Mato Grosso no pesadelo da cólera sob o olhar entrecruzado da história com a arte e a literatura (1867 e 1887)

Abstract

Arriving in Brazil around 1855 and in Mato Grosso a little later, in 1867, the cholera epidemic became a voracious traveler in almost all brazilian coastal Provinces, from the middle of the 19th century, the moment when the news increased through newspapers, correspondence, offices and reports coming from all parts of Brazil. In Mato Grosso, cholera came accompanied by another tragedy: the Paraguayan War, highlighting the suffering and reality of a people massacred by their pains and losses. The reports of the Commanders, combatants and people who walked side by side in this sad episode of the history of the Province, left traces in which we can observe the tensions between authorities, in an attempt to stop the scourge. The soldiers in the trenches were hit violently by cholera in the midst of the bloody war, but the disease did not affect all the cities in the same way as it did the North and Northeast Provinces at first. This work is a journey through the literature of cholera, in which fiction and reality mingle around disease and, in this way we can contemplate the intrinsic relationship between disease, fear and social imaginary. In Mato Grosso, especially during the Paraguayan War, when cholera violently settles in the trenches, devastating the lives of men already mined by the bloody battle, the literature is present in the lines drawn by the authors who narrated the episode of Withdrawal of the Lagoon. In 1887, the return of evil, twenty years later, bringing back, old feelings and new resentments.