This book is based on a master’s thesis in history at the Universidade de São Paulo. The author, a native of Araraquara (São Paulo), analyzed the political development of the early republican years of his hometown in a larger, national context. The particular incidents that he chose were the assassination of the ruling coronel and the state’s response to it. By closely examining the events as well as public and private reactions, Telarolli skillfully shows the fragility of the political institution (PRP—Partido Republicano Paulista) and by inference the fundamental differences between the coronelismo of the center-south and that of the Northeast.
The episode involved three related acts of political violence: first, in January 1897, the killing of the ruling coronel by a political supporter of the monarchist opposition coronel in Araraquara; this was followed by the lynching of the assassin and his uncle, both held by the police who failed to prevent the retaliatory murders; and finally, a political farce of trials replete with tampered juries that acquitted the followers of the late PRP coronel.
The so-called “incidents of Araraquara” of 1897 could have been dismissed as a minor political affair, nothing more than a power struggle between the die-hard monarchists and the emergent PRP oligarchy. But the 1890s were not normal times. Telarolli argues that the personal ambition of Governor Manuel Ferraz Campos Sales, growing monarchist discontent, and regional revolts were the prime factors for the state to intervene in Araraquara and to assert itself as a means of thwarting any future threat to the partisan harmony of the Paulista oligarchy. The state’s response satisfied no one. The PRP split, with two of its leading directors denouncing Campos Sales and joining the in-party opposition. This weakened the governor’s chances for the presidency in 1898.
Using the decidedly local incident, Telarolli examines an important historiographical debate on the nature of coronelismo. Victor Nunes Leal in his pathbreaking work, first published in 1948, presented the thesis that local coronéis were political creatures of the state-dominant party. Such a thesis has been steadily challenged by recent studies on other regions, where the political system evolved around a few personalistic oligarchs, not around organized parties, as in the case of São Paulo. Throughout the book, Leal’s thesis is substantially enhanced: the PRP granted the ruling clique a carte blanche in the matters of local administration of justice, elections, and patronage (p. 129).
However, Telarolli has taken a little too far Leal’s point that coronelismo was a symptom of the decadence of backland landlords. That the state and its PRP took extreme measures to prop up the ruling faction in Araraquara should not be construed as the consequences of the decadence of the rural elite (p. 126). On the contrary, it has been shown by Charles Tilly, Barrington Moore, Jr., and most recently Theda Skocpol that the exploding economic and social transformation of agrarian society results in the rise of a strong central state, capable of exerting its influence down to the local level. The São Paulo of the 1890s, and in particular Araraquara, went through such a modernizing transformation, as Telarolli points out (pp. 22-23). The rapid economic and social growth of Araraquara directly contributed to political instability, in the setting of which the assassination of the dominant coronel by an “outsider” must be placed. Leal’s thesis that decay in local power invited state intervention should have been reexamined in proper perspective.
Telarolli, in spite of the methodological quirks, offers first-rate reading material for those interested in the dynamics of the regional and local politics of the First Brazilian Republic. The book is well-documented with a broad sweep of newspapers, court records, and archival sources of the câmara municipal of Araraquara. As such, it is an important contribution to the regional historiography of the center-south.
