THE POLITICAL CONNECTIONS OF THE FERREIRA GOMES ADMINISTRATION IN SOBRAL-CE AND THE NEOLIBERAL PROJECT (1996–2000)

Abstract

This research focuses on the rise of the Ferreira Gomes political group in Sobral, starting with Cid Ferreira Gomes' election in 1996, under the umbrella of the neoliberal project led by Governor Tasso Jereissati in Ceará. The end of the dictatorship in 1985 and the emergence of the New Republic imposed demands that the local administrators, the Prado and Barreto groups, could no longer meet. Despite being heirs to these administrators, the Ferreira Gomes managed to align themselves with the rhetoric of a new politics, presenting themselves as open to solving issues such as sanitation, affordable housing, access to healthcare, education, and employment at a time when social rights, citizenship, and the democratization of the city were urgent agendas. The objective of the study is to investigate how the Ferreira Gomes manage to sell this image and establish themselves as a new political group in local power. The newspaper "Correio da Semana," a prominent Catholic press in the region with abundant material from the period, was used to understand this context. The theoretical framework includes ideas such as political marketing discussed by Rejane Vasconcelos Accioly de Carvalho (1999) and the commodification of politics in Pierre Bordieu (1980), Karl Marx (2004), and Zygmunt Bauman (2008).