Introducing the curatorial experience in the IHGRGS' Sandra Jatahy Pesavento collection

The curatorial experience in the Sandra Jatahy Pesavento collection takes place since mid-2015, being innovative in the field of personal archives and, especially, in the collections of the Historical and Geographical Institute of Rio Grande do Sul (IHGRGS). It aims to think, organize in terms of archival science, plan and suggest actions in several areas, disseminate its content and the memory and intellectual trajectory of the teacher, researcher, and historian Pesavento. The constituents of the collection are relevant for the research of the present time and the fields of History, History of Education, and Archivology, among others.²

Sandra Jatahy Pesavento’s personal archive (SJP Collection) is effectively deposited in the IHGRGS since the end of 2014, received as a donation from the Pesavento family (widower and children and their spouses). The referred institution of custody is characterized as a private non-profit entity, founded on August 05, 1920, whose purpose is to promote studies and investigations on History, Geography, Archaeology, Philology, Anthropology, and related fields of knowledge, mainly focused on the state of Rio Grande do Sul.

Historian Sandra Jatahy Pesavento (1946-2009) was a full professor at the Department of History of the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul (UFRGS) and professor at the Graduate Programs of History and Urban and Regional Planning (PROPUR) of the same institution. She obtained her doctorate in Economic History from the University of São Paulo (USP) and four postdoctoral degrees from Paris institutions. She was a level 1A CNPq researcher and communicated with authors and historians from several countries worldwide. Author of extensive historiographical work, we were able to identify from her Lattes C.V. 125 articles, published in Brazil and abroad, 51 books - individually and collectively authored -, and 85 book chapters. Beginning her research in the field of Economic History - with a Marxist influence -, Sandra made an epistemological turn in the middle of her career to become a researcher of Cultural History. Her rich work addresses analyses on the “charqueadas gaúchas” (gauchosaladeros), the “Revolução Farroupilha” (Ragamuffin War), the gaucho bourgeoisie, and also on the issues of urbanity, images, sensibilities, and on the History-Literature relationship, the latter already under the focus of Cultural History (^{SANTOS, 2015}; SANTOS and MEIRELES, 2017; SANTOS and MEIRELES, and MEIRELES, 2019).

The trajectory of Sandra Jatahy Pesavento is inscribed in different movements and different times, revealing the nuances of a life dedicated to History, teaching, and research. In 1970, she began - still as an auxiliary lecturer - her teaching career at the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul (UFRGS), where she remained until the end of her life. In 1977, after applying for a professor position, she was effectively employed by the University as a public servant, going through the ranks of lecturer, assistant professor, until becoming, in 1991, a full professor of the History department.

It is also important to say that she has held several positions and functions at and beyond the University, attaching herself to different research bodies, namely: the Graduate Program in History/UFRGS, both as a teacher and coordinator; member of the editorial staff of several academic journals in Brazil and abroad; member of advisory boards; member of international historians associations; member of Research Centers; member and creator of working groups (W.G. of Cultural History at ANPUHRS (1997) and National W.G. of Cultural History (2001, founder) at the National ANPUH); coordinator of CAPES/COFECUB agreements (France/Brazil). We must emphasize the fact that “Pesavento uncovered an absolutely new historiographical field in Brazil, and acted as a teacher and researcher on that field, and also thought and wrote her based on it” (^{SANTOS, 2015}, p.272).

The professor/researcher/historian's premature death left a gap in the academic circles of our country, since she was a big influence for several generations of historians - traits which are visible in her Lattes C.V. due to the training of undergraduate and graduate students. However, her legacy remains alive in her work and in the scientific works that reference her texts.

In mid-2014, the Pesavento family (husband, daughter, and son) chose to move the researcher's collection to a custody institution in Porto Alegre, place of birth and city that welcomed her professional career. At that time, five years after the professor's death, the family felt the need to give a destination to such a rich material, a life with forty years dedicated to researching and teaching History. Some colleagues were contacted, including the current curator, who contacted the chairman of the IHGRGS, Dr. Miguel Frederico do Espírito Santo, and the latter promptly accepted the collection, along with the board of Directors of the institution. The collection included the historian's library, with an estimated four thousand works, and research material of four decades, including, among others, manuscripts of books and articles, transcription of primary sources, studies of authors and themes (manuscript files), plans for lessons and courses, research projects in various funding bodies (Capes, CNPq and Fapergs), records of travels to international congresses, images of Porto Alegre collected for study, academic correspondence (printed emails), a few History notebooks from her time as a high school student, etc.

At first, evaluation and search for the material in the family's residence were carried out by the IHGRGS staff (chairman, archivist, librarian, and executive secretary) in order to prospect the space needed for its storage in the Institute. Right after that, the materials were allocated in their own rooms: books in the large library and papers (research documents) in a sliding closet in the archive room. They stayed like this for a few months, waiting for the curator, who was on a postdoctoral period in Canada.

In the meantime, the family had two other important initiatives: creating a website about the historian and the complete digitizing of her book production (individual and organized books and book chapters). By doing this, they provide democratization in the public sharing of her writings. This episode lasted a few years, but the digitization was completed in 2017, and the digitized works are available on the IHGRGS website³. The personal website was opened for access in May 2017 and contains a timeline of the researcher's life, including records of her personal life and her work production, the unpublished carnets de Voyage, written during her visit to Paris in 2004, videos of interviews, photos, and digitized versions of published books.⁴

In April 2015, after being officially named curator of the collection, historian Dr. Nádia Maria Weber Santos⁵ assumed her functions, constituting a curatorial staff along with two more historians (two Masters in History from UFRGS whom Sandra Pesavento mentored), a Master in Social Memory and Cultural Goods, and four Scientific Initiation fellows. Therefore, the process of assessing and organizing the collection began, although constricted by institutional limitations, such as the lack of resources for hiring qualified professionals to organize the collection according to the standards. In the first year, all material was screened in order to choose how it would be stored - considering space availability - and organized (cataloged). After that, having opted for keeping and storing it in boxes and suspension folders, the process of separation by research theme was initiated, always opting to maintain a certain order already set by the archive producer. Cardboard boxes started being filled, and the smaller volumes were conditioned in the suspension folders. This is a very thorough work, which requires prior knowledge of the author's production, and the process benefited from the fact that the curator and the author have been fellow workers.

Later, in 2017, the collection received another item: a cabinet (furniture piece belonging to the historian) with more than thirty binders with pages containing information extracted from Porto Alegre's newspapers of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, filings made by the collection’s producer and her numerous students. Many of these newspapers are from the Hypólito da Costa Communication Museum of Porto Alegre, which is currently undergoing poor conditions, having lost part of its collection; some are from the IHGRGS itself, and others are from other archives. The researcher has followed an organization according to the themes she worked on, which facilitates its understanding and current keeping.

Also in 2017, the researcher's husband found a desk drawer belonging to her, which was still intact and unopened. He made a new donation to the collection: the last writings and the historian's last reflections and works before her death.

After screening and organizing the documents in the boxes and suspension folders, in April 2017, the process of describing the contents of the collection began, and it is still being carried out by a senior year History student who has now graduated. At the end of 2017, the collection received an individual room for the cardboard boxes fond. Also at the end of that year, the collection was opened to the public for research. The library remains without complete cataloging to the present time.

Between 2017 and 2018, we had two Ph.D. researchers working (researching) on the collection, one from the Bahia State University (UNEB) (Doctoral Stay in Education, FAPESB scholarship Salvador, Bahia) and another from the Federal University of Santa Catarina (UFSC) (Ph.D. in Human Sciences, CAPES scholarship, Florianópolis, Santa Catarina), both interested in the trajectory of the historian's work, regarding the sensibilities and historical-cultural itineraries carried out by the female intellectual, respectively.

From the beginning, the curatorial actions focused on some objectives, as follows: a) organizing the SJP Collection, making it available and disseminating it; b) capturing financial and human resources for organizing and classifying the SJP Collection; c) providing the exchange of knowledge and experience with other research institutions and archives.

At the end of 2018, the curator of the collection had a project approved by the CNPq Universal Notice, and this made it possible to obtain resources for finally cataloging the library, as well as for some other actions. The project is in progress (until February 2022), but some activities are temporarily suspended due to the pandemic.

In 2019, the family made another donation to the collection: Sandra Pesavento's travel objects (named by her and scattered throughout her residence), travel photo albums and diaries (small notebooks with writings, collages, and travel souvenirs pasted inside), and slides with content from travels and classes. All this material is still under treatment and remains in the family residence because the pandemic has made it impossible to transfer it due to the closure of the IHGRGS in 2020.

In this same year, 2019, the curatorial staff (composed of 3 historians and a Master in Social Memory and Cultural Goods) received two new members (all of which are volunteers): an archivist/historian (author of this article), and a curator and restorer of cultural goods. In all, the staff currently has six components.

Thus, at this time, year 2020, with some interruptions due to the pandemic, the SJP Collection goes through an archivistic reorganization, being reclassified, and the entire fond is being conditioned in new horizontal boxes and allocated in a sliding cabinet. The library is being organized and cataloged in a new database provided to IHGRGS by the amount granted by the CNPq Universal Notice (2018).

The complete material of the Sandra Jatahy Pesavento Collection⁶, up to the present moment (Oct 2020), comprises three fonds or collections: I - Bibliographical Collection: the historian's library (about to be cataloged), II - Fond (estimated at 60 thousand items): study and research material from 40 years of work of the professor and researcher, encompassing: II/1 - Boxes with study materials; II/2 - Digital archive: the complete digitized works of SJP; II-3 - Special archive of manuscript pages: full binder, with furniture, belonging to the historian, and including annotations of newspapers from the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries in Rio Grande do Sul; and II/4 - Travel documents (albums with travel pictures; travel diaries - small notebooks collected since 1975; slides); III - Three-dimensional documents/museum collection: III/1 - Travel objects (boxes, stones, vases, pictures, etc.); III/2 - Sandra Pesavento's necklaces.

Every archive is an organic but dynamic unit. The documentary species of this type of collection (personal intellectual archive) are related to the activities of its producer (in this case, a university professor, historian, and researcher for four decades) and can be organized in various ways by those who currently keep the material. However, it is recommended, following a basic precept of archivology regarding archive custody: to keep the organization as close as possible to the organization set up by the producer, who was an organized person regarding her papers and documents, almost creating her own private archive. This can be seen in the numerous folders and plastics with titles that she produced. The archive’s translocation to the IHGRGS, carried out by the employees, tried to preserve the order found in the historian's residence, moving the items in tied packs. The box organization follows the same logic, as well as the storage of three-dimensional objects and photo albums. It is also worth noting the dynamism of the archive concerning documents and materials family or coworkers may donate. Thus, the collection is not closed to receive further contributions, which may be received as the consultation of the documents begins, a process that is scheduled for next year.

Therefore, in this period of approximately six years, during which we have been at the head of the curation of the Sandra Jatahy Pesavento Collection, overcoming many challenges, the staff has worked in several phases of the curatorial work. We have already carried out several actions of organization, safeguarding, and conservation (such as arranging and rearranging the material, allocating it in various supports, cataloging, describing); dissemination of the collection material (writing of articles, thematic dossier, and publications, realization of two thematic Sandra Pesavento conferences; realization of two exhibitions with the collection material); establishment of partnerships (with the Municipal Chamber of Porto Alegre, with the Federal University of Goiás - CNPq Universal project, with the Mario Quintana House of Culture (CCMQ) and the Public Archive of Rio Grande do Sul (APERS), with UFRGS, among others); search for interns and research fellows; funding in public notices (CNPq, State Secretariat for Culture of Rio Grande do Sul). Our work remains guided by the search for improvements, both in physical space and material conditions for paper and three-dimensional documentation, and the meeting of new partners who might be interested in collaborating with the SJP Collection.

Finally, we emphasize that the digitization of the collection content is one of the necessary steps to safeguard the documents, and its realization is on our near horizon, as an important goal of curatorial action.

The historian’s personal archive holds numerous riches that can be studied in various fields by various contributions, and we will present one of these views here.

Personal collections - archives of their own

The proposal for the organization of personal archives has been thoroughly discussed in the field of archivology since the overcoming of its theoretical incomprehension, which did not consider its configuration an object of archival science. However, it has - at the same time - an archival connection and a programmatic indefiniteness. This happens because they combine, in the same archive, archival techniques guided by common sense - revealed when adopting individual procedures to organize the collection - with actions defined by some knowledge of the informational need, such as the preservation of records important to the life of that person. Such a symbiosis requires significant reflection on the part of the professionals involved in its organization.

The writing and archiving of oneself, in the terms discussed by ^{Ribeiro (1998}), in which there is a need for recording a personality, famous or anonymous, or the proposal of archiving one's own life, as described by ^{Artière (1998}), are conditioned by a certain perception of the historical becoming, where their existences can be inserted objectively. The degree of difficulties for organizing a personal collection, the peculiarities of which stand out in the process of its formulation, makes the challenge quite intense. If a personal collection is already an individualized complexity - which becomes clear when the collection is approached with consolidated archival techniques -, it becomes even more robust when we face premises elaborated by the collection’s producer herself. The challenge here becomes even more relevant, as we have the rare combination of a significant set of variables.

In a fundamental text written in 1998, Terry Cook outlined these circumstances, being emphatic in establishing that “the fundamental affirmations of traditional archival science, with their resulting dichotomies, are false” (^{COOK, 1998}, p.4). This happens because the work of the archivist has long ceased from being the one of a supposed impartial guardian of document sets received in their institutions, with archivists becoming what the author called “very active builders of social memory.” (COOK, 1998, p.4).

This means that the effective participation of the archivist has become a constitutive part of forming a collection, and the understanding of the document set they are organizing is essential. In order to do this, one has to consider the contextual trajectory of the person who is the producer of the collection, understanding its idiosyncrasies and the production conditions. In this sense, maximum attention should be paid not only to the most direct aspect of the document content - arising from activities that made this producer object of the reunion of her collection - but especially to what is involved in such production - the dilemmas, doubts, misconceptions, and materialness arising from the trajectory of the producer, thus allowing the understanding of their trajectory in all the greatness it imposes.

It is precisely from this perspective that we can analyze the documents gathered in the collection of professor, historian, researcher, and writer Sandra Jatahy Pesavento. Throughout more than 40 years of work as an educator, Sandra has dedicated herself to demonstrating to her hundreds of students the aspirations and contradictions that permeate the historical process, allowing generations of students to be in contact with this content that originates from human experience in society.

Pesavento was the author of several works of historical research, resulting from her incursions on records of the past⁷. Since the beginning, she showed concern for clarity in her communications, highlighting singular aspects that allowed the reader - whether they were an academic from the area or someone interested in the subject - the possibility of understanding, with real clarity, the most intricate aspects of the historical plots being addressed. This was the case, for example, of her book “O Imaginário da Cidade - visões literárias do urbano, Paris, Porto Alegre, Rio de Janeiro” (1999), where she discussed aspects of the urban reality of our cities, or when she discusses the citizens who were imprisoned for the most diverse crimes, reporting the idiosyncrasies that surrounded the criminal procedure undertaken against these people, such as in "Visões do Cárcere” (2009).

Pesavento's historiographical production, marked by academic rigor and depth of research, allowed the author to produce texts whose content has consistently been recognized. These contents served as a reference to other studies and demonstrate that the search for quality in her work was a constant. This feature is visible in her files, which are being rearranged to be made available to the public soon.

In these documents, the author's concern with her scientific production becomes evident by the volume of information being transmitted to the reader but mainly by the intention of qualifying her writing, whose perspective is to allow the reader to go through the pages of the book in an appropriate way, without mishaps or difficulties that could truncate or even prevent the understanding of the addressed topic. Such elaboration becomes evident since her first works, still in school, where the theme of History was not only already present, but received sophisticated and robust treatment. This is the premise that we intend to demonstrate in this text, in the following topics.

Intellectual production recorded in the archive

The Sandra Jatahy Pesavento archive allows many readings. These documents were collected during a fruitful career as a researcher and writer, aspects that are evidenced by the analysis of the documents gathered in this set. As pointed out by ^{CUNHA (2019}, p. 21), referring to another collection with similar characteristics:

The documents of this private collection keep individual and family histories, bring marks of the schooling of their holders and allow different interpretations. Materialized in paper, pencil, and ink, the vast majority of these documents are enriched with personal notes, which allow varied readings, especially in the context of studies and research in the History of Education.

We have, for example, records of her travels, carefully written in notebooks, which accompanied her in all the places she visited due to her activities as a speaker, contemplating aspects ranging from the most detailed descriptions of events and episodes to prosaic information about the places, habits, and ways of living.

Another content that draws attention concerns the significant amount of annotations (manuscript) produced for the elaboration of a particular research. The collection has hundreds of journal cataloging pages, as already mentioned above, containing information about the news recorded in Porto Alegre's newspapers regarding the researched topics, which creates an expressive data set that could supply more than one analysis of an event. This set demonstrates the researcher's concern in revealing aspects that allowed the topic to be well understood during a time when the computer was only a chimera.

The relevance of the archive is highlighted as we can follow the maturation of the professor's intellectual production. Indeed, when we compare her first works as an academic, we perceive - in addition to her theoretical turn - the search for the qualification of the text, in the sense of making its historiographical conception more and more evident. In some early writings, there is an expressive concern with details and references whose relevance is, at the very least, questionable, since they do not seem to influence the exposed reasoning. Over time, this elaboration seeks a sophisticated simplification, which occurs when the text, although apparently lean and straightforward, allows the reader to make the necessary inferences in order to understand the addressed topic.

It is interesting to note that the author, at a certain point in her activity, elaborated a descriptive framework (Figure 1) of her intellectual trajectory, highlighting the authors who influenced her in her analyses and textual elaborations. In a way, this concern indicates that, for Pesavento, clarity was essential to the intellectual process that was being constituted for the realization of her research, which would result in more cohesive and effective texts. It should also be noted that such a process establishes, in a certain way, a reading of itself that only consultation of her own collection could produce.

In Figure 1 we have an excerpt from this document, which has 17 pages, each page containing four columns, where we read date/chronological period, the History theory studied, historiographical theme, and its corresponding production.⁸

Source: Sandra Jatahy Pesavento Collection, suspended folder No. 20. IHGRGS.

Figure 1 Sandra Pesavento's Intellectual Timeline (1973-1992) 

Sandra's records as a teacher

In this part of the article we list some fragments of documents from Sandra Jatahy Pesavento’s personal collection that we consider significant and exemplary of her career as a teacher and intellectual, qualifications that are inseparable in the formative process of her career.

Source: Sandra Jatahy Pesavento Collection, box No. 1. IHGRGS.

Figure 2 Fragment of Diário Oficial (Official Gazette) from 08/03/1970 

Sandra officially began her teaching career exactly 50 years ago, when she was admitted to work at the Instituto de Educação, as indicated by the excerpt from Diário Oficial (Official Gazette) from August 3, 1970 (Figure 2). During this period, she continued teaching at the Rui Barbosa School, where she taught History to high school (then 2nd Grade) students. From an early age, she demonstrated an aptitude for teaching by producing material that was handed out to the students, containing information that would be treated in her classes (Picture 3):

Source: Sandra Jatahy Pesavento Collection, box No. 1. IHGRGS.

Figure 3 Cover of communication material produced by Sandra 

In Figure 4, we can observe, in manuscript format, the development of content related to the República Nova (New Republic), which was treated in one of her Brazilian History courses, already as a History undergraduate student at UFRGS. The schematic model - a standard for the educational process of that time but nonexistent nowadays due to computerized systems - allowed the elucidation of a historical period whose singularities required consistent explanatory layers, which were visualized through this teaching strategy elaborated by her. This document is extensive, impossible to be published in full due to the size limit of an article. But it is important to point out that, such as this one, there are numerous other manuscripts in the SJP Collection in which the producer prepares her classes, both in the schematic - such as this one - and textual formats. Many of these were shared with students via photocopy (formerly mimeographed) or even written on the blackboard. Other manuscript texts were later prepared in more depth and originated articles or even books that she published.

Source: Sandra Jatahy Pesavento Collection. Box No. 15. IHGRGS

Imagem 4 República Nova (New Republic), manuscript text. 

This same proposal is perceived in this other fragment (Figure 5), which contains clippings of a broader text, chosen by her and reconfigured on a page to allow the understanding of the theme, a teaching strategy that, before the technology that nowadays facilitates everything, was designed to optimize the educational effect on her students.

Source: Sandra Jatahy Pesavento Collection. Box No. 15. IHGRGS

Figure 5 Chunking 

This concern is evidenced even further when examining her lesson plan, presented in the image below (Figure 6), whose systematic shows the central elements to be contemplated in the teaching process, allowing students an effective understanding of the theme, a didacticism that clearly demonstrates that her premise of work as an educator was to effectively make the theme have the desired effect, thus allowing her students to reflect on what was being treated, even if they did not master the presented content.

Source: Sandra Jatahy Pesavento Collection. Box No. 19. IHGRGS

Figure 6: Lesson plan "Seminário de História Social do Brasil II" (Brazilian Social History Seminar II), History major, UFRGS. 

Didactic concerns like these were not a novelty in her career. Since her first years at school, the future teacher was already seeking to register the addressed contents with quality, precision, and clarity. Next, in Pictures 7, 8, and 9, we will see some examples of her assignments as a student - zealously kept by her -, which corroborate the purposeful dimension when facing the dynamics of learning and teaching that has shaped her professional trajectory. They also show her role in dealing with historiographical content, indicated by the signature in the document that relates the components of the group formed by the classmates.

Source: Sandra Jatahy Pesavento Collection. Box No. 42. IHGRGS

Figures 7, 8, and 9 Sandra's assignments as a student 

In a broader perspective, when studying the collection, we find that Pesavento's texts, drafts, and manuscripts are accompanied by their related bibliography (authors she studied and suggested to students at various levels of teaching), which make up her library - allocated in the Item I/Bibliographic Collection within the SJP Collection. Her private collection of books was not formally cataloged but had a shelf order according to broad subjects and themes. For example, “História do Rio Grande do Sul” (History of Rio Grande do Sul) was the name of two extensive shelves, and “História do Urbano” (History of the Urban) identified another. When the library was brought to the IHGRGS, this order was initially maintained. In it, we find the French authors Pesavento started to know in her first postdoctoral period in Paris; English and Italian authors; many Brazilian authors since her incursion into Economic History; classical authors such as Marx; authors of Brazilian and world literature; art books, among many others. Although it is impossible here to name all the authors read by her and represented in her library of more than 4 thousand items, the commitment of the researcher/writer/teacher to be always up-to-date in her references becomes explicit, and this was strongly expressed in her manuscripts, drafts, studies, writings, publications, and especially in the classroom.

Thus, one of the important facets of this collection for the History of Education is clear, that is, in the intersection of its various components, we observe not only an attentive teacher, a historian that was insightful about contemporary and classical authors, but also a process that develops as she improves herself with readings, studies, historical research, and teaching didactics.

Final considerations

Committed to the field of Cultural History in her last twenty years as a researcher and with paradigmatic works such as the already cited “O Imaginário da Cidade - visões literárias do urbano - Paris, Rio de Janeiro e Porto Alegre” (1999) and “Visões do Cárcere” (2009), and also “Uma outra cidade - o mundo dos excluídos no final do século XIX” (2001) and “Os sete pecados da Capital” (2008), we can observe from her collection that Pesavento worked on five main thematic axes: the excluded, the images, the urban, the History-Literature relationship, and the sensibilities. Didactically, she presented in the classroom - and we could verify this on her lesson plans in the collection - relevant aspects of her incursions into the field, as some documents demonstrate.

Despite the relevance of building this new historiographical field during the 1990s in Brazil, the intellectual preserved the material that originated her research in the field of Economic History and from where she obtained her Master's (PUC-RS) and Doctor's (USP degrees. In this regard, the SJP Collection is also rich in detail.

As pointed out by ^{Cunha (2019}), the task of the historian in front of a personal archive - such as this one we curate - consists of problematizing these sources “through a significant act of interpretation” (^{CUNHA, 2019}, P.21). This act is expected from those who preserve for the future and those who recover the archive for the present, says the author, citing Bordini. (CUNHA, 2019, p. 21)

For us, who shared time with Professor Pesavento, both in the classroom and mentorships, and in partnerships for research and working groups, the current curation work becomes relevant not only as an act of preservation of her intellectual memory, but also as a possibility of studying the formation of a contemporary thought within Brazilian historiography and History of Education, and being able to share all this with the academic world and with the interested population. This interpretative work is what we proposed from the beginning, in addition to the organization of the collection.

Sandra Pesavento was, in the city of Porto Alegre, in addition to a university professor, a public figure, requested by various sectors of society to explain, as a historian, moments of our History, such as the “Revolução Farroupilha” (Ragamuffin War), and other aspects, such as historical characters that wandered here, famous and anonymous, and well described in her books, from Borges de Medeiros to Crioula Fausta and prisoners of the Public Prison. Newspaper articles, television programs, lectures at public and popular events, such as the Porto Alegre Book Fair, carry the mark of Pesavento, eloquent, well-spoken, well-humored, and strongly committed to her sources of research, which, according to herself, “control the fiction” in the historian's narrative (Pesavento, 2003, p.53). Pesavento writes:

sources are marks of what once was, traces, shards, fragments, records, vestiges of the past that reach us, revealed as documents by the inquiries brought by History. To this extent, they result from a renewed discovery, for they only become sources when they contain clues of meaning for the solution of a proposed enigma. They are undoubtedly objective data from another time, but which depend on the historian to reveal meanings. They are, strictly speaking, a construction of the researcher, and it is through them that the past is accessed (^{PESAVENTO, 2003}, p. 98)

It is through an interpretive work from their sources that the historian appropriates a past that no longer exists. For us, hence, the Sandra Jatahy Pesavento Collection brings together a meaningful number of historical sources - in both the quantitative and qualitative meanings of this expression - and in their most varied supports. We hope to continue sharing this material with society through the curatorial actions we have developed, and carrying out fruitful interpretations of its contents, which serve both the academic population and the hundreds of interested in what Sandra always had to say - and continues to say, now through her archived traces.