Movimento Tradicionalista Gaúcho: a educação como estratégia de atuação no seu processo de institucionalização (décadas de 1950 a 1960)

Abstract

This work is the result of a doctoral research which was carried out at the Graduate Program in Education at the Federal University of Pelotas. The thesis to be defended is that the Gaucho Traditionalist Movement (MTG) used education as a strategy for maintaining and disseminating its representations and practices of traditionalism in its first decades of activity, in the 1950s and the 1960s. The epistemological reference of the investigation is Cultural History (BURKE, 1991, 1997, 2011; PESAVENTO, 2003, BARROS, 2011) and it promotes, through document analysis (LE GOFF, 1990; CELLARD, 2008; CORSETTI, 2006; SAMARA and TUPY, 2010) and a semistructured interview (LÜDKE and ANDRÉ, 1986), a historiographical operation (CERTEAU, 2015) with written and oral sources. The iconographies only serve as illustrations, not being problematized here. The documentary corpus is composed of five main elements: 1) books by traditionalist historians; 2) books by Glaucus Saraiva, João Carlos Paixão Côrtes and Luiz Carlos Barbosa Lessa, considered the main intellectuals of gaucho traditionalism; 3) interview with Mário Mattos, founder of 35 CTG; 4) Annals of Traditionalist Congresses that took place within the time period (1950s-1960s); 5) issues of Revista do Ensino do Rio Grande do Sul that were published within the time period (1950s-1960s). The academic debate takes into account the writings of authors such as Tau Golin (1983, 1987, 1989, 2004) Zalla (2010, 2012, 2015, 2018), Nedel (2005), Brum (2005, 2008, 2009a, 2009b, 2013) and Freitas (2004, 2006, 2007a, 2007b, 2009, 2011), these being identified as contributors to the theme of gaucho traditionalism. Based on the idea of invented traditions (HOBSWAM, 2012), the analyzes were mainly centered on the following categories: bureaucratization (WEBER, 1999); symbolic power (BOURDIEU, 2000); production of culture and strategy (CERTEAU, 1998); representation (CHARTIER, 2002; PESAVENTO, 1993); appropriation and practices (CHARTIER, 1995; 2002). The present study highlights the idea that the MTG arises in a context in which its founders were recipients of culture and adopted, as a tactic, the cult of elements that they considered to be part of the gaucho culture. This is how the Gaucho Traditionalist Movement emerged, which, through a complex bureaucratic apparatus, became institutionalized and guaranteed for itself the symbolic power that allowed it to build and disseminate representations of traditionalism. Transformed into a producer of culture, MTG invested in education as an operating strategy in its first two decades of activity.