Aqueles que merecem a opinião pública: justiça de paz, cidadania e mobilização política nas primeiras eleições no Grão-Pará (1827-1841)

Abstract

This thesis is devoted to studying the relationship between the first elections for representatives of the justice of the peace in Grão-Pará and the Cabano movement. Its scope ranges from 1827, with the regulation of this position, until 1833, when the third election for this position took place since its creation and which preceded the Cabano movement. The in-depth study of correspondence between municipal councils, judicial authorities, and provincial presidents, especially those concerning municipal elections, has proven that blacks, indigenous people and mixed-race people mobilized around local elections and assumed important positions in the legal and civil administration of towns, parishes and places in Grão-Pará between 1828 and 1834. It is demonstrated that despite the set of laws inaugurated with the 1824 Charter not extending many of its benefits to this segment of the population, the reality was quite different, since the appropriations made by the new legal devices informed daily struggles for expanding citizenship. This thesis argues, therefore, that the Cabano movement was born out of ethnic and political conflicts that had as an important stage the elections of lay judges. The experience of political mobilization, both in their election, deposition and acclamation, was in constant dialogue with a repertoire of new laws and a constitutional and liberal vocabulary, and was therefore fundamental to the emergence and diversity of dynamics of the Cabano movement. Finally, it is shown that the discussion raised by the Cabano movement in the Court in Rio de Janeiro, about the need to defend an idea of “order” and “civilization”, contributed to the arguments of the “lawyers” for the review of the justice of the peace, which culminated in its national reformulation in 1841.