Codificação, Acondicionamento e Análise dos Documentos Relativos ao Museu do Marajó e seu Fundador Padre Giovanni Gallo

Abstract

The cataloging of historical facts in the history of a people are actions that depend on knowledge, labor and patience. Giovanni Gallo, who, in the 1970s, started a process of registering the daily life and histories of the local communities, including the archeological cultures that disappeared more than 500 years ago. The present work aims at sanitizing, restoring, packing, and chronologically organizing a large part of the documents inventoried by this priest, who today figures as a protagonist in the history of Marajó. We have used a historical, anthropological, sociological, and archival methodology, in which the very compulsion of the documents constitutes a stage in the analysis. Thus, listed in the documental collection constituted by the priest are newspapers, newspaper clippings, primary sources, photos - both personal ones and those that register daily life in Marajó - and slides. More than 500 written documents were treated, which occupy 11 folders and 12 binders, of which 4 contain slides, 4 primary documents and 4 newspaper clippings, besides 5 folders containing personal photos and other photos. Aware that many cultural values were disappearing and that there was an urgent need to fix this heritage, Fr. Giovanni Gallo cast his foreign gaze on the "other", gathering a collection of symbolic immaterial and material goods (archeological and ethnographic objects), which also provides an anthropological interpretation of the cultural-cotidian practice of Marajó. The present work highlights the unique character of the Museum of Marajó which, in its contents and museography, show the anthropological vision of Father Giovanni Gallo about the "other" who welcomed him and whom he wanted and succeeded in sensitizing to the discovery and appreciation of his own culture.