Colônia Santa Isabel: (Re)reconstruindo espaços e lugares de memória para percursos de visitação

Abstract

This study aims to analyze the memory spaces of Colônia Santa Isabel, in the city of Betim, Minas Gerais. The Colony is an urban complex created in 1931, with the aim of compulsorily segregating patients affected by leprosy. With the end of isolation in Colônia Santa Isabel, in the early 1980s, the abandonment of the locality by the State is remarkable. This triggered the irregular occupation of the buildings, resulting in the mischaracterization of a large part of its architectural collection, generating the false maxim of the uselessness of the buildings. Lately, in 2020, this impact was minimized with the listing of the urban complex of Colônia Santa Isabel, as Cultural Heritage of the Municipality of Betim. Thus, aiming to contribute to the preservation and proposition of new uses of space, the present work had as main objective the construction of a visitation itinerary for Colônia Santa Isabel. It is understood that the colony is crossed by physical spaces that keep memory of what was in the period of isolation, as well as memories produced by the population that lived and still lives there. We highlight, above all, the traumatic memories constituted in the period of isolation. Based on the analysis of the bibliography on the history of Colônia Santa Isabel, the cultural history of the urban area and its adaptations, intertwined with the methodology of oral history, memory spaces were mapped through buildings or remnants still existing in the colony. In addition, through the reports of former inmates, we go back to the various stages that constituted the isolation in Santa Isabel, with an emphasis on experiences, occupation processes, sociability and the most different uses of this urban complex over time. In a double movement of resignification of memories and reflections on the stigmas and traumas brought by the experience of isolation, but, especially, the stories of overcoming and interaction with space.