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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 29 April 2014
An examination of the Brazilian newspaper O Combate, this article accomplishes four goals. First, it defines the politics of a periodical long cited but little understood by historians. Second, it documents O Combate's place, alongside other ‘yellow press’ outlets, in the making of a ‘public sphere’ in São Paulo. Third, it situates the same publications' role in the bringing into being of a more commercial, publicity-driven press, which would shed the yellow press's radicalism and abet the collapse of the public sphere of its heyday. Fourth, it suggests that O Combate's radical republicanism was one fount of the democratic radicalism of the late 1920s and early 1930s, as well as of the regionally chauvinist constitutionalism of 1932–7. In this rare application of the ‘public sphere’ idea to twentieth-century Brazil, readers may also detect an account closer to Jürgen Habermas’ original formulation than that found in the historiography of nineteenth-century Spanish America.
Al examinar el periódico brasileño O Combate, este artículo busca cuatro metas. La primera define a la política de un periódico largamente citado, pero poco entendido por historiadores. La segunda documenta el lugar de O Combate, junto a otros periódicos amarillistas, en la construcción de una ‘esfera pública’ en São Paulo. La tercera sitúa el papel de estas publicaciones en el desarrollo de una prensa más comercial propulsada por la publicidad que dejaría el radicalismo de la prensa amarilla y así facilitaría el colapso de la esfera pública del momento. La cuarta sugiere que el republicanismo radical de O Combate fue una fuente de radicalismo democrático de finales de los años 1920 y principios de los 1930s, así como del constitucionalismo chauvinista regional de 1932–7. En esta rara aplicación de la idea de ‘esfera pública’ del Brasil del siglo XX, los lectores posiblemente también detectarán una narrativa más cercana a la formulación original de Jürgen Habermas que la que se encuentra en la historiografía de la América española del siglo XIX.
Analisando o jornal brasileiro O Combate, este artigo cumpre quatro metas. Primeiro, define-se a posição política de um periódico bastante citado, mas pouco compreendido por historiadores. Segundo, documenta-se o lugar de O Combate em relação a outras publicações da ‘imprensa amarela’ na construção de uma ‘esfera pública’ em São Paulo. Terceiro, contextualiza o papel destas publicações no surgimento de uma imprensa mais comercial e dirigida à publicidade que terminaria com o radicalismo da imprensa amarela e contribuiria para o colapso da esfera pública de seus dias áureos. Quarto, sugere-se que o republicanismo radical de O Combate foi uma fonte do radicalismo democrático do final da década de 1920 e início da década de 1930 assim como do chauvinismo constitucionalista e regionalista de 1932–7. Nesta rara aplicação da ideia de ‘esfera pública’ no Brasil do século XX, os leitores também poderão detectar um relato que se aproxima mais da formulação original de Jürgen Habermas que daquelas encontradas na historiografia da América espanhola do século XIX.
1 Fausto, Boris, Trabalho urbano e conflito social (4th edition, São Paulo: Difel, 1986 [1976])Google Scholar, pp. 160 n. 7, 210; Martins, Wilson, História da inteligência brasileira, vol. 6 (2nd edition, São Paulo: T. A. Queiroz, 1996 [1978])Google Scholar, p. 98; Weinstein, Barbara, ‘Impressões da elite sobre os movimentos da classe operária: a cobertura da greve em O Estado de S. Paulo, 1902–1907’, in Helena Capelato, Maria, Lígia Prado, Maria and Weinstein, Barbara, O bravo matutino: imprensa e ideologica no jornal ‘O Estado de S. Paulo’ (São Paulo: Alfa-Omega, 1980), pp. 135–6Google Scholar; Andrews, George Reid, Blacks and Whites in São Paulo, Brazil, 1888–1988 (Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 1991)Google Scholar, p. 340; Wolfe, Joel, Working Women, Working Men: São Paulo and the Rise of Brazil's Industrial Working Class (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1993)Google Scholar, p. 23. It should be noted that none of these authors took O Combate as their principal subject; for most, the use of O Combate as a source forced them to characterise a newspaper that, despite its importance, hardly features in the historiography of the Brazilian press.
2 See Reis de Queiroz, Suely Robles, Os radicais da república (São Paulo: Brasiliense, 1986)Google Scholar; and Fausto, Boris, ‘Brazil: The Social and Political Structure of the First Republic, 1889–1930’, in Bethell, Leslie (ed.), Cambridge History of Latin America, vol. 5 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), pp. 808–9Google Scholar.
3 Quotes from O Combate (hereafter OC), 30 June 1915, p. 2.
4 OC, 24 April 1915, p. 2. The term ‘Paulista’ as an adjective indicates that something is of the state of São Paulo; as a noun it refers to someone from the same state. The term ‘yellow press’ was borrowed, in translation (imprensa amarella, in the orthography of the early twentieth century), from the Anglo-American press. In its original sense, it indicated the lower quality of paper used in printing, but it came to reference a host of reader-friendly features found in yellow press publications, from photographs to voyeuristic stories, cartoons to an ‘us-against-them’ populist humour. For a chatty, ‘great men’ introduction to the transatlantic exchanges that created the Anglo-American yellow press, see Brendon, Piers, The Life and Death of the Press Barons (New York: Atheneum, 1983)Google Scholar, chaps. 1–8 (on Lord Northcliffe, whose influence on the founders of O Combate and of O Estado de S. Paulo's evening edition is noted below, see esp. chap. 7). Among many other things, Burrows, Edwin and Wallace's, MikeGotham: A History of New York City to 1898 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999)Google Scholar provides a history-in-miniature of the western Atlantic side of this story, where the journalists involved tended to have politics closer to the Rangel Pestanas’ radical republicanism than to Lord Northcliffe's Toryism: see pp. 522–8, 640–1, 676–9, 1151–4, 1189–90, 1213–16.
5 Facuri Coelho Lambert, Hercídia Mara, ‘Festa e participação popular: São Paulo, início do século XX’, História, 13 (1994), p. 123Google Scholar; de Souza Martins, José, Subúrbio. Vida cotidiana e história no subúrbio da cidade de São Paulo: São Caetano, do fim do império ao fim da república velha (São Paulo: Hucitec, 1992)Google Scholar, p. 13. See also Barbara Weinstein's résumé of the widely shared understanding of Paulista public life that undergirds these two quotations: ‘Postcolonial Brazil’, in Moya, José C. (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Latin American History (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), pp. 227–31.Google Scholar
6 Weinstein writes, ‘[Maria Lígia] Prado and others have used the many newspapers published in São Paulo as crucial primary sources, while some historians have made the press their specific object of inquiry. Despite the robust state of newspaper journalism in this era, with at least a dozen mainstream dailies being published, along with more ephemeral popular and working-class publications, these are rarely portrayed as forming the basis for a bourgeois public sphere’: see Weinstein, ‘Postcolonial Brazil’, p. 229. That essay's footnotes suggest that one could replace Weinstein's ‘are rarely portrayed’ with ‘have not been portrayed’.
7 Sabato, Hilda, The Many and the Few: Political Participation in Republican Buenos Aires (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2001)Google Scholar, p. 2. Sabato's oeuvre (see also ‘Citizenship, Political Participation, and the Formation of the Public Sphere in Buenos Aires, 1850s–1880s’, Past and Present, 136 (1992), pp. 139–63) offers the most celebrated example of the application of the Habermasian ‘public sphere’ idea to Latin American history. It is also representative of the literature in that the latter is dominated by work on nineteenth-century Spanish America, while the twentieth century and especially twentieth-century Brazil have been conspicuously absent until recently. For an overview, see Piccato, Pablo, ‘Public Sphere in Latin America: A Map of The Historiography’, Social History, 35: 2 (2010), pp. 165–92CrossRefGoogle Scholar; a recent exception is Woodard, James P., A Place in Politics: São Paulo, Brazil, from Seigneurial Republicanism to Regionalist Revolt (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2009)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
8 See Jürgen Habermas (trans. Thomas Burger), The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1991), part IV.
9 Saboia, Edith, ‘Francisco Rangel Pestana: notas biográficas por ocasião do centenário do seu nascimento, 1839–1939’, Revista do Arquivo Municipal, 61 (1939), p. 32Google Scholar; de Melo, Luís Correia, Dicionário de autores paulistas (São Paulo: n.p., 1954)Google Scholar, p. 470; J. Cordeiro, P. Leite, ‘Necrológios dos sócios falecidos em 1951’, Revista do Instituto Histórico e Geográfico de São Paulo (hereafter RIHGSP), 50 (1952), pp. 261–2Google Scholar; ‘Falecimentos’, O Estado de S. Paulo (hereafter OESP), 19 April 1951, p. 6; OC, 12 March 1918, p. 1; OC, 7 Dec. 1920, p. 1; OC, 25 March 1922, p. 1; Dias, Everardo, História das lutas sociais no Brasil (2nd edition, São Paulo: Alfa-Omega, 1977 [1962])Google Scholar, p. 108; Martins, História da inteligência, p. 200.
10 OC, 1 Oct. 1926, p. 1; OESP, 2 Oct. 1926, p. 6; OC, 2 Oct. 1926, p. 1; OC, 8 Oct. 1926, p. 1; OC, 1 Oct. 1928, p. 1.
11 Saboia, ‘Francisco Rangel Pestana’, p. 32; João Gogliano to Nilo Peçanha, São Paulo, 19 July 1921, in ‘Correspondencia recebida dos estados de São Paulo … de junho a setembro de 1921…’, Museu da República, Arquivo Nilo Peçanha, caixa 55.
12 OC, 5 May 1915, p. 2.
13 OC, 24 April 1915, p. 1.
14 Ibid. On Paulista machine politics during these years, see Woodard, A Place in Politics, esp. pp. 33–47.
15 Revista da Academia Paulista de Letras, 9 (1940), pp. 123–24; Cavalheiro, Edgard (ed.), Testamento de uma geração (Porto Alegre: Livraria do Globo, 1944), pp. 227–36Google Scholar; Peixoto, Silveira, Falam os escritores, vol. 1 (2nd edition, São Paulo: Conselho Estadual de Cultura, 1971 [1941]), pp. 185–91Google Scholar; Melo, Dicionário de autores, pp. 44–5, 372; de Menezes, Raimundo, Dicionário literário brasileiro (2nd edition, Rio de Janeiro: Livros Técnicos e Científicos, 1978 [1969]), pp. 38–9Google Scholar; Sant'Ana, João Gabriel, Repertório biográfico e genealógico paulista (São Paulo: n.p., 1987)Google Scholar, pp. 67, 69; Nobre, Freitas, História da imprensa de São Paulo (São Paulo: Edições Leia, 1950)Google Scholar, p. 209; OC, 27 April 1915, p. 2 (quoted); OC, 14 March 1916, p. 1; OC, 14 March 1918, p. 2; OC, 3 Nov. 1919, p. 2; OC, 3 Nov. 1919, p. 3; OC, 4 Nov. 1919, p. 3; Benedicto de Andrade to Ruy Barbosa, Rio de Janeiro, 15 April 1915, Casa de Rui Barbosa, CR71/5 (‘to defend…’).
16 O Parafuso (hereafter OP), 20 Oct. 1917; A Guide to the Press of Central and South America, 2nd edition, part II: Brazil. Paraguay. Guiana (French), March 1921, from Foreign Office Library, published in George Philip (ed.), British Documents on Foreign Affairs: Reports and Papers from the Foreign Office Confidential Print, part II: From the First to the Second World War, Series D: Latin America, 1914–1939, vol. 1: South America, 1914–1922 (Bethesda, MD: University Publications of America, 1989), pp. 271–339; Association of National Advertisers, Advertising and Merchandising in Brazil: Material Gathered by Harold McD. Brown, Corona Typewriter Company, for the Export Committee (New York: Association of National Advertisers, 1921), p. 50; Annibal Machado to Diretório Central, São Paulo, 30 Aug. 1926, Arquivo do Instituto Histórico e Geográfico de São Paulo, Arquivo Partido Democrático, pacote 45; C. R. Cameron, ‘Fascism in São Paulo’, Report no. 167, São Paulo, 29 Oct. 1928, National Archives and Records Administration, College Park, MD, Record Group 84, Records of the Foreign Service Posts of the Department of State, Consular Posts, São Paulo, Brazil, vol. 90, class 800.
17 de Luca, Tania Regina, A ‘Revista do Brasil’: um diagnóstico para a (n)ação (São Paulo: Editora da UNESP, 1999)Google Scholar, p. 38.
18 OP, 25 Feb. 1919.
19 OC, 15 March 1921, p. 1.
20 De Luca, A ‘Revista do Brasil’, p. 59; Martins, Ana Luiza, Revistas em revista: imprensa e práticas culturais em tempos de república (São Paulo: Imprensa Oficial, 2001), pp. 199–201Google Scholar; Love, Joseph L., São Paulo in the Brazilian Federation, 1889–1937 (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1980)Google Scholar, pp. 26, 92; Caldeira, Jorge, ‘Júlio Mesquita, fundador do jornalismo moderno no Brasil’, in Mesquita, Júlio, A guerra, 1914–1918 (São Paulo: Terceiro Nome, 2002)Google Scholar, p. 21.
21 The 5 per cent estimate is from Capelato, Maria Helena, A imprensa na história do Brasil (São Paulo: Contexto, 1988)Google Scholar, p. 11.
22 Martins, Revistas em revista, p. 234.
23 Americano, Jorge, São Paulo nesse tempo, 1915–1935 (São Paulo: Melhoramentos, 1962)Google Scholar, p. 222; Bosi, Ecléa, Memória e sociedade (São Paulo: T. A. Queiroz, 1979)Google Scholar, p. 263; OC, 28 Jan. 1916, p. 4; OC, 24 Oct. 1921, p. 1.
24 Americano, Jorge, São Paulo naquele tempo, 1895–1915 (2nd edition, São Paulo: Carrenho, 2004 [1957]), pp. 172–3Google Scholar; Batini, Tito, Memórias de um socialista congênito (Campinas: Editora da UNICAMP, 1991)Google Scholar, pp. 115, 118, 120, 136; Bosi, Memória e sociedade, p. 247; Martins, Revistas em revista, pp. 234, 481–2, 484; OC, 21 May 1915, p. 1; OC, 21 May 1917, p. 1.
25 Afonso Schmidt, ‘Voltolino’, Paulistania, March/April 1949, p. 14.
26 OC, 24 April 1915, p. 2. The adjective ‘Carioca’ refers to the city of Rio de Janeiro.
27 OC, 27 April 1915, p. 2; OC, 19 April 1917, p. 3.
28 OC, 31 Jan. 1916, p. 1; OC, 27 June 1917, p. 1.
29 OC, 25 Oct. 1919, p. 1; OC, 27 Oct. 1919, p. 3; OC, 3 Dec. 1919, p. 1; OC, 18 May 1921, p. 3; OC, 8 April 1922, p. 3.
30 OC, 28 July 1915, p. 4.
31 OC, 4 Aug. 1915, p. 1 (quoted), also mentions a ‘worker’, a commercial employee, a solicitor and a stonemason who were injured when police broke up the protest. Decades later, José Correia Leite, not himself a student, would recall his own participation in such ‘student demonstrations’. Cuti (pseud., Luiz Silva) (ed.), E disse o velho militante José Correia Leite (São Paulo: Secretaria Municipal de Cultura, 1992), p. 27.
32 OC, 22 Oct. 1915, p. 1; OC, 26 July 1919, p. 1.
33 OC, 2 May 1917, p. 1.
34 OC, 28 April 1915, p. 2; OC, 13 Nov. 1915, p. 1; OC, 10 Feb. 1917, p. 1; OC, 30 June 1915, p. 2.
35 OC, 28 April 1915, p. 1.
36 OC, 31 Jan. 1916, p. 1.
37 OC, 25 July 1916, p. 4.
38 OC, 3 May 1915, p. 4; OC, 18 Sep. 1916, p. 1.
39 OC, 24 April 1915, p. 1.
40 OC, 28 April 1915, p. 1.
41 For example, OC, 29 May 1915, p. 1.
42 OC, 3 Feb. 1919, p. 1.
43 OC, 19 April 1917, p. 3.
44 OC, 30 Aug. 1916, p. 1.
45 OC, 30 July 1919, p. 1.
46 OC, 9 Jan. 1917, p. 4, emphasis in original.
47 OC, 29 June 1915, p. 4; OC, 28 Feb. 1918, p. 1.
48 OC, 3 Jan. 1918, p. 1.
49 OC, 13 April 1918, p. 1; OC, 3 June 1918, p. 3.
50 OC, 19 Oct. 1917, p. 1; OC, 3 Sep. 1918, p. 1.
51 OC, 29 May 1915, p. 1.
52 OC, 11 Jan. 1917, p. 1, emphasis in original.
53 For example, OC, 16 Aug. 1917, p. 1.
54 OC, 5 May 1919, p. 1.
55 OC, 6 July 1915, p. 1.
56 OC, 3 Aug. 1915, p. 4.
57 OC, 3 Feb. 1916, p. 1.
58 Ibid.
59 Ibid.
60 How seriously the state's leaders took O Combate is illustrated by a February 1917 letter from Rafael Sampaio Filho to Paulo Duarte; see Duarte, Paulo, Memórias, vol. 3 (São Paulo: Hucitec, 1976), pp. 352–3Google Scholar.
61 OC, 20 Nov. 1917, p. 1; OC, 5 Jan. 1918, p. 3; Caldeira, ‘Júlio Mesquita’, p. 32.
62 Revista do Brasil, Nov. 1919, p. 275 (quoted); OC, 18 Sep. 1917, p. 1; OC, 1 June 1920, p. 1; OC, 2 March 1921, p. 1; Duarte, Memórias, vol. 5 (São Paulo: Hucitec, 1977), p. 300.
63 OP, 18 March 1919; OC, 20 Dec. 1921, p. 1; de Andrade, Oswald, Um homem sem profissão (Rio de Janeiro: José Olympio, 1954)Google Scholar, p. 131; Duarte, Memórias, vol. 8 (São Paulo: Hucitec, 1978), pp. 215–18.
64 OC, 22 Oct. 1915, p. 1; OC, 19 Nov. 1915, p. 1.
65 OC, 28 June 1915, p. 1.
66 OC, 6 Nov. 1915, p. 1.
67 Quotes from OC cover stories of 13 Oct. 1916 and 19 Nov. 1915.
68 OESP, 23 April 1915, p. 5.
69 OC, 12 May 1917, p. 1, emphasis in original.
70 Augusta Fonseca, Maria, Oswald de Andrade: biografia (2nd edition, São Paulo: Globo, 2007 [1990]), pp. 60–1Google Scholar, 62, 79, 81–2, 112, 115, 117–19, 154, 295–6 (‘politics…’ and ‘Translations…’ are on pp. 60 and 61); OC, 11 Dec. 1915, p. 4; Andrade, Um homem sem profissão, pp. 98–9, 103–6, 131–3, 169, 177, 194–5, 210; Duarte, Paulo, História da imprensa em São Paulo (São Paulo: Escola de Comunicações e Artes, 1972)Google Scholar, pp. 29, 41; and Memórias, vol. 7 (São Paulo: Hucitec, 1978), p. 267, and vol. 8, pp. 215–20; Affonso A. de Freitas, ‘Notas á margem do estudo “A imprensa periodica”’, RIHGSP, 25 (1927), p. 490; Penteado, Jacob, Belenzinho, 1910 (São Paulo: Martins, 1962)Google Scholar, p. 198; de Faria Cruz, Heloisa (ed.), São Paulo em revista (São Paulo: Arquivo do Estado, 1997), pp. 190–1Google Scholar, 205–6, 231–2; Leite, Aureliano, Subsídios para a história da civilização paulista (São Paulo: Saraiva, 1954)Google Scholar, p. 278; Martins, Revistas em revista, pp. 130, 133–5, 221, 238, 430–1, 436–7, 453, 495, 498, 519, 533; Nobre, História da imprensa, pp. 214, 222; Werneck Sodré, Nelson, História da imprensa no Brasil (4th edition, Rio de Janeiro: Mauad, 1999 [1966])Google Scholar, pp. 299, 342; Brás Ciro Gallotta, ‘O Parafuso: humor e crítica na imprensa paulistana, 1915–1921’, unpubl. Master's thesis, Pontifícia Universidade Católica de São Paulo, 1997.
71 Andrade, Um homem sem profissão, p. 131.
72 OESP, 25 April 1915, p. 2; OC, 27 April 1915, p. 4.
73 OC, 21 Jan. 1916, p. 1.
74 OC, 4 Jan. 1918, p. 1.
75 Batini, Memórias, p. 107; Duarte, Paulo, Júlio Mesquita (São Paulo: Hucitec, 1977)Google Scholar, p. 118; and Memórias, vol. 5, pp. 299–300; Subiroff, Ivan, A oligarchia paulista (São Paulo: Secção de Obras d'O Estado de S. Paulo, 1919)Google Scholar, p. 3.
76 OC, 1 Oct. 1926, p. 1.
77 Revista do Brasil, Nov. 1919, pp. 218–25.
78 OC, 7 Sep. 1915, p. 1. See also Egas, Eugenio, Galeria dos presidentes do estado de São Paulo, vol. 2 (São Paulo: Secção de Obras d'O Estado de S. Paulo, 1927)Google Scholar, p. 10; Melo, Dicionário de autores, p. 471; Saboia, ‘Francisco Rangel Pestana’, p. 32.
79 OC, 9 Dec. 1915, p. 4 (‘hair-raising criticism’); OC, 23 Dec. 1915, pp. 1, 4 (‘the galleries…’ on p. 1); Duarte, História da imprensa, pp. 29–30; Cruz, São Paulo, p. 214; Martins, Revistas em revista, pp. 123, 130, 133, 155, 344, 448, 455, 512–13, 521, 221, 430–41, 439–40; Nobre, História da imprensa, p. 221.
80 Figueiredo, Antonio, Memórias de um jornalista (São Paulo: Unitas, 1933), pp. 146–51Google Scholar, 156–8, 230 (quote on p. 147); Duarte, Júlio Mesquita, 78ff; Memórias, vol. 3, p. 310, vol. 5, p. 345, and vol. 6 (São Paulo: Hucitec, 1977), pp. 298–9, 301, 306–8; and História da imprensa, p. 31; Martins, Revistas em revista, pp. 439–40; Sodré, História da imprensa, p. 344.
81 Duarte, Júlio Mesquita, p. 79.
82 Figueiredo, Memórias, p. 157; OC, 15 Aug. 1922, p. 1.
83 At the close of O Combate's first calendar year of publication, its editors recognised the gulf between their ambition and the actual newspapers that they produced: ‘It has not been, it is certain, and we recognise this, a model modern newspaper.’ They went on to add, ‘But the little that we have done, we have done with frankness, – in the way that appears most worthwhile to us: TELLING THE TRUTH.’ OC, 27 Dec. 1915, p. 1. As the Diários Associados’ founder, Assis Chateaubriand, well knew, telling the truth was beside the point when it came to producing a truly modern newspaper. See Morais, Fernando, Chatô: o rei do Brasil (São Paulo: Companhia das Letras, 1994)Google Scholar.
84 Pati, Francisco, A cidade sem portas (São Paulo: Rêde Latina, 1956), pp. 137–67Google Scholar; Schmidt, Afonso, São Paulo de meus amores (São Paulo: Clube do Livro, 1954), pp. 18–20Google Scholar; Figueiredo, Memórias, pp. 158–9; Sant'Ana, Repertório biográfico, pp. 284–5; Duarte, Memórias, vol. 6, p. 298, vol. 7, p. 302, and vol. 8, pp. 322–3, 328–9; and Históra da imprensa, p. 31; Nobre, História da imprensa, pp. 224, 229; Sodré, História da imprensa, pp. 356, 365; Mota, Carlos Guilherme and Capelato, Maria Helena, História da Folha de S. Paulo, 1921–1981 (São Paulo: IMPRES, 1980), pp. 13–50Google Scholar, 309–18. Olival Costa's play is noted in OC, 16 July 1915, p. 1, and on the back covers of the 28 July 1915 and 5 Aug. 1915 issues.
85 Morais, Chatô, pp. 153–4, 170–1, 184–7, 192 (quotes on pp. 170, 187); Ferraz, Geraldo, Depois de tudo (Rio de Janeiro: Paz e Terra, 1983)Google Scholar, pp. 18, 43–4; Correio da Manhã (Rio de Janeiro), 4 March 1919, reprinted in secção livre, OESP, 7 March 1919, p. 9; OESP, 6 Jan. 1929, p. 10.
86 Habermas, Jürgen, ‘The Public Sphere: An Encyclopedia Article’, New German Critique, 3 (1974), p. 53Google Scholar.
87 OESP, 30 Dec. 1915, p. 4.
88 OESP, 5 June 1918, p. 1.
89 By the standards of the post-First World War era, O Combate's politics may seem ideologically thin and/or confused; indeed, one of the JLAS's readers, applying a mid-twentieth-century yardstick, took the newspaper to be ‘empty of ideology’. European readers are likelier to be familiar with the social, political and ideological family to which O Combate's genus of radical republicanism belonged. In France, it would include the tradition of Marat and Hébert as it was reinvented under the Third Republic: a ‘social ideal, combining respect for (small) private property with hostility to the rich, … an extreme, egalitarian and libertarian democracy, localized and direct’, part of ‘that universal and important political trend which sought to express the interests of the great mass of “little men” who existed between the poles of the “bourgeois” and the “proletarian”’, and which ‘tended to settle down, in post-revolutionary ages [that is, after 1871], as a left-wing of middle-class liberalism, but one loath to abandon the ancient principle that there are no enemies on the left’: Hobsbawm, Eric, The Age of Revolution: 1789–1848 (New York: Vintage, 1996 [1962])Google Scholar, p. 63. In this context, Joel Wolfe's characterisation of O Combate as a ‘leftist newspaper’ rings true, but it was also a ‘bourgeois newspaper’, as a one-time contributor remembered, or still more appropriately, a petty bourgeois newspaper. Figueiredo, Memórias, p. 151; OC, 7 Dec. 1926, p. 5.
90 Angel Rama (trans. John Charles Chasteen), The Lettered City (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1996), pp. 56–7; Saítta, Sylvia, Regueros de tinta: el diario ‘Crítica’ en la década de 1920 (Buenos Aires: Sudamericana, 1998)Google Scholar; Allen, Douglas, War, Memory, and the Politics of Humor: The ‘Canard Enchaîné’ and World War I (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2002)Google Scholar; Hobsbawm, Eric, Interesting Times (New York: Pantheon, 2002)Google Scholar, p. 318 (‘Liberty…’). While the history of the Rio de Janeiro press can scarcely be sketched in the present article, it would appear that non-traditional, populistic newspapers (tarred as ‘yellow’ by their detractors) emerged slightly earlier in that city than in São Paulo, and that some of the Rio newspapers made the leap into commercial, publicity-driven modernity directly, rather than through a diffuse, second-hand influence (as I argue was the case for O Combate, O Parafuso and their fellows in the Paulista yellow press). To take the most remarkable case, the Carioca transition from the age of the owner-operated, ink-stained, amateur-run, tribune-of-the-people newspaper to the modern, commercial-driven media concern can be seen in two generations of the Marinho family: the father, Irineu, an old-time journalist who at the founding of O Globo pronounced his newspaper to be free of ‘interesses conjugados com os de qualquer empresa’ and stated his intention to remain aloof from all ‘grupos capitalistas ou … plutocratas’; and the son, Roberto, who made O Globo the tribune of foreign corporations and Rio department stores (and who later, as is well known, would build Brazil's first national television network on the basis of an illegal partnership with Time-Life and sweetheart deals on the part of the military dictatorship). The quotes from O Globo's premiere issue may be found in de Abreu, Alzira Alves et al. (eds.), Dicionário histórico-biográfico brasileiro, vol. 3 (Rio de Janeiro: Ed. FGV, 2001)Google Scholar, p. 2540.
91 de Holanda, Sergio Buarque, ‘Realidade e poesia’, in Grieco, Agrippino et al. , Em memoria de Antonio de Alcantara Machado (São Paulo: n.p., 1936)Google Scholar, p. 179.
92 If a ‘public sphere’ existed in mid-1930s São Paulo, it was one that new developments – from media consolidation and increased advertiser power to clericalist retrenchment and the National Security Law of 4 April 1935 – would have rendered strange and unappealing to the latter-day Montesquieus who authored O Combate's founding statement.
93 Much work remains to be done on these traditions; here and there in Woodard, A Place in Politics, may be found the barest outlines of their histories.
94 Some remembrance of the deeper history of these two traditions, including living memories of the Rangel Pestanas and O Combate, survived into the late 1970s and early 1980s; it has since been lost. See the oral histories of D. Lavínia (b. 1897) and D. Brites (b. 1903) in Bosi, Memória e sociedade, pp. 203–93 (also see pp. 376–80 and 384–5 for Bosi's discussion of what she termed the ‘paradox’ of ‘paulistismo mais comunismo’); and Tito Batini (b. 1904), O modelador das máscaras (São Paulo: n.p., 1982).