ABSTRACT
This article argues that an unpublished series of crônicas (short writings) written by José Lins do Rego (1901-1957) can contribute to the understanding of important aspects of the social and political life of Rio de Janeiro during the 1940s and 1950s, then capital of the Republic. Thousands of short writings published by the northeastern novelist in the newspaper O Globo, in a column titled Conversa de lotação (Bus conversations), which were never published in a book by the author, reveal the daily life of the Federal District under the intersubjective view of its inhabitants. The basis for such are the writer’s daily interactions with the passengers of a collective means of transport, which were characteristic of the city in the mid-twentieth century, in his commute from the southern part of the city to downtown. The selection of articles reproduced here seeks to be a sample of the issues debated in this kind of transient public space, the bus, by its citizen-passengers. In order to set analytical marks on a rather extensive production, we focus on two main angles: on the one hand, the national debate surrounding the presidential elections in October 1950; on the other, the municipal problems related to the urban growth of the city in the beginning of that decade, based on the reports captured by the short writings of Lins do Rego about the traffic jams and other disorders experienced by the population in the daily life of the city of Rio de Janeiro.
Keywords:
short writings; Rio de Janeiro; politics; José Lins do Rego; history