The engineer and the politician

the relations between political and scientific speech in the trajetory of Francisco Pereira Passos

Abstract

The history of the city of the Rio de Janeiro in the XIX century, with its urban reforms and epidemics is, doubtless, a recurrent subject in Historiography – the majority of works set itself in the analysis of Public Health problems and the reconstruction of the city from 1890’s decade to the beginning of the twentieth. However, in the 1870’s a few of these works were set on the first initiative of the government – the Department of the Business of the Empire - of rearranging the city. In this sense, this work proposes the analysis of the “pré Bota-Abaixo” movement, showing how the future mayor Pereira Passos built, defined and delineated his works and ideas of rearranging the city, since his formation in the Military School. And it will continue by analyzing his path of life, his personal and intellectual influences, and also his relation with the theories of the Junta de Higiene - set out in the plans of the Commission - up to the opening of the great Avenida Central in the beginning of the century XX.