“We trust in your justice and charity:” the potential for researching the history of care for the poor

Abstract

This paper discusses the archives of municipal authorities, especially their correspondence, as important inputs for understanding the relationships between the poor population and the public administration during the early republican years in Brazil (1889 to 1930). The discourse of individuals who sent letters to the municipality of Santa Maria in which they claimed to be poor is discussed in order to investigate what survival strategies these people used and what public and private recourse they could turn to in the province of Rio Grande do Sul. Tracing the profile of poverty, the gender differences, marked in the justifications given in the requests for aid from the municipal authority, are analyzed.