O cotidiano repressor dos agentes da DOPS de Pernambuco na ordem autocrática e bonapartista (1931 a 1956)

Abstract

The objective of this thesis is to apprehend the repressive daily activities of the agents from the Bureau of Political and Social Order in the state of Pernambuco, during the period of 1931 to 1956. These repressive practices were perpretated with the consent, integration and participation of the civil society and the military forces regarding the restriction of freedom of expression, violation of correspondence, arbitrary arrests, persecutions, punishments and tortures. Such traces of history have been extracted from the documentation available in the Jordão Emerenciano State Archives in Pernambuco, and in the medical records and books. They deal with the exchange of information between the Public Security Secretariat, the Regional and State Stations, the Army and the Navy, also involving the Ministries of War, Foreign Affairs, Labor, as well as businessmen and the press. All this logic of surveillance, oppression, coercion and repression were invested against militants and people suspected of being part of left wing organizations, especially the Communist Party of Brazil (PCB), people associated with the integralist right wing, or because they were suspected of affecting the good manners, like the artists, or for expressing opinions on the political conjuncture, such as journalists, or for suspicion, such as the military staff, North American soldiers, among others. Based on the ideals of defense of national security and moral integrity, the functions attributed to the agents located in the various bureaucratic instances overlapped, when they did not conflict. The changes in the correlation of political forces that oscillate from the increase in central power expressed in the figure of Getúlio Vargas, for their final fragilization, impact on the services rendered by such agents, resulting in a maze of accusations, suspicions and repressive procedures that were not always coherent between themselves. The agents advocated both in defense of the upper echelons of regional politics, or the central government of Vargas, as well as in their own cause. Therefore, the daily life of these agents expresses a period in which the state goes beyond the limits of bourgeois democracy, assuming its Bonapartist form