A literatura de cordel na terceira república: tradições de injustiça e resistência social no imaginário cordelista (1945-1964)

Abstract

The period that became known in republican history as the Third Republic (1945-1964) or redemocratization, ironically, was inaugurated with the deposition of Getúlio Vargas by conservative liberal elites, united with the high command of the Armed Forces, as they no longer saw in Vargas and in the State (1930-1945) that of their economic aspirations, which would meet their interests. This period, which also ended with the deposition of President João Goulart by the elites and the high command of the military in 1964. This historical “irony” shows us that these nineteen years of redemocratization were of extreme political-institutional turmoil around Vargas political model, known as national-developmentalism, with its emphasis on the full intervention of the State in the entire process of socioeconomic development of the nation and the intense implementation of laborism, with the purpose of expanding labor rights to the working classes. Therefore, this political-institutional effervescence can be noticed by the excessive political disputes between the elites themselves and between them and the working classes, due to different national projects that clashed and the incensing search of several social actors for the appropriation of power structures. We chose, therefore, the cordel literature elaborated in the period of the Third Republic, in order to extract from them, themes such as injustices and social inequalities, which, in a way, show us the presence of the class struggle in the traditions of the imaginary cordelist and how was so present in this poetic imaginary, the dispossession of the working classes and country people by the elites, thus opening up the extreme social inequality. On the other hand, we also highlight the strong presence of social resistance in the cordelist tradition through the creation of “messianic myths” and the summoning of the popular layers to political awakening, which aimed to lead the less favored to fight for their interests and to actively participate in the political-institutional process in the Third Republic.