Police against bandits in Western Paraná: Joaquim Alves da Silva’s poems as a memory of agrarian conflicts (1960-70)

Abstract

Study centered on the analysis of the literary work Como era o Sudoeste e porque matei Joaquim Coelho, of the poet and soldier of the Military Police Joaquim Alves da Silva. This source, still unknown to historiography, constitutes a promising discursive field for investigating the history of criminality present in the west and southwest of Paraná in the 1960s and 1970s. It seeks to understand the representations that the narrator builds around the police action in the fight against jaguncismo and banditismo, as well as to analyze the information that it presents on the bandits who acted in these regions. As a result, Joaquim Alves da Silva's work contributes to the problematization of the history produced around the region, in particular by providing a counterpoint to the official history and much of the historiography, which spreads harmonic perspectives and conceals conflicts, especially land disputes and the presence of bandits.