A infância desvalida institucionalizada em Pelotas/RS: controle e ordenamento social nas páginas dos periódicos locais – décadas de 1910 a 1940.

Abstract

This research has as objective the survey of political and administrative aspects that involve the reception and instruction of boys and girls and the practices of control and social ordering of destitute children in the city of Pelotas / RS, in the period from 1910 to the middle of 1940, which resulted in the institutionalization of this childhood. Practices that sought to standardize and moralize children's behaviors and conduct through regulations provided for in the legislation of the time are investigated. The temporal delimitation of this study is justified by changes in the Catholic Church in Pelotas and the region since the creation of the Diocese of Pelotas in 1910, the creation of foster care institutions and education for poor children in the 1920s. Legislation enacted in 1927 culminated in the applicable measures of assistance and protection of children in Brazil, resulting in the so-called reform school in Pelotas in the 1940s. In this sense, this thesis investigated the referrals to childhood devalidated through the police and family institutions, later analyzed the foundation of childcare institutions, until the creation of its own institution to welcome minors, considered as a social problem. The study is based on the bibliography on the subject, on the legislation in force during the investigated period and on local newspapers, considering that the press periodic was the greatest means of information of the time. Through the documental analysis methodology, the local newspapers Diário Popular and A Alvorada were examined, the production referring to education and referrals to underprivileged children, since the local presses are important disseminators of the problem. It seeks to know how the culture of internment took place effectively in the city of Pelotas. In this way, it was found that the press was an important agent in the institutionalization of childhood, especially for children considered as “minors”. The representation of the press about minors corroborated for the constitution of a social imaginary that led to considering them as a danger to society. Thus, both for the uncorrupted underprivileged childhood and for abandoned, delinquent and offending minors, asylum institutions focused on moral and professional education were necessary, forming docile, useful and submissive bodies.