“Uma obra colossal” na favela Santa Marta: Pequena Obra Nossa Senhora Auxiliadora – PONSA (1945-2010)

Abstract

This research analyzes the territorialization process of Pequena Obra Nossa Senhora Auxiliadora (PONSA) as an educational strategy developed by elite Catholic women intellectuals in the Santa Marta favela, Rio de Janeiro, between 1945 and 2010. The investigation examines how the institution inserted itself into the favela territory and participated in shaping Morro Santa Marta as a space of collective memory, identifies the representations of elite Catholic woman intellectual embodied by Laura de Andrade Pinto do Rego Monteiro, president for over four decades, and mapping the sociability networks mobilized for the construction and maintenance of the institutional presence materialized in the headquarters building called Casa de Mater. The study is methodologically grounded in Carlo Ginzburg's evidential paradigm for analyzing dispersed sources, mobilizing the concepts of territorialization by Rogério Haesbaert, intellectuals and sociability networks by Jean-François Sirinelli, representation by Roger Chartier, strategies by Michel de Certeau, and elite according to Maria da Graça Setton. The sources comprise annotations based on institutional minutes, international correspondence with Catholic funding organizations, photographs, an institutional pamphlet, and journalistic articles from the Brazilian Digital Newspaper Library. The research demonstrates that PONSA developed territorialization by simultaneously articulating material domination through ownership of the building and symbolic-cultural appropriation through Catholic educational, devotional, and assistance practices. The presidents strategically mobilized multiple sociability networks: family networks, charitable events of Rio's elite, sewing groups, the Lions Club of Botafogo, Jesuits, female religious congregations, international Catholic funding, and government agreements across all three administrative levels. The study reveals the structural contradictions of this educational experience which simultaneously provided effective services to the population while reproducing social hierarchies through tutelary assistentialism that denied community autonomy to residents. The research contributes to the historiography of Brazilian education by documenting a Catholic educational institution in a favela context, a phenomenon little explored in the field, and broadens understanding of the protagonism of elite Catholic women intellectuals in twentieth-century education history.