O processo de criação de uma universidade para a Amazônia: os bastidores da construção da UFOPA

Abstract

This paper intends to analyze the process of the making of the Federal University of Western Pará State-UFOPA to Amazon region, as well as to evaluate the role the institutional players have played in the drafting of the project of creation of that university whose commitment was to get federal status as a patrimonial good to the development of Amazon. At this power game bureaucracy and politics have played the leading roles, and their relations to power (executive and legislative ones) have been decisive to the creation of a federal institution of superior studies (IFES). In this sense, the power relations in the highest ranks of government reproduce themselves inside UFPA as well as in the three levels of political life. To the accomplishment of this paper a qualitative research was provided amid bureaucrats and politicians by means of interviews and shorthand notes. The evaluation of the collected data suggests that the creation of UFOPA was the result of a collective strategy of institutional players whose actions have been of utmost importance to the writing, defense and enactment of the project of law creating UFOPA. They also anticipate that this institution will be a leading actor in the development of Western Pará and Amazon.