"Reuniões perigosas": ajuntamento ilícito e política na Corte regencial (1831 - 1837)

Abstract

During the intense regency period, the political disputes and the social issues were integrated transforming the spaces of the Court-city of Rio de Janeiro into a place of conflicts. The institutional instability and the urban disturbs imposed to the regency authorities in charge of ruling the nation, the challenge of keeping the order in the Empire’s capital. Hereafter, the repressive apparatus of the State used a legal police service that besides combating the criminal offences, started to act in a more preventive way towards harmful behavior, considered uncivilized, troublesome and suspect. In this sense, gatherings of people were treated as potentially criminal actions. This research has as its main object the illicit gathering, its representations in the sociopolitical context from 1831 to 1837, more precisely, between the turbulent end of the First Reign and the growth of the conservative return. The purpose, therefore, is to investigate and identify – considering the analysis of the criminal files located at the National Archives of Rio de Janeiro –, in which circumstances, gatherings among three or more individuals were treated or classified as illicit, taking into consideration the new legal codes and the political motivations regarding the “social issue”, in a city stigmatized by the logic of the urban slavery. Finally, it will be analyzed the forms social actors interact to the application of the legal norms about their behavior and collective actions