A pobreza no período JK: um olhar a partir do quarto de despejo

Abstract

Juscelino Kubitschek's government is a turning point in Brazilian economic history, with the modernization and development of industry, infrastructure, the symbolic construction of Brasília. The formation of an official memory accounts for the effervescence of the period in economic, political and cultural terms, generally speaking in positive references to those Golden Years. Another facet of the period emerges, however, from reading the literary work Quarto de Despejo, by author Carolina Maria de Jesus. Written between 1955 and 1960, the work describes the daily life of poverty of the population that inhabited the favela of Canindé, in São Paulo. This perspective challenges the hegemonic reading of the historical period, insofar as poverty in the years of the Juscelino Kubitschek government is a theme that is generally absent in the specialized literature. Faced with this problem, the general objective of this research was to analyze poverty in the Juscelino Kubitschek Period from the work Quarto de Despejo. Methodologically, the research was characterized by a qualitative and exploratory approach, and used documental research and bibliographical research techniques to collect data, which were analyzed through content analysis. The results indicate several elements that characterized the phenomenon of poverty in the period studied, with emphasis on São Paulo, the city where the events narrated in the analyzed document take place. The State played a fundamental role in managing the social pressures of an impoverished population that grew and swelled in the state capitals of the country. In São Paulo, this management was carried out through segregation, repression and control. The inflationary process, which would be useful for financing industrial development through income transfers, greatly penalized this portion of the population, which was not very integrated into the dynamic sector of the economy. With no investment in urban infrastructure to meet the volume of migrants leaving the countryside, slums, suburbs and villages grew, lacking basic services for the installation of new residents. In addition, hunger marked the period in which more than half of the country's population suffered from some nutritional deficiency, with emphasis on child malnutrition, which characterizes severe food insecurity. From these results, it can be said that Quarto de Despejo is a rich source of evidence about the Juscelino Kubitschek Period, especially when analyzed in conjunction with other data and research. The present study made it possible to outline a new approach to the Golden Years, which deserves to be deepened in further studies.