The Edgard Leuenroth Archive (AEL) of the Institute of Philosophy and Human Sciences (IFCH) at Unicamp has just received the donation of the collection Soweto Black Organization. The set covers more than three decades of struggles against structural racism, inequality and social marginalization of the black Brazilian population. Among the donated material, posters, banners, banners, photographs, bulletins, pamphlets, fabrics, as well as textual documentation produced or accumulated by the organization's activities in the fields of education, health, food security and living conditions of black women stand out. Part of the collection dates back to the activities of the Black Group of the Pontifical Catholic University of São Paulo (GNPUC), created in 1979. Several members of Soweto were graduates of that important university collective, which had operated until the early 1980s.
Flávio Jorge Rodrigues da Silva, director of Soweto, states that this partnership with AEL is part of an effort to present to Brazil in the 21st century the memory of resistance and struggle initiated by a generation of activists, mainly in the second half of the last century, who, carrying the banner of the fight against racism, set out to demystify the farce of racial democracy existing in the country. "There are many boxes that fulfill an old aspiration of our entity: to show an important story of struggle but, unfortunately, still little known and marginalized by a racist society. Through the most modern technical resources and the valorization of digital media, this material can be accessed by wider and more varied audiences."
The incorporation of the group to Unicamp is part of a broader project to preserve black memory coordinated by the directors of AEL, Aldair Rodrigues, from the History Department and Mário Medeiros, from the Sociology Department, in partnership with CEBRAP Afro (Research Center and Training in Race, Gender and Social Justice) and involving the president of the nucleus Márcia Lima (University of São Paulo), the coordinator of the Afro Memória project Paulo César Ramos, and Maria Julia Venâncio. The objective is to preserve, digitize and disseminate collections from black Brazilian organizations.
In the context of implementing affirmative actions at the university, the initiative offers new references and countless research possibilities. Aldair Rodrigues highlights that the preservation of the collection is a gesture against the erasure of black protagonism in the history of Brazil. "Soweto's documentation covers important chapters of the struggles against racism and struggles for social justice in the country. It becomes possible to reconstruct, for example, the relationship between members of the black movement and the party system at different levels of the legislature."
Mário Medeiros, deputy director of AEL, emphasizes that the arrival of the Soweto collection at AEL allows us to have a richer panorama of the political experiences of Brazilian black movements throughout the 1990s, considering that, from the name of the organization, they signal transnational interests and the international circulation of ideas about anti-racism. "On the other hand, the group of militant intellectuals who made up and make up Soweto show important people in the construction of a propositional agenda for the last 30 years of the black movement, involving marches such as Zumbi dos Palmares (1995) or party institutionalization and with the State.", he believes.
For Paulo César Ramos, coordinator of CEBRAP's Memória Afro project, it opens up an opportunity for studies on the democratization process in Brazil to better understand the history of the relationship between black movements and other social movements such as the MST, the union movement, the student movement, and the formation of SEPPIR. “The record of this relationship is striking in the Soweto material.”, he states.
Maria Júlia Venâncio, a graduate student in Social Sciences at USP, who worked on the preliminary organization of the collection with members of the organization, explains that working with the collection at its headquarters made it possible for this process to rely on the perspectives and memories of activists who actively participated in various milestones recorded in the materials, in addition to allowing the arrangement of documents to be more faithful to their accumulation logic. "I believe that access to collections and intergenerational dialogues are ways to enrich our training and ensure that black youth are represented in university spaces and programs based on the recognition of the importance of black movements in the history of Brazil."
About the Soweto Black Organization
Soweto was created in São Paulo in 1991. Antonio Santos, Arnaldo França Xavier, Cleide de Paula, Damaris de Figueiredo, Edna Muniz de Souza, Emilson André Jacinto, Flávio Jorge Rodrigues da Silva, Gevanilda Gomes dos Santos, João Batista de Jesus Felix, José Francisco, José Galvão Mesquita, José Roberto Barbosa, Luís Carlos de Freitas, Maria do Carmo Sales Monteiro, Maria Inês da Silva Barbosa, Maria José Pereira dos Santos, Matilde Ribeiro, Paulo Rafael da Silva, Ramatis Jacino, Sebastião José and Suelma Inês Alves de Deus. Among these founders, four remain at the institution to this day: Flávio Jorge Rodrigues da Silva, Gevanilda Gomes dos Santos, Paulo Rafael da Silva and Suelma Inês Alves de Deus.
Check out some images from the collection upon its arrival at AEL:
