The aim of this article is to investigate the imagination of the first generation of republican parliamentarians in Brazil regarding the terms of political citizenship. Based on a systematic study of the Senate and Chamber of Deputies annals, this study retains itself in the process of electoral issues regulation in 1891’s constitution and in the debate around the formulation of the law Rosa e Silva, in the years of 1903 and 1904. In these two moments, the debate about the expansion or limitation of the right to vote reedited and expanded the classical frontiers of Census Suffrage (such as the literary census and the profession test). In addition, the debate acquired form in the disputes about secret or open vote and about the dislocation or not of electors for enlistment or voting in the comarcas headquarters. To the dispute about the censitary principle was added a strife about the civic nature of citizens. It is argued that in the beginning of the First Brazilian Republic a sentiment of heroic citizenship prevailed, in contrast to the Electoral Code of 1932 and its opposed principle of protégés citizenship.
First Brazilian Republic; Rosa e Silva law; Electoral reform; Secret vote; Citizenship