Memórias e políticas simbólicas: a construção da imagem do ex-deputado estadual Francisco Vasconcelos de Arruda (Ceará, 1945-1964).

Abstract

This paper aims to present the memories built around the image of former State Deputy Francisco Vasconcelos de Arruda, better known as doctor Arruda, showing how the politician came to be a course from the symbolic policies that stitch relations of interest so that its image can positively reach the social milieu, using as space of action the city of Ipaumirim-CE in the period between 1945 to 1964, the so-called Populist Republic. Dr. Arruda was a protagonist in the book Itinerary of a Leader, written by his brother in the year 1989, which narrates the dramas that the politician spent since the day he was born in the year 1910, until the day of his death in 1972. We find in the writing of the book a long and romanticized reading about the politician, constructing his image in a glorified way so that it marks the memory of those who did not know him in life, proven through testimonies, poems and tributes paid to Dr. Arruda during his performance as a politician. We do not want in this work of historiographic character to deconstruct the heroic discourse that characterizes Arruda, assigning another way of thinking his image, but rather, we intend to present as Arruda his paths, making his choices within his possibilities as a politician and his way of acting as a man public that reasoned within the perspectives of his time.