"O Sinistro Fantasma das Drogas" : discursos e repressão em Pernambuco nos idos da ditadura (1964-1976)

Abstract

This paper aims to study the practices of repression of drug use and trafficking, based on the analysis of political, social and cultural discourses that circulated between 1964 and 1976. Our temporal cut is inserted both in the midst of the Brazilian civil-military dictatorship and in a period in which there was a reordering of internal politics to deal with the issue of the use and trafficking of illicit drugs. From official documents, texts produced by doctors and intellectuals, journalistic articles and speeches given by politicians, we seek to understand, under the contributions of the Discourse Analysis, how the narratives of repression to drugs were being conceived and put into practice. The work emphasized the state of Pernambuco, where it was possible to observe the police action aimed at the repression of illicit uses in poor neighborhoods of the capital city of Pernambuco, the emergence of characters who will be accused of promoting trafficking, and the difficulty in repressing the planting of marijuana in the interior of the state due to the strong power relations existing between the public administration and the landowners. At the national level, we can observe the three powers moving the debate on the issue. The legislative and executive powers proposed bills in an attempt to remedy what some of them considered a case of "public calamity," linking the use and trafficking of drugs to the degradation of moral values, as well as to communist practices. Insummarize, we were interested in problematizing the way in which these discourses sought to produce truthful effects and constitute a social imaginary about drugs, users and the public space, thus legitimizing repressive practices.