O interiorano “subversivo”: Imprensa e perseguição política no Pontal do Triângulo Mineiro (1951-1964)

Abstract

The Folha de Ituiutaba newspaper was produced in Ituiutaba, State of Minas Gerais, between 1942 and 1964. It can be defined as provincial press. The newspaper circulated throughout the region of Pontal do Triângulo Mineiro, and had the print run of 3,000 copies in its last years. The paper and the journalists who worked for it had been constantly watched by the political police during the 1950s and 1960s until the 1964 Brazilian coup d'état, when the newspaper was closed, the publisher and the editor-inchief arrested for subversion and then held in false imprisonment at the Department of Political and Social Order (DOPS) in Belo Horizonte. This work aims to analyze the Folha de Ituiutaba newspaper, between 1951 and 1964, when the journalists Geraldo Sétimo Moreira and Ercílio Domingues da Silva were responsible for the editorial department. We seek to understand the political actions the paper took, and the reasons why it was watched and closed. To achieve this goal, we examine the newspaper’s visual and editorial projects compared to its political and economic relations. We investigate the newspaper’s editors, employees, alliances and splits, aiming to understand its existence, interests, the groups that the paper supported or held opposition, considering that the paper had values, meanings, and languages shared with the readers. The Folha de Ituiutaba newspaper is the object of study and the main source for this work, and the focus of this research is the editions produced from the 1940s until the closing of the newspaper. The analysis suggests that the paper was persecuted and hampered by virtue of its political alignment, once it spread nationalist ideas, which contrasted those of other political groups of Pontal do Triângulo Mineiro.