WHERE HISTORY LIVES: TRACES OF THE BARRA POWER PLANT IN COLLECTIVE MEMORY AND IN HISTORY TEACHING
Local History; History Teaching; Barra Plant.
This dissertation investigated the teaching of local history through the reconstruction of the memory of Usina Barra, a former sugar mill located in the municipality of Vicência, Pernambuco. Based on oral history methodology, document analysis, and questionnaires administered to teachers at the Dr. Benjamin Azevedo School, the work sought to understand how the collective memory of residents, especially former workers and their descendants, contributed to the preservation of a history that resists official erasure. Drawing on authors such as Ecléa Bosi, Paul Thompson, Pierre Nora, Paulo Freire, and Jörn Rüsen, the study reaffirms that teaching local history is not restricted to the classroom, but is built on relationships, listening, and community experience. Thus, Usina Barra emerged not only as an object of study, but as a collective historical subject, whose living memory pulsates in the voices that reconstruct it and keep it present.