Memórias do autoritarismo sergipano : a democracia autoritaria em Sergipe entre 1947-1953

Abstract

The Brazilian redemocratization of 1945, marked by the fall of the Estado Novo and the return to a democratic regime, promoted the resurgence of political parties and public debate in the country. However, this process did not occur uniformly across all regions, displaying significant local specificities. In the state of Sergipe, the political landscape between the late 1940s and the early 1950s was characterized by a still strongly authoritarian environment and marked by arbitrary political practices, despite the national context of democratic opening. This work analyzes the dynamics of party politics during this period in Sergipe, considering the tensions between the advancement of democratic institutions and the persistence of personalist and oligarchic power structures. The methodology used was based on the documentary analysis of newspapers from the period, records from the Judicial Power Archive of Sergipe, in addition to the theoretical support from fundamental bibliographic works on the period, with emphasis on Skidmore (1982), Dantas (1989), Schwarcz and Starling (2018), and Dantas (2022). From these materials, the persistence of exclusionary political practices was identified, revealing the fragility of democratic institutionalization in the Sergipe context tied to the national scenario. It is concluded, therefore, that the redemocratization, although significant in legal and institutional terms, was asymmetrically experienced, with Sergipe being an example of the complexity and limits of this historical process.