Collective imaginary and the museum

In addition to the new laws aimed at education in the first half of the twentieth century, there were also articulations with the culture, created for the conservation of the national historic heritage. It was a period in which, historically, a concern for the preservation of the country's memory on the Brazilian public scene began to arise, culminating in debates that reflected to some extent in the legal texts from the 1930s and that, later on, ended up influencing the creation of institutions to support and defend the historical heritage. As evidence of this dispute, there was the creation of national museums and the gradual increase of visitors in general. Among them are those linked to school institutions, as we could attest in the visitor’s books of Inconfidência Museum, a privileged source for the research that gave rise to this article.

Ouro Preto, as we know, was the scene of events that were shaped through elements that represent a certain narrative of part of the national memories, among which stands out the event known as Inconfidência Mineira, a conspiracy that gained a marked historical relevance to the point of deserving a museum of its own. Thus the motivation of educational institutions to visit the museum was always justified, especially if we take into account the presence of the theme in school books, in the teaching of History of Brazil, the baroque architecture style of the city, its relation with historical events linked to civic and patriotic issues, the period of mineral extraction of gold, the relationship and formation of the city with the traffic of African slaves, among other reasons.

If the Republicans turned Tiradentes into a national hero, it was during the Vargas government that this mystique was strengthened. From the 1940s the Brazilian press published an extensive printed material regarding the Inconfidência Mineira and its ‘hero’. These editions contributed to the consolidation of republican ideals. In this sense, among those who signed the articles published between the 1930s and 1960s were some of the most notable Brazilian intellectuals, such as Manuel Bandeira³, Augusto de Lima Júnior, Gustavo Barroso, Carlos Drummond de Andrade, and Rodrigo Melo Franco de Andrade. In spite of the historical and architectural richness, certainly the wide dissemination about the Inconfidência contributed to give visibility and notoriety to the city and its patrimony, motivating people (including many foreigners) to visit it and to go to the museum.

The attempt to popularize the historic cities of Minas Gerais was also aimed at increasing the tourist potential among Brazilians and foreigners. An example of this was a document dated on June 5^th, 1956, signed by the Director of the Museum, Cônego Raimundo Otávio Trindade, thanking Jornal do Comércio ‘[...] for divulging the previous notes [...]’ about the museum. Through these actions, Inconfidência Museum was gradually consolidated as one of the main historical memories to be preserved and valued, since it sums up the ideals of the nation and the representation of its people: fearless, free and brave. This memory was strengthened mainly by the figure of Tiradentes, previously considered a defendant and who was gradually transformed into martyr and hero of the nation.

The historian José Murilo de Carvalho asserts that in order to create a myth it is necessary to work the social imaginary, stating that ‘... the elaboration of an imaginary is an integral part of the legitimization of any political regime’ (^{CARVALHO, 1990}, p. 10). It was no different with Inconfidência Mineira. Carvalho points out that: ‘It is through the imagination that one can reach not only the head but, especially, the heart, which is, the aspirations, fears and hopes of a people. It is by imaginary that societies define their identities, goals and enemies, in order to organize their past, present and future’ (CARVALHO, 1990, p.10).

In the visitation books we have often identified the record of people who have written on their pages their admiration for the Inconfidentes, praising the courage and bravery of Tiradentes, congratulating the initiative of creating a museum for this purpose. In this way, the history of the Inconfidência Mineira and the image of Tiradentes as heroic figure of the nation began to be constructed within certain historical and political conceptions, whose main objectives were aligned with the ideals of constitution of a republican nation, free and civilized, but with control over how this should be imagined.

There is no denying that the creation of the museum, as well as the strengthening of patriotic myths and ideals throughout this process, was extremely important to the country. However, paradoxically, it also served as a device for shadowing contradictions and even dispersing potential transgressing forces. In this sense, we are able to point out that the strategy to create the Inconfidência Museum was not only to preserve the memory of our history, but also to produce certain forgetfulness, which is, for certain groups to conquer their respective projects of power. Jacques Le Goff (1984) argues that for the protagonists of these projects to occupy the seats of ‘... masters of memory and forgetfulness, it is one of the great concerns of the classes, groups, individuals who have controlled and keep controlling historical societies. The forgetting and silences of history reveal these mechanisms of manipulation of the collective memory’ (LE GOFF, 1984, p.103).

Records from schools

As we announced, the major sources of this study were the Museum Visitation Books, from volume one to 26. Taking the first book, dated December 29, 1945, we continued collecting data until December 1965 and included a book of illustrious visitors, which was used separately, completing a total of 27 books surveyed⁴. In the same place where the books were, we found administrative documents such as letters and correspondence sent to the museum by directors, teachers and students of public and private school institutions, both secular and military, religious and vocational training. We also find some letters from educational non-school organizations, such as scout groups.

The main question was to identify, quantify, qualify and analyze the type of school visitors who were looking for this cultural space, which is home to an important part of Brazil's history, with a permanent exhibition about the Inconfidência Mineira, as well as objects that represent the customs of the period represented there. Some of the documents found, such as correspondence sent by school institutions to the museum, show schools interested in visiting it, usually because they are studying something linked to the Inconfidência Mineira or even to the city of Ouro Preto, as shown in the following document. With the stamp of the Department of Post Office, it was sent by Mr. Henrique Rangelo and addressed to the director of the Museum (Photo 1), from an agency in Mogi das Cruzes, São Paulo. In the document, the sender asks the director Orlandino Fernandes⁵ to ‘inform, if possible, the visit of students from his College to the Museum’.

Source: Credits to Betânia dos Anjos do ^{Carmo’s collection, 2018}.

Picture 1 A school director’s telegram informing to the Inconfidência Museum’s director on an excursion of a group of students from Mogi das Cruzes, received in October 23, 1935. 

Many similar correspondences were found in the archives of Casa do Pilar, which shows a great interest of the school institutions, at that time, to visit the museum for activities that were included in the curriculum or that were complementary to it. It is also seen that the museum attended and received these groups, supporting them regarding the needs of the trip, as we can read in the correspondence found in ‘sent documents’ of the administrative sector (Picture 2) in which director Orlandino writes to Mr. Thomaz Farkas, from São Paulo, stating that ‘[...] the greatest pleasure in receiving students from Colégio Experimental [...]’ and gives other measures beyond his functions.

Source: Credits to Betânia dos Anjos do ^{Carmo’s collection, 2018}.

Picture 2 The director of the museum’s correspondence confirming the reception to the group of students from Colégio Experimental and making other arrangements about the stay, on August 24, 1936. 

As an example of this increasingly and robust relationship between some educational institutions and the museum, we have identified in the archives a letter dated June 25, 1965, written on letterhead from USP (Unversidade de São Paulo) and its Philosophy, Science, Languages and Literature College. In general terms, the letter affirmed that ‘[...] The Philosophy, Science, Languages and Literature College, from Universidade de São Paulo, seeks to develop a renewed education system in its basic cycle classes from the area of Social Studies, which plays a pioneering role in the curriculum’. There is also a letter of thanks from the director of Ginásio Estadual Vocacional de Barretos, addressed to the director of the museum: ‘[...] we thank you for the kindness you have received and the assistance given to us during the study of the environment [...]’. These exchanges, which are quite present in the above-mentioned archives, show that several school institutions searched for the museum quite often and this was willing to attend to them and accompany students and teachers during the period of the visit.

Another kind of source found in the documents located at Casa do Pilar that was important for this study were standardized offices issued by the Museum and referring to its flow of visitors. As a common practice, these trades, distributed sequentially from the year following the museum's inauguration in 1945, were constant throughout the period studied. They were drawn up, signed by the three directors of the museum and sent to the 'President’s Cabinet / Executive Board', whose addressees were the respective directors of the institution's maintainers who, over more than 80 years, had several nomenclatures, such as Serviço do Patrimônio Histórico e Artístico Nacional (National Historic and Artistic Heritage Service ) (SPHAN); Instituto do Patrimônio Histórico e Artístico Nacional (National Historical and Artistic Heritage Institute) (IPHAN), among others, which also had the task of controlling the flow of visitors.

As an example, we have the official letter 45, dated March 2^nd, 1956, signed by Cônego Raimundo Otávio Trindade and sent to IPHAN General Director, Rodrigo Melo Franco de Andrade, whose subject was ‘Number of visitor in February, 1956: 2.151’⁶. In response the director communicates to the director of the museum, according to the letter n. 157, dated March 8, 1956, on a letterhead of the Ministry of Education and Health - MEC / DPHAN that this information was forwarded to ‘MEC Press Service Chief for the purpose of publicity in the press’. Our analysis does not confirm this number of signatures corresponding to the month of February, 1956, on the visitor's books. Thus we consider that, for the purposes of our study, which is to characterize the self-declared public as being linked to school institutions, visitation books have been a more reliable source. Therefore we have selected only the visitation books as privileged sources, placed publicly at the disposal of any visitor in the museum lobby. The sequential, handwritten, personal, and almost always constant record of the books over the years seemed to be more reliable because they are handwritten notes and because they represented the presence of the visitors in that place and time.

The visitor's books of Inconfidência Museum

Bernadette Gatti considers that, in education, ‘[...] few studies use quantitative methodologies [...]’ (^{GATTI, 2004}, p.11). For this reason, she believes that ‘[...] there are educational problems that need to be qualified through quantitative data for their contextualization and understanding’ (GATTI, 2004, p.11). Thus, the methodological proposal of Gatti for the use of a quantitative method for the treatment of these sources is pertinent. From these data and numerical analyzes, it was possible to reach qualitative interpretations, reaching what Gatti defended when she states that ‘[...] the combination of this type of data with those derived from qualitative methodologies can enrich the understanding of events, facts, processes’ (GATTI, 2004, p.11).

Following the guidelines of that author, we made a quantitative survey of the public who visited the museum based on information requested in the books: ‘name, origin and date’. After this first survey, we carried out a thorough selection of those who declared themselves to be linked in some way to an educational institution, be it directors, teachers, students, among others. With the isolation of this specific public, it was possible to make a more accurate analysis of the profile of these visitors. The main interest was to study who they were and where they came to visit a museum, in the countryside of Minas Gerais.

Of the 26 visitor books analyzed, from 1945 to 1965, plus the specific one for illustrious⁷ visitors, only a five-month time span was identified between March 8, 1962 and July 28, 1962 (Book 15). We also found a numerical duplicity between two books, which, however, did not affect the chronological sequence for the analysis, since their contents were different.

Made in hardcover, the dimensions of the books are 33.5 cm x 22 cm, all with two hundred sheets and four hundred pages (front and back). In the first book (book 01), thirty-one free lines are recorded for each sheet, while the other books had the free space of thirty-two lines per sheet, which can record about 12,800 (twelve thousand and eight hundred) per year. All visitation books also have a numerical and sequential crescent page printed in the upper right corner of each front sheet. According to the list of books and dates presented above, in the early years of the museum, each book averaged three years of visitation.

Knowing the institution's internal practice⁸ in not opening the museum on Mondays for maintenance and cleaning, we count an average of 355 visitors a month, 14 (fourteen) people a day, in the first years of visitation. However, throughout the survey, the analyzes showed an increasing number of visitors each year. It can be observed that, from the end of the 1950s, the institution recorded in a single year almost three entire books of visitors, for example, books 8, 9 and 10, which were used to record visitors of 1958, which indicated an increase in the number of visitors.

Two aspects made data collection difficult. The first one came with the difficulty of identifying a large part of the handwriting, made in a feather tip (ink pen) and with illegible or erased signatures. However, in the late 1960s, the ballpoint pen began to become popular, even presenting new colors in the signatures, in addition to the blue and black, more recurring at that time. The second difficulty arose from the fact that the record was made by a member of a male family group, and only his name or signature was recorded. Then terms such as "and lady", "and wife" or "and family" were added.

From these considerations, the survey was done day by day (line by line), month by month and year by year, so that the groups of schoolchildren who visited Inconfidência Museum could be mapped over the proposed twenty years. In this way, it was possible to discover who this public was and where he came from to visit the museum. In order to better process the geographical distribution of visitors, the southeast region was separated by its states, remembering that, in that context, Rio de Janeiro⁹ was the Country Federal Capital. For the analysis of visitors from the state of Minas Gerais, it should be noted that the visitors of the state (total public), were predominantly originating from the cities of Ouro Preto (and its districts) and Belo Horizonte. Visitors from other Brazilian states and other countries were also registered. And also visitors who declared themselves to be priests, military, doctors, politicians, engineers, and still the main focus of our research: students and teachers.

In the first page of the first book (Book I), only six signatures referring to 1945 were identified. The initial date of the records is December 29, 1945. The following lines refer sequentially to the beginning of the year 1946, thus appearing, therefore, that the first book with record of the visitors should have been planned to actually begin their records from 1946.

In that book, the sheets were divided into two columns, the first for the visitors' register, and the other for their origin, in which the visitors recorded, in addition to the place of origin, the date of the visit, according to Picture 3. The other books had three distinct columns, with Name, Origin and Date. In the first pages, visitors from Minas Gerais, other states of Brazil and foreign countries were located.

Visiting public who reportedly came from educational institutions of any age, school level, gender, region, background or even motivation that brought them to this institution were included in the terminology 'groups of schooling', recording any evidence to substantiate this connection. In the twenty years surveyed, about 270 references to groups of schoolchildren were found in the visiting books of Inconfidência Museum.

Source: Credits to Betânia dos Anjos do ^{Carmo’s collection, 2018}.

Picture 3 Book 1 of December 29, 1945 

Groups of persons linked to educational institutions - general aspects

The study of craft supplies and visitor books revealed that many schools exchanged prior correspondence with the museum director on each of the mandates, expressing an intention to visit the museum, generally as a complement to some study begun in the schools. From the correspondence found and the analysis of the signatures in the books, the highest number of school visitors was from the southeast region, mostly Minas Gerais, more specifically Belo Horizonte, followed by the states of Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo. There was very little occurrence of the registration of visitors from Espírito Santo. Over the course of twenty years, audiences linked to foreign educational institutions also attended the museum. The first group of school visitors came from the capital of the state of Minas Gerais, being registered as ‘Colégio Marconi Convoy from BH’¹⁰ (08/1946, page 39 F).

According to a study, Colégio Marconi was created by Italian immigrants linked to the integralist movement¹¹. Among the proposals of integralist education, the aspect of socialization as a support for teaching was present in the guidelines of the movement. An example of this practice was pointed out in Lenir Palhares' dissertation (2016), citing a study of the Integralist Encyclopedia in which the Studies Division foresaw ‘[...] the formation of a collective identity and the development of the sense of belonging...]’. The goal was, in addition to the doctrine, sports, morals and civics education. These practices were composed of programming such as ‘[...] visits to establishments, factories and museums" to develop in the child, not only the love of work, but also the artistic taste’ (ENCICLOPÉDIA, 1959, p. 177-178 apud PALHARES, 2016, p. 111).

It is believed that it was for a school activity that the schedule of this visit brought the group from Colégio Marconi and other groups of school children to Ouro Preto. Their presence appears with a record of twenty-eight participants, on August 22, 1946. As the signatures appear to be adults, there is no way to distinguish students from teachers or who was responsible for the group, because there is no self-declaration in this sense. As for the genre, they signed a first group of twenty men and then eight women. Often the person in charge of the students did not allow everyone to sign or to indicate the exact number of participants of the visit.

Source: Credits to Betânia dos Anjos do ^{Carmo’s collection, 2018}.

Picture 4 Record of Colégio Marconi students’ visit in 1946 

We have found, in all the books surveyed, records of visitors from France, Argentina, England, Belgium, Italy and several other countries. These visitors were not separated by continents. Of the foreign groups linked to institutions, there was a constant presence of schools and faculties of architecture and law from different regions and countries. As an example of this institutional variety, in August 1962 the Experiment in International Living, an American nonprofit organization for education, sustainable development, and exchange programs, established in 1932, was found.

Over the years, it has been possible to observe larger groups of female visitors ‘unaccompanied’ by some male ‘authority’. An example of this is a self-declared teacher, responsible for a group of students from the State of Guanabara, who has registered herself as ‘teacher at Escola Inácio de Azevedo Amaral, accompanied by 33 students of the 2nd year’ (HISTORICAL ARCHIVE OF INCONFIDÊNCIA MUSEUM [19--], 77). From the second half of the 1950s and especially in the following decade, it was possible to identify the most effective presence of women in the social scene, which reflected somehow in visiting books. An example of this is the registration of a group of visitors composed of a group of 25 women, self-declared students, from Universidade Federal Rural do Rio de Janeiro (HISTORICAL ARCHIVE OF INCONFIDÊNCIA MUSEUM, 19-20).

We also have found, in one of the books, the register of a visit of a group of women, students at Colégio Sion, from São Paulo, on October 18, 1962, accompanied by a nun, paying tribute to the two female figures linked to Inconfidência Mineira: Bárbara Heliodora (1759-1819) and Marília de Dirceu (1767-1853), with the following words: ‘in honor of Bárbara Heliodora and Marília de Dirceu by Colégio Sion (São Paulo) under Sister Germana’s direction - convoy conducted by cultural exhibitor Prof. Dr. Alceu Manard Araújo on 10/18/1962¹²’ (HISTORICAL ARCHIVE OF INCONFIDÊNCIA MUSEUM, [19--]).

Source: Credits to Betânia dos Anjos do ^{Carmo’s collection, 2018}.

Picture 5 Tribute of students from Colégio Sion (SP) to the women of Inconfidência Mineira, in 1962 

Visitors per year

In 1944 and 1945 no group of schoolchildren were registered in the visitor's books, although this did not mean that they had not visited the museum. According to an annual analysis, the four lowest levels of school visitors were: 1946, with only three records of school attendance; 1961, with four; 1947 and 1953, with five records each. The most visited years were: 1960, with 32 records; 1962, with twenty-nine; 1965, with twenty-six; 1964, with twenty-five. As we pointed out initially, the book that covers the period between June 26, 1964 and January 2, 1965 was not located. The non-accounting of this period raises doubts about what would actually be the year with the greatest number of visitors, but does not substantially compromise the other analyzes.

Considering the monthly analysis of the studied period, it was verified that the months of July and August were the ones of greater visitation, while March and December received smaller public. It could be that the highest incidence in these months is related to the school holidays of the middle of the year and the summer period, considering that, at the end of the year, although it was already a holiday period, besides the parties, it was also a very rainy period for travel in Minas Gerais.

Visitors per region

For this specific analysis of groups of schoolchildren, eliminating the indistinct occurrences, a total of 270 notes is considered. Of these, 95% of visitors to schoolchildren by state and country were visitors from Brazil and 5% from abroad.

In Brazil, the southeast region appears with 74% of visits, and the state of Minas Gerais has the highest percentage, 52.2%. Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo recorded 22.5% of visits to the Museum each, while Espírito Santo represented only 2.8% of visits.

The other regions of Brazil totaled 21% of the 270 visitors. The distribution was divided into 43.5% from the northeastern region, 41% from the southern region, 12.8% from the central-west region and 2.7% from the northern region.

These data show that the southeast region was the one that most visited the museum in this period. However, within the most present region, Espírito Santo had, in percentage terms, a similar visitation to the north of the country, 2.8% and 2.7% respectively, which, in addition, result in a number of visitors very close to the foreign public in the same period, 5%. It is a result that puts in check the justification of not visiting the museum for geographic reasons, since some groups of scholars from other countries were prepared to come to know the city and the Inconfidência Museum, as we saw previously. This fact may suggest that the displacements in a country of continental dimensions were (and still are) very difficult and expensive.

Visitors per genre

For this analysis, we will make some considerations to understand the criteria that were established for the evaluation of gender in the register of visitors' books. When the survey of the number of male and female teachers through self-declarations began to be made, subjectivities were found that cast doubt on the exact number of men and women in some groups of visitors, since the records did not always show clearly the condition of the visitors. As an example of this situation, we identified a group that visited the Museum in July 1952 (HISTORICAL ARCHIVE OF INCONFIDÊNCIA MUSEUM, [19--], p. 76) and wrote: ’34 teachers from the 10^th Rural Course of Fazenda do Rosário of Ibirité’ or ‘"16 visitors from France - Representatives of the Sorbonne College" in September 1952 (HISTORICAL ARCHIVE OF INCONFIDÊNCIA MUSEUM, [19--], p. 91). In this case, although it is clear that it is a group of subjects related to education, because it is a common reference for both genders, it was decided not to count the group.

When it came to groups of schoolchildren from specific institutions, such as military or religious schools, for which there was some sort of self-declaration that indicated the gender by patent or religious rank, the counting of males and females was considered important. An example would be a group from Uruguay which wrote: ‘Excursion de las Franciscanas [...] de Maria - Colégio de La Asunción com las alunnas [...]’ in July 1963 (HISTORICAL ARCHIVE OF INCONFIDÊNCIA MUSEUM, [19--], p. 31), in which, by the criterion adopted, those female pupils were accompanied by a female tutor. Another case was the visit of a group of schoolchildren from a military school from Belo Horizonte, where the students were accompanied by a Captain-Director and a Teacher-Captain, self-titled ‘Embaixada de alunos do Ginásio Tiradentes da Polícia Militar do Estado de Minas Gerais’, who visited the Museum in May 1954 (HISTORICAL ARCHIVE OF INCONFIDÊNCIA MUSEUM, [19--], 180). In this case, they were considered a male tutor and a female one.

Likewise, when the group is registered in a general way, as ‘Teachers from Colégio Nossa Senhora das Neves’ (HISTORICAL ARCHIVE OF INCONFIDÊNCIA MUSEUM, [19--], 45) or ‘School group from Rio de Janeiro accompanied by its directors - Caravana do Colégio Brasil - Órgão estudantil de Niterói’ (HISTORICAL ARCHIVE OF INCONFIDÊNCIA MUSEUM, [19--], page 99), only one person of the registered genre was considered representative of that group (in the first example, a female, and in the second, a male representative).

Once these parameters were defined, 205 occurrences of genders were counted, of which 68.7% were male and 31.35% female. The percentages point to a much larger number of self-declared male visitors who visited the Museum in twenty years, either by individual visits, in groups of teachers or by accompanying groups of students. This suggests that male teachers prevailed in museum visits, since they also predominated as teachers of junior high school, scientific and higher education at that time.

Visitors per institutions

For the study of the visitors linked to institutions with the presence register in the visitors' books of the museum, we divided the groups between foreign and national institutions, classifying them by categories: first as universities / colleges; the second as school groups. We also consider, in the second group, students and teachers who came individually, as a form of leisure. Even if it were clear that they were only there for the tour, it was considered the information of the institution of origin from which they came, since they declared it. One example was the registration of married couples, recognized for having the same surname, and one of them declaring himself a teacher, as a United States teacher recorded in June, 1964 (HISTORICAL ARCHIVE OF INCONFIDÊNCIA MUSEUM, [19--], p.110), ‘Prof. and Mrs. Alan M. Mac. Ewan: Lincoln University Penn’. In this case, what mattered was the record of the self-declared condition of teaching at a foreign university.

For higher education, all the registers were included in which there were terms such as college, high school, national school, university, engineering, and so on. Then the visitors were classified as a second group of primary, collegial and scientific schools, as well as technical, polytechnic, vocational schools, gymnasiums, and boarding schools.

The difficulty in this screening is related to the records in which only the name of the institution was placed without further details, such as the 'visit of Escola 12 de Dezembro, from Belo Horizonte’ (HISTORICAL ARCHIVE OF INCONFIDÊNCIA MUSEUM, p. 108). There was also the problem of the lack of indication of the age or the school level of students, such as the group of ‘15 people who were part of a delegation of students from Peru’ (HISTORICAL ARCHIVE OF INCONFIDÊNCIA MUSEUM, 188). In these cases, the option was to classify these institutions as ‘without further information’ because we considered that the assumption could lead to a misinterpretation.

Conclusion

Among 270 references to groups of schoolchildren, 180 records related to educational institutions were found and validated. Of the total of 180, 41.65%, or 75 were visitors of higher education, divided between national and foreign institutions. Most of them were students from Law, Philosophy, Architecture and Fine Arts. Classified as primary, basic and scientific schools, we have located 48.33% occurrences, that is, 87 groups. About 10% of the institutions, 18 of them, were linked to non-school institutions such as scout groups or school groups in holiday courses. Many groups connected to religious institutions or military schools were registered, but it was decided not to account for them separately since many schools adopted religious or civic names, which makes it difficult to obtain a clear classification to determine whether they are public or private schools; military or civilian. The most surprising fact was the rare visits of groups of schoolchildren from Ouro Preto, Mariana or other cities close to the museum.

We have found out that the majority of the schooling population was composed of Brazilians from the southeastern region of the country. The male visitor overlapped the female group, although a growing number of women's groups visited the museum in the last years of the survey. We were surprised by the number of groups of foreign and national schoolchildren linked to the schools of Architecture and Fine Arts, as well as the frequent records of the School of Translators and Interpreters of Minas Gerais, always present in the books throughout the studied period, certainly accompanying foreigners.

It is believed that the school visitors sought out the museum with the purpose of knowing part of the Brazilian history represented there, since the formalization of those responsible for the groups was located in the books, at various moments, about the importance of the historical fact, its characters and the city itself. Thaís Nivia de Lima Fonseca states that ‘Inconfidência Mineira has been an element of support for a certain historiographical construction and for political projects and positions since the last decades of the 19th century’. According to her, ‘[...] Tiradentes emerges as its symbol, synthesis of the ideas of which the movement would be the forerunner in Brazil. [...]’ (^{FONSECA, 2002}, p. 57). The constant visits of the military schools to the Museum could be justified by the fact that, on April 29, 1946, President Eurico Gaspar Dutra instituted April 21 as Military and Civil Police Day, considering Joaquim José da Silva Xavier, ‘Tiradentes’, as martyr of Independence and granting him the title of Civic Patron of the Nation and of the Military and Civil Police of Brazil.

Proportionately, it was found that most of the groups of schoolchildren who visited the museum between 1945 and 1965 were senior and middle-class, private, religious, military and vocational schools, mostly males. This profile corroborates the idea that the education and culture foreseen in the constitutions and thought for Brazil, in that period, intended to reach a social audience in general, and school in particular. However, in reality, those who attended school represented a small part of the Brazilian population, since, according to Maria Luisa Santos Ribeiro, from the 1930s to the 1960s, there were no effective advances in education in the country. According to her, ‘[...] Brazil came to the 1960s with almost 40% of illiteracy, which shows the inefficiency of the reforms, their rhetorical character and the omission of the State in the effective enforcement of laws’ (^{RIBEIRO, 1986}, 161). This shows that, in fact, the student or teacher who had the possibility to visit the museum was a subject with a double privilege: that of being educated and having the financial conditions to visit the museum.