IEA-USP
Camargo in 2018, during a seminar at USP’s Institute of Advanced StudiesIEA-USPThe walls of historian Ana Maria de Almeida Camargo’s apartment in the São Paulo neighborhood of Jardins were covered by books from floor to ceiling, to the point that her neighbors complained that the weight might compromise the building’s foundations. Upset, the professor from the School of Philosophy, Languages and Literature, and Humanities at the University of São Paulo (FFLCH-USP) reacted accordingly.
“She was indignant. She said: ‘It’s my books that hold this building up,’” recalls José Francisco Guelfi Campos, a historian from the Federal University of Minas Gerais (UFMG) who was supervised by Camargo from his undergraduate degree to his doctorate, all at USP. “In the end, she hired a structural engineer to write a report,” adds Campos. The books remained where they were. The library was a source of great pride to Camargo, who died in São Paulo on September 24, aged 78, due to heart problems.
The documents at many archival institutions were organized by Camargo or others who turned to her for advice. Some of those that she worked with include the São Paulo Historical Archive, the Fernando Henrique Cardoso Foundation, the Mozambique Historical Archive, USP’s Brasiliana Guita and José Mindlin Library, and recently, the archive of actress Cláudia Wonder (1955–2010) at the Museum of Sexual Diversity, in the São Paulo state capital.
In the 1980s, Camargo was part of the “Brazil: Never again” project, which denounced the abuses committed by the military dictatorship between 1964 and 1985. She was also one of the founders of the São Paulo Archivists Association, an advisor to the Council of National Archives (CONARQ), and a member of the steering committee of the International Council on Archives.
Johanna Wilhelmina Smit of USP’s School of Communication and Arts (ECA) highlights the four-decade partnership that Camargo maintained with historian and librarian Heloísa Bellotto (1935–2023) (see Pesquisa FAPESP issue no. 326). From 1986 onwards, they together created and developed the archival science graduate course at USP’s Brazilian Studies Institute (IEB), which was renowned in the field in São Paulo. Camargo, Bellotto, and Smit were also behind the creation of USP’s Archive System.
The Dicionário de terminologia arquivística (Dictionary of archival terminology; AAB-SP, State Department for Culture and Department of Museums and Archives, 1996), written by Camargo and Bellotto, became a reference for professionals working in the sector across Brazil. “The dictionary represented a watershed moment, the result of two decades of working together, systematizing the use of concepts that make an archive intelligible,” says Silvana Goulart, a historian who took part in several projects with Camargo. In 2014, they published Centros de memória: Uma proposta de definição (Memory centers: A proposal for definition; Edições Sesc), and they had been working on the creation of the FAPESP Memory Center since last year.
The historian’s career was linked to USP since she began her undergraduate degree in 1963. She worked as an assistant to historian Emília Viotti da Costa (1928–2017), who was forced to retire by the military regime in 1968. Camargo was then suddenly made to replace her, becoming a professor at the university. In 1970, she became director of the Júlio de Mesquita Newspaper Archive at the São Paulo Historical and Geographic Institute (IHGSP), which was the basis of the thesis she wrote for her PhD, also done at USP. Defended in 1976, the thesis, which was almost 2,000 pages long and was divided into 10 volumes, cataloged the IHGSP collection.
Camargo dedicated herself to studying the press and created facsimile editions of many nineteenth-century periodicals, such as Revista Dramática (Edusp, 2007). “They are extremely meticulous reproductions that required enormous research. She went looking for missing editions so that she could complete a series and made the best possible quality reproductions,” says Campos.
The historian was separated and did not leave any children.
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