation of the farroupilha elite during the process of construction of the Rio-Grandense State Republic (1836-1845), analyzing this institutionalization of the State and the role of the local institutions, as well as politicians on their relational space during the construction process of the modern nation States. In certain aspects of this institutionalization, we checked for events in the city of Alegrete, such as elections, actions of council members and the dyadic relations between social actors that made it possible to organize an independent state. Simultaneously, such information was used to contextualize a peculiarity in the organization of the Rio-Grandense Republic in a municipal level, which was the creation of the position of municipal director, at a project level. The debate about the organization is found in an information sheet in the Minutes of the Legislative and Constituent Assembly, organized by farroupilhas in periodicals, Constitutional and Imperial Laws, Minutes of the City Council, institutional and private correspondence. We came to the conclusion that, in practice and in theory, the city is the basis of sovereign entities and of the modern State. In its theoretical aspect, we found its defense formulated by Benjamin Constant. In practice, we found its leading role in the political situation in the early nineteenth century on the Iberian Peninsula, which directly affects the events in America and play a significant role during the Farroupilha Revolution. This research was funded by the Research Scholarship of Social Demand Program/CAPES and was developed in the research group of Integration, Policy and Border of the Post-Graduate Program in History at the Federal University of Santa Maria (UFSM).