Isolated childhood: public policie for leprophylaxis in Maranhão (1930-1950)

Abstract

The article aims to disseminate partial results of research carried out within the scope of the doctoral course in education, on public policies for children in Maranhão, with a focus on the period of the Estado Novo, where the concern with the epidemics that spread throughout the state triggered prophylactic practices to control of individuals sick with leprosy. In the case of the children, they were isolated in a preventorium, called Educandário Santo Antonio, after their parents were diagnosed with the disease and institutionalized in Colônia do Bonfim, a leper colony located in a region far from the city of São Luís. Based on the analysis of literature such as reports, state decrees, and bibliography produced by intellectuals about the period of government of Paulo Martins de Souza Ramos in Maranhão, we evidence political practices of subordination of children to the wishes of a society that wanted to get rid of the nuisance that they generated, despite being healthy children. Interlocutions with Erving Goffman’s theory (2008) elucidated the institutionalization of childhood as a strategy for control, surveillance, and stigmatization of individuals marked by suffering from the disease under the discourse of a policy for prophylaxis. The research results show the construction of a policy of segregation aimed at the underprivileged population in Maranhão, focusing on children, healthy children of leprosy patients, who were subjected to work, and a hygienist and moralizing education that left marks on this generation.