Sob a sombra da águia romana: manifestações fascistas em textos jornalísticos de Ribeirão Preto/SP (1935-1936)

Abstract

This article aims to analyze manifestations of adherence to Italian fascism in periodicals circulating in Ribeirão Preto, an inland city in the state of São Paulo, with particular attention to issues published between 1935 and 1936. In line with documentary analysis standards in the humanities, we mobilize a theoretical-conceptual framework alongside the materialities of the local press and transnational conjunctures, including Italian immigration, the regime’s propaganda machinery, and the unfolding of the Second Italo-Ethiopian War. Based on readings of issues of the Ribeirão Preto newspaper Diário da Manhã, we map recurring patterns: exaltation of the Duce and the so-called “myth of Romanity”; moralization of “order,” “unity,” and “discipline”; the aestheticization of sacrifice; legitimation of colonial violence as a “civilizing mission”; and the circulation of bulletins, telegrams, and cultural announcements that link local associative networks to the agendas of an expanding fascism in early twentieth-century Italy. We thus show how the local press operated as a channel of mediation and an ideological apparatus, attuning pro-fascist sensibilities in a city markedly shaped by a strong Italian presence, notably mobilized in family-based labor within the large coffee plantations.