Processos criminais – uma construção histórica e arquivística dos processos de defloramento no município de Santa Maria – RS na década de 1930

Abstract

This work brings a historical approach to the figure of the Brazilian woman in the social and legislative sphere, as well as presenting the santa-marian woman of the 1930s through the study and description of the criminal processes that address the issue of deforestation. The collection researched is an integral part of the fund called Judicial Processes, the main source of this research, these processes have as its funding unit the Municipal Historical Archives of Santa Maria. Criminal cases are a major source of research, and studies from various areas of knowledge can be developed with this documentation. The description of these cases sought to demonstrate their importance as a source of research, through the analysis of the history of the women of Santa Maria and how the crime of deforestation in the 1930s was determined. For the description, the Brazilian Standard of Archival Description (NOBRADE) was used. This research has as main objective to present the criminal processes as a source of historical and archival research. In a first moment, the research is revealed in bibliographical research and, in a second moment, in order to deepen the bibliographical survey, it is started for a case study that, because it is a study of a defined entity. The specific objectives are to demonstrate the relevance of this type of documentary as a source of memory and scientific research, emphasizing its importance for archivology; to verify criminal cases involving women victims of the crime of deforestation; to present data and characteristics of local society at the time and how women were seen in that social context, and to emphasize the importance of judicial archives as a documental heritage of humanity. The results are the historical reconstruction that women were inserted in a macho and patriarchal society, where their education was focused on the home, always in search of being a good wife and mother, with the woman being considered a figure always submissive to the will of men, without freedom of choice, having with her the duty to preserve herself a virgin until marriage, all in the name of the honor of her family and her future husband. Moreover, the work reaps as a result the fact that criminal cases are a source of historical and archival research, since they preserve the history of the country, more specifically with regard to crimes that today are no longer susceptible to punishment by Brazilian criminal law, since virginity is no longer a requirement of honesty for marriage.