The Pe José Nilson collection and the Mucurip

crossing the memory and writing the history

Abstract

Our theme is the Padre (Priest) José Nilson Collection located in a room adjacent to the Church of Nossa Senhora da Saúde in the Mucuripe neighborhood, this memorial is a fragment of the large collection about the Mucuripe that was conceived by Vera Lúcia Miranda in 1997. The central figure of this collection, Padre José Nilson de Oliveira Lima, parish priest of this church dating from 1950 to 2003 permeates the social memory of this community for mediating the social problems of the neighborhood, such as the housing problems due to the removal of prostitutes from Rua da Frente (current avenue Beira Mar), the improvement of the living conditions of the jangadeiros (sea workers, men who use the Jangada (a kind of boat) to fish), mainly by the professionalization of their children. For that reason, the next lines reflect on the constitution of this collective memory around Padre Nilson. For this we use the collection that consists of photographs, newspaper clippings and objects that refer to Padre Nilson, so we comprehend it as a place of memory according to the understanding of Pierre Nora.