Narrativas diversas, memórias em disputa: as instituições (Funleide, Suleide e Cara) criadas pelo governo do estado de Goiás após o acidente com o césio-137 (1988-2011)

Abstract

This essay analyzes the relationship between history and memory in the unfolding of the accident with the radioactive element Cesium-137, occurred in the city of Goiania, in September of 1987. It brings to the topic a new vision, putting focus in the time after to the tragedy and in the study of the memories created around the institutions founded by the government of Goias to provide support to the victims of the accident (Funleide, Suleide and CARA). The objective is discussing the memories produced by different agents and social groups, in their relationships with these state institutions. The central problem inquires how different memories remember the operation of those state institutions and what power relationships and/or struggles for rights these reminiscences express and collaborate to build. To achieve the objectives, it uses different kinds of evidences, as such as the written press – newspapers and reviews were especially important to this research –, official documents produced by the state government (or by the institutions founded by it) and others unofficial documents, as such as the dossiers made by one of the accident's victims associations. The reflections are organized in three moments, each one answering specific questions. In the first moment, an historiographic analysis searches answers for a question: is there still space for new academic research about the accident with the element Cesium-137 in Goiania? At a second moment, the question refers to the reasons for Goias government to have founded Funleide and how different memories (official and unofficial) remember the creation, the changes, the successes, and the failures of the entity to reaching its initially goals. In a third moment, the central question revolves around how the memories produced by the associations of victims of the accident treat the care received by them. Also inquires how these remembrances reveal the struggles by recognition, in the justice, by whom initially was not considered “radio injured person”. Finally, it analyzes a memories book, revealing the critic narratives of professionals that worked in the state institutions too. It became clear, with this research, that the time after the accident is full of conflicts that, frequently, are not recognized by the State. On this way, the divergent memories built about the studied institutions are in a space of contest, in which pursue, among other things, to legitimize public policies or to struggle for rights.