Educandário Amparo Santa Cruz: “O lugar onde os filhos choram e as mães não escutam”, Porto Alegre (1940-1950)

Abstract

The current research is focused on the constitution of the Educandário Amparo Santa Cruz, its educational practices and daily routines, with optics for regulation and rules of a space that is designated to attend the education of the residents’ children affected with Hansen’s disease during the decades of 1940 and 1950 at the Hospital Colônia de Itapuã. The objectives of this study are: to identify and comprehend how the project of the Educandário Amparo Santa Cruz was created; to identify and analyze the regulation and rules presents in this institution, as well as the daily practices as space destinated to education; contest its organization and the operation of the preventive space and comprehend the relations between the Hospital Colonia de Itapuã and the Educandário. The methodologies used in this study were historical document analysis and oral history. The main documents analyzed were the memories of two female former patients and an Amparo report introduced at the 2ª Conferência de Assistêncial Social aos Leprosos in the city of Rio de Janeiro in 1945. The report shows information of the preventive and statistical data regarding the education, medical reports, the architectural plan, and photographs. It was used sources like newspapers, reports, and documents from the Brazilian prevent regulation of 1941. As a theoretical background, this study is inspired by the Foucauldian studies as well as Goffman, Certeau, Pollak e Halbwachs. This research aims to bring the following reflections: the Educandário Amparo Santa Cruz goes forward as an educational institution for, beyond teaching, it had as purpose the care of the well being and health of the children and teenagers, building, therefore, a multiple doing entity. In addition, the preventive was architecturally planned only to answer to the institution’s objectives and its isolation and segregation rules, by using precepts of care and education to justify its functional practices including frequent medical assistance and permanent watch. Regarding Amparo Santa Cruz’s creation, the prevent was totally connected to the Hospital Colônia de Itapuã, therefore depending its exist on the hospital. As for its education practices, such as agricultural techniques, workshops, and domestic economy, these activities are viewed as a way to educate the children, as being separated by age and gender, to prepare them to live in society after adulthood. Lastly stands out the importance of these oral memories for the document corpus of this study, bringing to the research information which written documents would not be able to embrace. With these memories, it is possible to comprehend the segregation between relatives and their children in which the prophylactic norms result in a weak family bond and, although some children were not stricken by Hansen’s disease, they were equally hit by the disease stigma.