Lugares de memória, espelhos de poder: O Museu Padre José Gaertner e a institucionalização de narrativas identitárias em Marechal Cândido Rondon (PR)

Abstract

This dissertation examines the Padre José Gaertner Museum, located in Marechal Cândido Rondon, Paraná, as a site of memory and as an institutional device for the public production of meanings about the past. The expression “mirrors of power” is employed as an analytical metaphor to suggest that museums, by selecting, organizing, and displaying collections and narratives, do not merely preserve history, but also project authorized representations of it, thereby legitimizing interpretations and forms of collective identification. The study is grounded in the assumption that memory, culture, and identity are socially produced and historically situated constructions, shaped by classificatory practices and symbolic boundaries rather than by fixed or essential attributes. In dialogue with Pierre Nora and Michael Pollak, the research investigates the ways in which regimes of visibility and silencing are constituted, enabling certain repertoires to circulate as public memory while relegating others to the margins. It also draws on Alberti’s perspective that museums should be understood not as neutral repositories, but as spaces in which historical and cultural narratives are actively produced and publicly mediated. Methodologically, the dissertation combines documentary criticism with institutional discourse analysis, drawing on municipal legislation, administrative acts, official correspondence, circulars, and documents related to the Municipal History Commission, as well as records concerning the formation of the collections and the museum’s public administration. It also draws on an oral source produced through an interview with Venilda Saatkamp, who was directly involved in the organization of the collection and in the museum’s institutional trajectory. The findings indicate that the municipal institutionalization of memory contributed to the consolidation of a dominant local memory, often structured through grammars of colonization, progress, and belonging, which shaped the collection, preservation, and exhibition of the past within the museum. The study further examines the museum’s materiality—its collections, exhibition categories, captions, and mediation practices—in order to understand how specific narratives and cultural identifications were stabilized, while other experiences and social actors remained in less visible positions, thus revealing silences and identity disputes in the making of public memory.