Trocas políticas entre “amigos” e prestígio de Paulo de Frontin na Primeira República (1896-1911)

Abstract

This paper discusses the political articulations that involved the distribution of public resources through personal relations in the First Brazilian Republic. We used traces of Paulo de Frontin's trajectory between 1896 and 1911 to understand the reciprocal links in the formation of political clienteles in urban environments such as the one of the Federal Capital at the turn of the twentieth century. This character had much of his biography history in the city of Rio de Janeiro. During the last decades of the nineteenth century and throughout the first republican regime, Frontin had an intense activity as an engineer, teacher and businessman. In these functions, he accumulated the prestige and a network of allies that assured him to become one of the most supported leaderships of the Carioca policy. This way, our chronological cut was guided by the moments in which he occupied public positions in strategic areas of the city engineering, like the railway and of urban improvements. These positions were the direction of the Estrada de Ferro Central do Brasil (1896-1897), direction of the Central Avenue Construction Commission (1903- 1904) and return to the railroad board (1910-1911).