Ressonâncias da voz de um bispo: a educação e memória no Araguaia/Xingu de Casaldáliga

Abstract

This thesis aims the educational practices of Pedro Casaldáliga, bishop of the Prelacy of São Félix do Araguaia, in Araguaia/Xingu, in Mato Grosso, in the Brazilian Amazon. The main objective was to understand the educational/religious practices of Pedro Casaldáliga, which contributed to the formation of a territory through legacy, memory and identity. With this purpose, the study sought to answer which educational practices were constituted by Casaldáliga and how they are remembered and manifested, in order to delimit a space and reorganize a place in which the need for social participation and transformation of reality are affirmed. In order to defend the thesis that Pedro Casaldáliga was an educator through his educational practices, his example and for having constituted heritage, memory and identity by fighting for the causes of the poor population, we sought to go through the intertwining of Benjaminian history making and telling and the treatment of sources with Carlos Ginzburg's evidentiary paradigm. The ways in which Pedro Casaldáliga educated correspond to the time/space of his work: he was a bishop linked to Liberation Theology, which was developed in the daily life of challenging sociocultural/religious relations during the corporate/military dictatorship. To understand the resonances of Pedro Casaldáliga's voice, we worked with the memories of people who lived in the space/time of the educator's clerical exercise and experienced life through his educational practices: former teachers and students of the GEA, people who were part of the pastoral team, indigenous representatives, teachers and rural workers. The thesis is organized into four sections, which in a (dis)ordered manner intertwine understandings of his educational/evangelizing practices. It began with an understanding of Pedro Casaldáliga, in the contexts of his training and the experiences that formed him as an educator in the Brazilian Amazon. The second session sought to give visibility to the educator through his writings, focusing on Pedro Casaldáliga's letters written between the end of the 20th century and the beginning of the 21st century. In the last two sessions, the focus was on memories, based on the analysis of the recollections of the people interviewed. In working with them, it was decided to do as Bosi (1979) did: not to be limited to the veracity of the narratives of the interviewees, but rather to what was remembered and chosen to be perpetuated about Pedro Casaldáliga. Through the remembrances, the aim was to get to know the educator through his heritage and memory. The researcher's wanderings were intertwined in these sessions. Walking through the city became a way of seeing and reading what happens in them (Possamai, 2012). The investigative path taken in this thesis sought to contribute to the History of education by presenting other ways of educating and understanding life from the perspective of those who live in the Brazilian Amazon.