Representações sobre o prefeito Severino Cabral dentro de uma cultura política modernizante na cidade de Campina Grande (1958-1963).

Abstract

This study seeks to analyze and understand some political and cultural phenomena present in the history of the city of Campina Grande in the late 1950s and early 1960s, during which Mayor Severino Cabral channeled, in his theatralization of politics, symbols and representations about the city that made her identify with the ideals of progress and modernization, characteristic of the developmentalist policy of the nation's President Juscelino Kubitschek. At the same time, other symbolic references of national politics also weigh in building the political image of Cabral in the city, such as the representations of Coronelismo, populism and clientelism. Taking as its starting point the 1959 municipal election campaign in the construction of these representations, and presenting the different faces of Cabral as a political figure, this study also aims to outline the formation of a particular urban imaginary, in which popular representations about Cabral took shape, leading into account the peculiarities of the political, social and cultural Campina Grande of the studied period. Through analysis of the style of Cabral’s conciliatory policy, several images of the city emerge in this work: images of modernity, the city’s commercial and agricultural past, the policy of social handouts and the wishes of progress and industrialization, glimpsing Cabral as an archetypal political figure to the political history of the city.