Le Cocq and Cara de Cavalo: iconophilia, iconoclasm and memory disputes

Abstract

The life and death stories of Detective Milton Le Cocq D’Oliveira and the bandit Manoel Moreira, known as Cara de Cavalo, are among the most well-known narratives in the police chronicles of 20thcentury Rio de Janeiro. The shifting of protagonist- antagonist roles of these figures in different discourses, which have been formulated and reformulated since the 1960s, have led to the proliferation of differentially framed narratives and memories that circulate and replicate across various media and audiences. In this work, we present some stories about Le Cocq and Manoel Moreira. From this we demonstrate how differently framed memories about their trajectories come into conflict and collision, leading to a flow or circulation of opposite and reciprocal iconophilic and iconoclastic gestures, shaped by narrative structures that position the characters at antagonistic poles. This flow also serves to differentiate social groups and to establish niches of memory and cultural artifacts.