Mato Grosso do Sul: labirintos da memória

Abstract

The creation of Southern Mato Grosso State, decided by the government of General Ernesto Geisel left the dominant segments of the local society in state of euphoria and amazed, because, even beeing an old wish of the "southern" elites, such subject had been forgotten for a long time. When they were aware on the concrete possibility of a separation of the state, they initially tried to intervene in the assembly process of the new State. Lately, they went back to their concerns of the construction of a memory for the new unit of the federation. Soon that memory with a strong mythical content started to be imposed to other references, emerging as a study source on the local past, as the support for the elaboration of didactic books and public contests and as a guide for private and governamental advertisements. The present work studies the process of construction and the characteristics of those memories in order to understand their logic and to identify the constitution of their themes, through a contrapontual reading in the works of some of their main exponents: the journalist J. Barbosa Rodrigues, the teacher Hidelbrando Campestrini and the engineer Acyr Vaz Guimarães.