Oralidade, território e memória: comunidade e Museu da Resistência da Boa Esperança Casa Maria Sueli

Abstract

The importance of orality, territory and memory in the Boa Esperança Community, located in the north of Teresina-Piauí, is the central focus of this work, whose research was carried out between 2023 and 2025. The study aimed to highlight ancestry through orality, the historical, social and territorial elements that support the collective identity of the community, historically invisible and unassisted by the municipal government. This process of neglect was further aggravated with the implementation of the megaproject of urban revitalization and tourist expansion known as the Lagoas do Norte Program (PLN), under the discourse of progress, has promoted deterritorialization and the breaking of community ties. From a qualitative approach, the study was developed based on direct contact with residents, through semi-structured interviews, conversation circles and participant observation. This methodology allowed us to understand the practices of everyday resistance and the central role of oral tradition as a form of transmission of knowledge, the denunciations of injustices and the strengthening of collective memory. Orality, in this context, is identified as an instrument of struggle, belonging and identity affirmation. The Living Museum of the Good Hope Resistance emerges as a space for the preservation of this knowledge, bringing together lived and living stories through objects, narratives and symbols that reinforce the link between territory, culture and memory. Thus, this work seeks to demonstrate how these elements are deeply interconnected and contribute to the rupture with the processes of historical and social erasure that still remains today threatening the permanence of the community in its territory.