Elites políticas, cidade e desenvolvimento regional: Chapecó, 1950-1955

Abstract

The present study/work searches to understand how the speeches of “modern city” have occurred in Chapeco during the first years of the 1950s. Chapeco city, which is located in the West region of Santa Catarina State, was founded in 1917. After this date, the colonizer companies' activities intensified while bringing for the region settlers from Rio Grande do Sul. The company with more emphasis was called Companhia Colonizadora Bertaso, which belonged to Colonel Ernesto Bertaso. Besides acting in the colonization, the Colonel and his son Serafim Bertaso were important figures to think about the urban space of Chapeco city and contributed to the modernity which was intended to install and that began in the 1030’s. The general goal of the research is to understand how the newspapers A Voz de Chapecó and O Imparcial ( The Voice of Chapeco city and The Impartial), which circled in the beginning of the 1950s presented their debates about politics and the city and how both contributed to the modernization and development of Chapeco city after the 1951 elections, modifying the chapecoense political scenery. Observing the sources, it was intended to understand the way the news spread by the individuals from the city influenced the economy and the local development. As specific aims, it is proposed to understand who were the authors of the news propagated in newspapers. Analyze which position was defended and combated. Identify the relation these individuals/newspapers had with local political parties. Understand how the city policies were addressed. And, understand how modernity and development were treated by them. It is proposed then, to understand how the urban modernizing project occurred between 1950 and 1955. This time delimitation derives from the fact that during the first years of the 1950s considerable political changes occurred in Chapeco city due to the appearance of new parties and leaderships evolved in the elections of 1950. It was the beginning of a decade which brought meaningful changes to the chapecoense history, with very troubling city elections and the lynching of four people in the public park. In the course of many years, the newspapers and the public men 's actions were turned to deconstruct the idea of a city without order. The newspaper’ pages will be our allies in search of understanding how this modernizing project started to gain shape and culminated with the creation of Chapecó Alimentos (SAIC), the first large-scale meatpacking company that gained prominence and economic importance. It is seeked to understand how the speeches written in the newspapers helped the dream of transforming a small town into aprominent city to become reality. It was given attention to the political rivalry caused by the 1950 elections of and that had been, unintentionally, present along the five subsequent years, contributing to concrete actions of improvement in urban spaces because it was the rivalry and the political changes which emphasized the criticism related to the urban development of Chapeco city and its fragilities, at the same time that stimulate the public agents to search for solutionated the presented problems. To carry out this research, several sources were used such as: journalistic sources, iconographic sources, oral interviews, period books, among others.