Parochialization as a geopolitical phenomenon and biopolitical strategy in the process of the formation of the Republic in Brazil

Abstract

The article aims to understand the geopolitical process of the constitution of the Brazilian Republic starting from the technologies of pastoral, disciplinary and normalizing power adopted by the Catholic Church. Methodologically referring to Michel Foucault's studies on security, territory, population, it is assumed that it was necessary to reactivate and redefine pastoral power as a technology of power and to assign to the Catholic Church the task of reorganizing the spatial distribution of the Brazilian territory as a condition for the multiplication of the disciplinary devices in society and for the normalizing control of the population and its bio-social prevention. The study analyzed ecclesiastical documents, pastoral letters, annuals and statistical censuses, and it concludes that, more than the creation of dioceses, the proliferation of parishes became the most effective geopolitical machinery of the early times of the Republic. The constitution of these territories depended not only on the will of the ecclesiastical hierarchy but was part of the very dynamics of the Republic's oligarchic political system, which required extensive consultation with local and regional lay leaders.