Antonio Silvino : de governador dos sertões a governador da detenção (1875-1944)

Abstract

Antonio Silvino, "From Governor of backwoods to Governor of Detention" (1875-1944) is a work that came from the desire to understand who the “cangaceiro” Antonio Silvino was, from the vision of newspapers that were read by an educated class and the “cordéis” that had reached a population of little education. This study aimed to construct a biography, in which I tried to be aware of the nomination given in the documents related to the bandit, the historical context and the representations assigned to the newspapers from Recife, the public documents and the “cordéis” by Francisco das Chagas Batista and Leandro Gomes de Barros, in each stage that I described Antonio Silvino‟s life. The exercise now presented does not cover the whole subject of his biography, it would be an impossible thing to do, as well as the writing of history is an interim response about the past, and so is the biographical writing. I wanted to perform a theoretical and methodological discussion based on studies of cultural history and the construction of biographies, which are already being debated since the 1970s. This work is divided into four chapters. The first presents the historical context in which Manuel Baptista de Moraes was born, Antonio Silvino‟s real name. In the second, I analyze the actions of the bandit from 1900 on, when he takes on as the head of a gang, until his arrest in 1914. The third one is about the spectacle that was made about his arrest and on the individuals who acted on it. The fourth chapter focuses Silvino‟s routine in the Casa de Detenção in Recife, analyzing his behavior changes and his desires in jail, concluding with his freedom and the ending of his days in 1944, in the city of Campina Grande - PB. The research has shown the possibility of understanding the “cangaceiro” beyond the image of hero and villain, „cause reconstruct the fragmented life of this cangaceiro” allowed a visualization of this man from a human‟s point of view and realize that he was a man with a political nature.