Irani (1912): de campo de batalha a lugar de memória

Abstract

In this dissertation, we seek to understand the transformation of a place that was a battlefield to a place of memory. The current Irani county, was created in the same territorial space that on October 22, 1912 took place the Battle of Irani, the first confrontation of the Contestado War-1912-1916. We discovered that in Irani was built and also preserved a cultural patrimony related to the memory of the battle and war. We contemplate a possibility of approaching this culture, the political and social contexts that influenced the formation of the patrimony and the remembrance movement, initiated from the end of 1970 to nowadays. To present Irani's cultural heritage and development policies, we look for sources in the region itself. The analysed documents are composed by minutes, statutes, regiments, court documents, advertisements of cultural patrimony, architectural projects and the specific legislation of the Contestado. The sources were obtained in the archive of the Irani town hall, in the Contestado Memorial, in the archive of the Contestado Foundation, in the Chapecó’s diocesan archive and in a private collection in Xanxerê city. The set that we gathered allowed an exhibition of the main actions in favor of the Contestado’s memory in Irani and patrimonial development, which took place at different times in the last decades. We discovered that the trajectory of the Contestado movement in Irani can be easily confused with that of Vicente Telles, the main protagonist in the dissemination of the Contestado culture and responsible for the registration of the Contestado Foundation, an organization that until its extinction in 2021, manages the Historic Site of Irani and structuring projects. We demonstrate by documents analysis that the work of Vicente Telles and the Contestado were accompanied by the interest of the Contestado municipal legislatures, which aimed to increase the local memory factor of Irani and historical/cultural tourism.