“To stop voting is to vote for the enemy”: Catholic Church and press in building voters in Rio Grande do Sul (1945-1950)

Abstract

: In order to understand the mobilization aimed at building voters in the initial period of the democratic experience, that is, building an interest in the act of voting at the time of the return of elections, the creation of national political parties and the significant expansion of the registered voter, this article analyzes the role of specific agents in this mobilization work: the Catholic Church, the Catholic Electoral League and the Catholic press. The study has Rio Grande do Sul as its spatial cutout and the newspapers Correio Rio-Grandense and Jornal do Dia, as well as Unitas - bulletin of the ecclesiastical province of Rio Grande do Sul. For such agents, in this moment of expanding electoral participation, how should the Catholic voter behave? What meanings were attributed to the act of voting? The construction of the Catholic voter is driven by a markedly anti-communist speech, articulated to the Church's positioning strategies before the State and to the practices of mobilization of the clergy and the Catholic Electoral League with a view to enlistment and voting.