Museu Treze de Maio [May Thirteenth Museum]

a space for Black memory and identity in Santa Maria-RS

Abstract

This proposed study is part of a Research developed at the Federal University of Santa Maria for the Master’s Program in Social Sciences. The guiding question of this study is to understand whether the Museu Treze de Maio has been a mobilizing agent of the processes of ethnic identification and of construction of a black memory in Santa Maria / RS. It seeks to analyze how the relationship between the construction of a black identity and the valorization of African descent memory in the Museu Treze de Maio happens. Memory is understood, according to Halbwachs (1990), as the reading about the past elaborated in the present, through the resources existing in it. We consider the museum as a place of memory (Nora, 1993), in which a space becomes a place (with sense and meaning) and the patrimony, as in the case of the Museum, receives the characteristic of "preservation" (native term) and memory upgrade. We perceive that the activities at the Museum highlight the belonging and value the identity of their regular frequenters.