Memória Amordaçada: o massacre do Caldeirão da Santa Cruz do Deserto

Resumo (EN)

This article aims at discussing the production of muzzled memory from the discussions regarding memory, history and the silencing of the 1937 massacre at the Caldeirão da Santa Cruz do Deserto, episode in the history of Ceará, a state in northeastern Brazil, which took place less than a century ago in a socio-religious community led by the pious José Lourenço, in the Cariri region. The research is based on Michel Pollak’s category of subterranean memories in order to understand how the history of the massacre was silenced, but not forgotten. The corpus of analysis is composed of reports by three remnants of the massacre who kept said event in their memory, even though they had no direct action in the episode. The spoken narratives of the episodes allowed us to understand the processes by which social memory is sometimes muzzled but other times come up again. It is understood that this event can be considered as one of those present time stories, because it has the characters’ memories, either those who acted, lived or even witnessed the massacre. However, it is a muzzled memory, as it was violently silenced.KeywordsHistory; Memory; Silence; Caldeirão da Santa Cruz do Deserto.