Fronteira, identidade, essência: a busca das origens do Rio Grande do Sul em Gaúchos e Beduínos, de Manoelito de Ornellas

Abstract

In 1948, Manoelito of Ornellas published his work Gauchos and Bedouins: ethnicity and the social formation of Rio Grande do Sul, inserting himself in the debates on the (re)formulation of regional identity carried out in the mid-twentieth century in the state. At that time, disputes involving the legitimate past and what is and how to be gaucho took new turns, different from those born with the creation of IHGRS and the "official line". Both history as discipline and the social actors involved changed. In this research, we try to demonstrate the transformation that occurred and how the work and the author fit into the heart of this process. For this, the dissertation is divided into three chapters In the first, will be addressed the relations of the author and his work with their contexts, especially the historiographical culture of Rio Grande do Sul and the debates around the regionalist literature, tradition in which he was inserted as an intellectual. The second chapter takes place a mixture of biography and intellectual biography, paying attention to the trajectory of Manoelito in seek of grants to interrelate their written production. In the third and last is performed an internal review of Gauchos and Bedouins, trying to understand their epistemological assumptions, notions and central representations builded, his dialogue with the historiographical culture of the period and the insertion in the debate on the identity (re)construction during the publication period. The research is linked to the Research Field Integration, Politic and Frontier of the PPGH-UFSM and was funded by a CAPES/FAPERGS scholarship.