Eclipse on paper: The 1919 total solar eclipse in Brazilian newspapers

The 1919 total solar eclipse was a natural event of great mobilization in Brazil. The national scientific community used the occasion to advance astrophysical knowledge about the Sun and establish its scientific credentials within the international community; the political elite seized the opportunity to project an image of Brazil’s modernity abroad; and a large audience turned to newspapers to engage with the eclipse. Newspapers provided a wealth of eclipse-related information, updating readers on the arrival of scientists in northeast Brazil, their journeys to Sobral (the second city of the state of Ceará, where Brazilian, American, and British teams were to observe totality), on the logistics involved, and on their different observational agendas, including the British team’s test of Einstein’s prediction of light bending.

In this article, we offer an analysis of the 1919 eclipse coverage across Brazilian newspapers at national, state, regional, and local levels, published respectively at the cities of Rio de Janeiro, Belém do Pará, Camocim, and Sobral, to reveal how much locality shaped the contents and styles of news. The presence of foreign astronomers meant the scientific dimensions of the eclipse took the lead in Sobral’s and Camocim’s newspapers, while religious and social dimensions were also evidenced, with emphasis on the Catholicism of the British astronomers. In the states of Pará and Rio de Janeiro, the social and political appropriations of the eclipse, often with satirical overtones, took pride of place.