A contribuição da abordagem museológica para a percepção do patrimônio sensível: estudo de caso sobre o Memorial de Direitos Humanos de Minas Gerais

Abstract

The building of the former Department of Political and Social Order of Minas Gerais (DOPS/MG), located in the Centro-Sul region of Belo Horizonte, became the main center of political repression in the state during the Brazilian Military Dictatorship (1964- 1985), staying etched into the social imagination as a symbol of the authoritarian period. With the country’s re-democratization, the political police department was dissolved in 1989, and the building was immediately claimed as a site of memory by former political prisoners, families of victims and disappeared persons, as well as by human rights advocacy movements. After nearly thirty years of social, political, and institutional disputes over the building’s use, it was finally designated to house the Minas Gerais’ Human Rights Memorial (MDH). This research tries to understand the creation of the Human Rights Memorial within the context of Brazil’s Transitional Justice framework, as a measure of symbolic reparation and a guarantee of the right to memory and truth. Specifically, it examines the projects for the implementation of this Memorial and the most recent proposal for the in situ musealization of the building. It discusses the fundamental role that the museological approach can play in the expanded understanding of sensitive heritage and, consequently, in the implementation of a memorial that seeks to re-signify a site marked by systematic human rights violations.