Políticas de assistência, proteção e educação à infância pobre, abandonada e órfã e as ações da Prelazia do Xingu no município de Altamira – Pará (1970-1979)

Abstract

The thesis entitled “Assistance, protection and education policies for poor, abandoned and orphan children and the actions of the Prelature of the Xingu in the municipality of Altamira - Pará (1970-1979)” is part of the Social History of Education and History of Education, notably in the History of Pará Childhood. We understand the relationship between Child Protection, Protection and Education Policies, based on Kuhlmann Jr. (2010), which states that it must be understood from the Assistance / Protection binomial, since it represents the broader conception of the care modality, the role of the State, Organizations and Civil and Religious Society in the context of public policies, concomitant to the process of national development, designed for the Brazilian social protection system for children throughout the 20th Century. In this scenario, the Prelature of the Xingu is a religious institution that, since the beginning of 1936, has been active in the political, religious, social and educational process of this city and region of the Transamazon and Xingu. In relation to childhood, it has always been at the mercy of a lack of state policies, from the time of the founding of the city in 1911 until the 1970s. Thus, as a promoter of socio-educational and protective policies, the Prelature of the Xingu comes progressively being recognized by the local community as an institution that fought for better conditions of life for the population and demanded recognition of the Transamazon as territory of belonging. In this sense, the research aims to identify and analyze the impacts, repercussions and resistances that the assistance, protection and education to the poor, abandoned and orphaned children developed in the municipality of Altamira (PA) by the Prelature of the Xingu, in order to caused by the migratory process in the Xingu region, mainly motivated by the supposed progress attributed to the construction of the BR 230 Transamazônica highway, in the 1970s. Thus, seeking to respond to the objectives proposed in this thesis, we adopted as a research methodology the qualitative approach of the documentary type, added by the technique of narratives, reflected in the light of the theoretical and methodological reference of Ricoeurian, who understands that the use of documents helps us to rescue forgotten history, while the narratives contribute to the filling of “gaps” and “incompleteness” emerged during the research; consequently, both should be appreciated, valued and interpreted from the analytical matrix of discourse as a work. In relation to the construction of the corpus, we use: a) written sources - Brazilian Presidential Report / Message to the National Congress (1970-1979); Congregational work plan; action plan; statutes and regulations; and overview of the Xingu Prelature; letters; crafts; opinions; diverse literature on congregations; newspapers; letters; photographs; poetry e poems; b) oral sources - interview with a religious of the Congregation of the Adorers of the Blood of Christ. As a result, the study pointed out that, in the midst of the State's omission to provide childcare policies in Altamira, as envisaged in the Minors Code, Law No. 6,697 of 1979, which guarantees the provision of education, health, protection, social assistance, and other fundamental social rights, the Xingu Prelacy instituted important activities: 1) in the area of assistance, it founded dispensaries, shelters, and distributed food, clothing and footwear for the implantation of the social assistance of the Pastorals of the family, youth and childhood that had as pedagogical and philosophical ideal the Liberation Theology and the Pedagogy of Love; 2) in the area of protection, aimed at caring for the body and the environment, in addition to measures aimed at maternity, feeding, vaccination, disease eradication and child mortality; 3) in the educational field, offered domestic education, vocational and primary education in orphanages and institutions with Christian principles. In these environments, the purpose was to work on human promotion, religion and moral and ethical values, as they are, alongside the work of the pastoral ministry strictly said, the concern of the Xingu Church, specifically in a desolate scenario left by the disorderly process of the occupation of the city, due to the construction of the BR 230, an undertaking that compacted with the developmental policy that has in the materialization of the violations of basic social rights its deepest mark of “progress” implanted in local territories. In the case of infancy, the reflexes generated serious social and structural problems and a state of worrying poverty, resulting in poor housing conditions, lack of health care, education, safety and leisure.