Abstract
This article analyzes how the Partido Republicano Rio-Grandense (PRR), founded on February 23, 1882, politically instrumentalized the deleterious and negligent penal-prison population in the Rio Grande do Sulfrom 1884 to 1889, according to the pages of the newspaper A Federação, against the Imperial State. It seeks to elucidate how province penitentiary management incited attacks, not only tocrown representatives but also on the monarchic regime itself, based on reports, denunciations, complaints, memoranda, testimonies from different institutions and individuals about hygienic, security conditions, administration, order and morality experienced by theRio Grande do Sul prisons. Through an exhaustive search of these written texts, some transcribed from provincial and publican newspapers from PRR’s official organ, it was possible to notice how PRR leaders skillfully built a critical discourse rather than attention received or not from the provincial executive’s responsible authorities.
Keywords
The Rio Grande do Sul; Partido Republicano Rio-Grandense (PRR);
A Federação
; penitentiary question; Empire