In December 11th, 2011, the referendum proposed the creation of the Carajás and Tapajós States from the territorial division of the State of Pará. The total of 66% of Pará voters who attended the public consultation voted contrary to both proposals, while 33% of them voted in favor of the creation of two states. From this historic event for the Pará population, the research aims to understand the meanings produced by the newspapers O Liberal and Diário do Pará about the referendum in Pará from the definition of symbolic forms. I use the methodological framework of depth in hermeneutics (DH), proposed by J. B. Thompson, combined with techniques of historical analysis and content analysis. The survey sample consists of 135 issues, 57 of O Liberal and 78 of Diário do Pará. For the sample, I considered all editions of two newspapers published in June, July, November and December of 2011. However I selected only those containing some information about the referendum, regardless of journalistic genre. The development begins with the historical and geographical characterization of the territories of Carajás and Tapajós to put the proposal of Pará division over time. Then I reflect about the communication character of journalism: the correlation established between the self and the other makes the whole information a potential communication. The other is both whom the self addressed, as the third who are spoken. Mass communication, although in a mediated way, resorts this dimension and that’s why is capable of contacting distant lines. The symbolic power of mass communication is to visualize or silence those lines. Interpretations/re-interpretations of what the newspapers produced about the referendum in Pará, identified in the research, finalize the exploratory study. Some of them are: the referendum was treated as party elections, ensuring victory to "No" and defeat the "Yes", when, in fact, it was a popular consultation; Carajás and Tapajós united in opposition to Belém, however the two territories had different reasons for the division; the image associated with the Carajás and Tapajós are the male politicians; both newspapers saw the referendum as breaking, splitting, cropping and economic loss, mainly.
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