Uma intelectual nos campos e nos pinhais: Hellê Vellozo Fernandes e as "escolinhas do mato" de Monte Alegre - PR (1945-1964)

Abstract

This thesis analyzes the intellectual trajectory of Hellê Vellozo Fernandes (1925-2008), highlighting her role as coordinator of the “escolinhas do mato” at Fazenda Monte Alegre between 1945 and 1964. To this end, the family and educational aspects that contributed to the formation of her habitus were characterized, the positions she occupied in the intellectual field of Curitiba and Monte Alegre were identified, and the specificities of the mediation she performed in school coordination were analyzed. Based on Hellê’s written production – published in the newspapers O Tibagi and Diário do Paraná, especially the series of chronicles Nos campos e nos pinhais (1963-1974) – and on institutional documents, interpreted through the concepts of habitus, capital, field and illusio, by Pierre Bourdieu, as well as the discussions on mediating intellectuals systematized by Gomes and Hansen, the analysis of her trajectory was structured in three stages: social and cultural origins (habitus), position in the intellectual field (incorporated dispositions), and interpretation of agency (source analysis). The research demonstrated that Hellê Vellozo Fernandes’ protagonism was linked to the capital incorporated in her family, school, and social networks, as well as to the positions she occupied in the intellectual field of Curitiba and Monte Alegre. By converting her experiences with the “caboclos” (people of mixed Indigenous and European ancestry) of Pinheiral into symbolic capital, she gained prestige and recognition among the notable intellectuality figures, mainly through male endorsements. In the countryside, within the context of Klabin’s urban-industrial project, she acted as a representative of local power in coordinating schooling in rural villages. Between the countryside and the capital, Hellê challenged the limits imposed on women without breaking them, creating her own responses, such as founding of the Associação de Jornalistas e Escritoras do Brasil and the organizing a model of schooling adapted to the conditions of the encampments. Her voluntary work in Klabin’s schools was guided by an illusio that sustained her role as an agent of cultural transformation. In coordinating the “escolinhas do mato”, she appropriated references from rural education, adapting them to precarious conditions and local power relations. Marked by improvisation, these schools operated under a pedagogy of contingency, articulating literacy and hygienist practices for the civilization of the residents in the rural villages of Monte Alegre. In this context, Hellê Vellozo Fernandes acted as a pedagogical and cultural mediator, and her work was marked by ambiguities: while she documented the precarious conditions of the encampments, she also produced moralizing representations of the “caboclos”. Beyond proposing a theoretical and methodological approach that presents itself as a possibility for research on women intellectuals in the History of Education, this thesis contributes to making visible trajectories such as that of Hellê Vellozo Fernandes and, indirectly, that of the population of the pine forests of Monte Alegre, demonstrating that the mediation of these women was constituted not only by pedagogical practices, but also by forms of cultural intervention and the construction of their own identities as intellectuals.