Biopower and racism in Guerra do Contestad

the social periculosity attributed to caboclas populations

Abstract

This article aims to analyze the Contestado War, which took place between the years 1912 and 1916, in the lands of the southern plateau of Southern Brazil, between the States of Paraná, Santa Catarina and Rio Grande do Sul, as a product of biopower and racism, in which conflict the caboclo populations were associated with social danger, considering the role of race, racism and socially imputed inferiority. Although this historical legacy reverberates in different ways in current times, I highlight how the cabocla population of the Contested lands has outlined resistance strategies, aimed at recognizing their existence and their cultural and religious traditions. The methodology brings together bibliographic and photographic sources, as well as considering the historical, cultural and economic context, seeking to analyze the phenomenon of the Contestado War through the analytical lenses of biopower, racism and social danger. It is demonstrated how photographs of the conflict were mobilized as devices of power, and how the concept of counter-memory, as formulated by Michel Foucault, allows us to understand how memory is always in dispute given the plurality of powers, forces and practices socially existing. It is concluded that in the case of the people who inhabited the South of Brazil at the beginning of the 20th century, the construction of social danger occurred according to a particularly violent state racism, showing how in the historical situation that generated the Contestado conflict, biopower was exercised through racism, where the State and institutions of power perpetrated violence and massacres on the indocile bodies of insurgents.

Key words: Contestado War; biopower; social periculosity; population “cabocla”.