Vigiar, informar e reprimir : a mira do serviço nacional de informações (SNI) sobre a cultura paraibana (1964-1985)

Abstract

This study examines the surveillance carried out by the National Information Service (SNI) over the artistic and cultural field in Paraíba during the Brazilian military dictatorship (1964-1985), considering the relevance that the cultural arena acquired at the time as a space for expression and political engagement by oppositional leftist groups. The research is based on the analysis of documents from the SNI Archive, available through the National Archives Information System (SIAN). As records produced by repressive agencies in authoritarian contexts, these documents are classified as “sensitive” (Bauer & Gertz, 2015) and present methodological challenges, since they were produced from a biased perspective, often marked by omissions and distortions. The corpus includes cultural events held in Paraíba, activities of artists from other states circulating in the region, and the trajectories of local artists with national projection, encompassing the fields of cinema, theater, music, and visual arts, through the analysis of dossiers that reveal forms of direct or indirect surveillance over these expressions. Complementarily, the second chapter incorporates an analysis of the cultural coverage of the newspaper A União, the official press of the state government, to understand how the official discourse articulated censorship, promotion, and cultural control at the local level—an essential element for reconstructing the cultural landscape of Paraíba, given the scarcity of studies on the subject during the period under review. The study is grounded in the field of New Political History, drawing on the concept of political culture to reflect on accommodation as a defining feature of Brazilian political culture (Motta, 2018). This notion is applied to understand the tacit incorporation of leftist artists and intellectuals into the ranks of a right-wing government, through forms of accommodation that preserved order and avoided confrontation. The concept of political culture also proves fundamental for addressing the anti-communist imaginary, since imagination encompasses the idea of representation, a constitutive element of the concept itself. In addition, the study draws on Raoul Girardet’s (1987) formulations, particularly the notions of the “mythology of conspiracy” and the “myth of the Savior,” to understand how certain narratives guided repressive actions. This research is part of the area of concentration in History and Historical Culture and the research line History and Regionalities.