The mailman and the educator political practices in epistolary writing

Abstract

Among the vast amount of documents assembled in the personal archive of Anisio Texeira (under guard of the Center of Research and Documentation of Brazilian Contemporary History - CPDOC, from Getulio Vargas Foundation), figures a letter that stares in face: in the text, the sender asks a job for a brother-in-law. He was not one of the politicians, scholars, relatives, friends or teachers that have written to Anisio Teixeira for asking, thanking, complimenting, suggesting, charging or claiming, while he was in charge of the Directory of Public Instruction from Brazilian Federal District, between 1931 and 1935. The sender was the mailman that daily had been delivering the letters signed by so many other senders, usually writing on behalf of their own interests or, as in most of the times, for interceding on behalf of relatives or friends. Such letters contain a set of tracks concerned to certain political culture remarkably present in Brazilian public life, in special, its educational system, during the first decades of XX Century. This paper analyzes the way Anisio Teixeira tried to institute new political practices in Brazilian education, focusing those letters writing supports and personal notes found in the margins.