RACE, WRITING AND PRESS: THE CASE OF THE NEWSPAPER O MESTRE BARBEIRO (PORTO ALEGRE, 1835)

The article addresses an anti-liberal newspaper, O Mestre Barbeiro, published in Porto Alegre in 1835 during the months prior to the outbreak of the Revolucao Farroupilha. The proposal is to analyze two aspects: on the one hand, the farcical delegation of the writing in the figure of a barber and the pertinence of the identity traits of that figure -it is deduced that the mestre barbeiro was black- in a context in which the access to citizenship of the subaltern sectors was being questioned (including the slaves and ex-slaves). On the other hand, the mechanisms used to (de)compose the discourse of the imaginary writer, located in the ideological antipodes of the true author of the journal, through a cumulative series of cuts and additions that resulted in a distortion of his senses.