Batalhas pelas memórias de um ano : cartografias das memórias jornalísticas dos cinquenta anos de 1968

Abstract

This study proposes to carry out a cartography of the journalistic memories of 1968 in Brazil from its fiftieth anniversary. If 1968 was a year of great manifestations and confrontations with governments in Brazil and in the world, their memories continue to be built and rebuilt from the battles for the memories that take place in public spaces. To do so, we started from the readings of three books written by journalists, 1968: o ano que não terminou (Zuenir Ventura, 1988), 1968: eles só queriam mudar o mundo (Regina Zappa and Ernesto Soto, 2008) and 1968: quando a terra tremeu (Roberto Sander, 2018), and with them we mapped the dynamics of meaning involved in the narratives about that year. We started in the cities, looking for disputes, memories and silences in the territorial markings that are pointed out in the narratives. The places can be used institutionally or socially as spaces of struggle and resistance, at the same time that streets and walls explain political and social disputes that refer, directly or indirectly, to 1968 and to problems not yet solved in the social plan. The analysis of the fiftieth anniversary scenario points to several geolocation initiatives, attempts to approximate the events of the military dictatorship, especially among the young public, with the aim of preventing it from 'repeating itself'. Starting from these classic cartographic representations that we elaborated based on the books and from the resumption of events in the fiftieth anniversary, we delimited four events that were triggered in different ways in 2018: the death of student Edson Luís (spontaneous), the attacks on the show Roda Viva (provocative), the Battle of Maria Antônia (disputed) and the edition of Institutional Act Nº 5 (commemorate). The discussions point out that the 1968 narratives elaborated by journalists prioritize the southeast region to the detriment of the rest of the country and make little reference to female figures. On the other hand, the triggering of events in 2018 indicates that the narratives are still in dispute, some characters from 1968 find spaces to witness and dispute their own public figures, at the same time as certain narratives articulated by the dictatorial government or by resistance to it persist as strong memories. 1968 is not composed of isolated events, but it continues as an event year, with reverberations and active disputes.