Ritmos e dissonâncias: controle e disciplinarização dos desvalidos e indigentes nas políticas públicas do Amazonas (1852-1915)

Abstract

This research encompasses the creation of shelters destined to mendicants and indigents in the city of Manaus, at the end of the Imperial regime and at the beginning of the Republic. Subjacent to this process, we worked on the mechanisms of intensification of the social differences from the creation of the Province in 1852, and therefore, poverty became not only visible to governors, but also a disturb to the emerging mercantilist and bureaucratic élite. The adequation of production and consumering relations to the liberal forms of production, coincident to the organization of Brazilian nation conducted the deliberation of a series of public politics which aimed at adapting individuals and space to the modern demands. Habits, customs, traditions and ways of living had to be submitted to a rigid control, and behavior changing was fundamental to that. Within this reforming picture, those who did not want or could not be immediately absorved by the productive process due to a series of reasons which included orfanity and mendicancy, started to be regarded with mistrust and became an aim to cohibiting politics which conducted them to enclosure. The creation of shelters destined to poor people had an educational character for children, as well as a medical aspect to sick and indigent people. This process was conducted within a philanthropic discourse which hid both the growth of poverty and a series of segregation intentions