O Bando do Cigano Deolindo. Higienismo e Criminalidade na Belle Époque Capixaba (1890-1898)

Abstract

This research aims to provide subsidies for the understanding of the representations created by Espírito Santo society through the press and repression agencies on the gypsy Deolindo José Cardoso and his gang at the end of the 19th century. As primary documentation, newspapers, official letters from the Espírito Santo State Police Department and police inquiries were analyzed - dominant documentary corpus in this investigation, which deal with the police repression of the gypsy group Deolindo, which caused his death in 1898 in Comarca de Piúma, in the south of the state of Espírito Santo, being, therefore, a documental research. The thesis used a specific chronological cut between the years of 1890 and 1898, a period that includes the enactment of the Republican Penal Code of 1890 and the year of 1898, in which the death of Deolindo and the arrest of members of his gang in the Comarca de Piúma occurred. In favor of the modernization of cities, based on positivist scientism, the delimitation of spaces began, associated with hygiene issues that, under the scientific aegis, ordered not only the places, but also the bodies. Inserted in a capitalist perspective, a new work order was established and caused the expulsion of gypsy groups considered undesirable by the newly inaugurated republican regime, with the Penal Code being the instrument responsible for legitimizing the police repression against these groups at the time. Therefore, we aim to understand how the practices of power are materialized in the existing relationships between the gypsies analyzed in this research and the Espírito Santo society of the referenced period, through the analyzed documents. For this investigation, given the distinct nature of the sources, we based ourselves on Roger Chartier's thinking regarding the concepts of practices and representations, and Carlo Ginzburg's regarding the principles of the evidential paradigm, in order to find traces in the contents of the documentary sources. analyzed capable of revealing the social plots and particularities that involved Deolindo and his band in the historical period referenced by this research.