A corrupção como arma política: seletividade na tolerância, eleição e derrubada de governos no Brasil (1955–1964)

Abstract

This thesis analyzes how corruption, from its conversion into a public problem, came to be used as a political weapon in the dispute for the State in Brazil between 1955 and 1964. In the context of political disputes, it seeks to demonstrate the selective use of corruption in the tolerance of practices that contributed to the maintenance of the Juscelino Kubitschek government; its use as a political currency in the election of the Jânio Quadros government and also as one of the justifying elements of the civil-military coup in the deposition of João Goulart. There is a selectivity in the political use of the phenomenon of corruption triggered by different groups. We verified that the civil-military right, with the repositioning of agents, but with the same State project, triggered the anti-corruption flag. This group, which was not homogeneous and underwent changes during the period of democratic experience, will be the same group that will come to power through the 1964 coup. However, the use of corruption as a political weapon was not only activated by the right. Although more mobilized by the right, the left also raised the flag of corruption in the political game, as in the CPI of IPES/IBAD. In the midst of political disputes lies a claim to the anti-corruption flag in the dispute for the State. In theoretical terms, the contributions of Pierre Bourdieu were used, to think about the dispute of symbolic capital by different agents in the political field and the contributions of Antonio Gramsci, to analyze the construction of the hegemonic consensus of the anti-corruption discourse through the Private Apparatus of Hegemony in the dispute by the state. As a source, press material available in the Digital Newspaper Library of the National Library (Jornal Correio da Manhã, Tribuna da Imprensa, Última Hora, Jornal do Brasil, Correio Brasiliense, Jornal do Commercio and Revista Manchete) was used, in the collection of newspaper O Globo and in the collection of the newspaper Estadão. Official documents such as decrees, laws and institutional acts were also used, in addition to the Parliamentary Inquiry Commission of the IPES/IBAD Complex.