José Jayme Ferreira de Vasconcellos: um jornalista mediador na dinâmica política das elites em Mato Grosso (1917-1945)

Abstract

This doctoral dissertation analyzes the intellectual and political trajectory of the carioca lawyer José Jayme Ferreira de Vasconcellos in Mato Grosso from 1917 to 1945. The time frame in focus refers to the character’s arrival in Campo Grande, then a city located in the south of Mato Grosso, until the final period of the Estado Novo during the Getúlio Vargas administration. Although this delimitation is established, the events preceding Vasconcellos' migration are also investigated, particularly moments when he still lived in the federal capital, given that during this time he accumulated intellectual knowledge and interacted with politicians from Mato Grosso, particularly senator Antônio Francisco Azeredo and federal deputy Aníbal Benício de Toledo. With this proposal, the central objective of this research is to relate the political party activities of José Jayme Ferreira de Vasconcellos to the political dynamics of the elites in Mato Grosso. Therefore, it is considered that the power structures in the country after the Proclamation of the Republic, in 1889, acquired new characteristics and requirements. Specifically in Mato Grosso, the newly installed regime changed the scenario of oligarchic disputes, thus creating a new context of political-institutional reorganization in the state and new practices of confrontation among the ruling groups. The republican discourse of progress and civilization contributed to the ambivalence of the mechanisms of political action within the region, namely the continuation of physical violence linked to the use of resources from the symbolic field, particularly political representations manifested in newspapers, books, and magazines. From then on, both accession and co-optation of influential individuals into the spheres of power became routine practices of the ruling elites, possessing specific cultural resources that composed the red tape system of Mato Grosso. Thus, the main hypothesis of this study proposes that the political dimension in Mato Grosso in the first decades of the 20th century established new directions for the intellectual field, especially in Cuiabá and Campo Grande, by integrating intellectuals into the power spaces and contributing to political projects, alliances, and party agreements. José Jayme Ferreira de Vasconcellos is considered a mediating journalist here because he influenced the construction and dissemination of cultural assets connected to politics, particularly through the “Jornal do Comércio,” a communication channel of which he was the owner.