Luz e sombra: uma análise da história escrita da CHESF no Submédio São Francisco e a tessitura de uma história única

Abstract

This study aims to analyze the works written on the history of CHESF in order to identify what type of discourse permeates such productions. The selected works cover a time frame ranging from 1982 to 2014. In our analysis we seek to understand the place of each author and understand its organic connection with the Hydroelectric Company of San Francisco (CHESF) and thus identify the results of this organicity in CHESF’s written history. Following our analysis purpose that can clearly point the horizon of our questions, the “Vila Potty” – which later became Paulo Afonso born out of CHESF camp gates – will also be a fertile subject for our work, given that the Company's history permeates city history, as well as the history of the whole region. To accomplish our goal also some concepts were necessary. We will make use of a theoretical apparatus which includes concepts such as: civil society, hegemony and organic intellectual, all these starting from the early theoretical reflections of the Italian intellectual Antonio Gramsci. This work discusses how CHESF and these intellectuals can produce a certain type of discourse that depict an “official” version as the only version of history. In other words, our aim is to understand through writing this story what is meant by CHESF’s history, what it includes and what it leaves out of the narrative. This work pretends to unvest this “official” discourse. However, no aim in these lines that follow counterpose the speech or attempts to rewrite a history against the grain. What makes our work relevant is that it constitutes an answer to the need for a critical review of the history that has been written up to date and has been generating an uncritical consensus of CHESF embracing the ideas of progress and development, but never raising questions about to whom and at what cost.