There is a high chance that anyone working with archives in Brazil has crossed paths with historian Helo\u00edsa Liberalli Bellotto, whether as a student, colleague, or reader. Bellotto, who died in S\u00e3o Paulo on March 1 aged 88, created courses, taught in several states in Brazil, in addition to Portugal and Spain, and wrote renowned works on archival science in Brazil.<\/p>\n
Her main theoretical legacy was the development of a document-identification process based on the concepts of species and type, says Ana Maria Camargo, a historian from the School of Philosophy, Languages and Literature, and Human Sciences at the University of S\u00e3o Paulo (FFLCH-USP) and coauthor of Dicion\u00e1rio de terminologia arquiv\u00edstica<\/em> (Dictionary of archival terminology; Brazilian Secretary of Culture, 1996) with Bellotto. The species designates the structure of a document according to its functions. Contracts and reports, for example, are different document species. Types describe how a document of a given species is used: a lease or an employment contract, a research or audit report.<\/p>\n \u201cThis was an important development for archival science, something that had not even been done in Spain, which is very advanced in this field and is where she studied her specialization,\u201d points out Camargo. \u201cHelo\u00edsa was able to incorporate the most important aspects of archiving documents: their functionality and the indissoluble relationship between the documents and the activities that led to their creation.\u201d<\/p>\n According to historian Thiago Nicodemo, head of the S\u00e3o Paulo State Public Archive, Bellotto’s work led to a significant advance in document management. \u201cShe helped to show that the archive is not just a place where old papers are stored, but the brain of an operation that allows you to know where things are, to prevent losses,\u201d he summarizes.<\/p>\n Born in Rio de Janeiro in 1935, Helo\u00edsa Bellotto moved to S\u00e3o Paulo at the age of 9. She earned a degree in librarianship from the S\u00e3o Paulo School of Sociology and Politics (1956), another in history from USP (1959), and a PhD in history from USP (1976), for which her thesis was titled \u201cThe government of Morgado de Mateus: The beginnings of the restoration of the Captaincy of S\u00e3o Paulo (1765\u20131775).\u201d She studied a specialist qualification in archival science at the School of Documentation in Madrid, Spain, in 1977. She also studied courses at the National Archives in Paris, in 1979, and the US National Archives and Records Administration in Washington DC, in 1987.<\/p>\n In 1969, she became a researcher at USP\u2019s Institute of Brazilian Studies (IEB). Despite retiring in 1990, she continued to supervise graduate students at FFLCH. In 1986, she designed a specialization course in archival science at the IEB, one of the main educational centers in the field in S\u00e3o Paulo. Over the following two decades, more than 600 students from all over Brazil, Latin America, and Africa took the course. \u201cBellotto helped make archiving a professional career path. In S\u00e3o Paulo, the archives were dependent on the IEB course for a long time,\u201d says Nicodemo.<\/p>\n Bellotto also founded the undergraduate course in archival science at the University of Bras\u00edlia (UnB) in 1991. She spoke about the course in an interview with the university’s website last year, highlighting that she was able to put her key ideas about archivist training into practice: she reduced the amount of time spent on history and library science and increased the time devoted to law and management. She also taught at the Federal University of the State of Rio de Janeiro (UNIRIO) and the International University of Andalusia, in Huelva, Spain, as well as other schools.<\/p>\n Bellotto designed the specialization course in archival science at the Institute of Brazilian Studies<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Between 1998 and 2011, she was a consultant for the Resgate (Rescue) project, an ambitious initiative set up to digitize the documents of the Portuguese Empire\u2019s Overseas Council, the institution responsible for administering Portugal\u2019s colonies. The physical documents are preserved in the Overseas Historical Archive in Lisbon. Bellotto led the effort to recover papers relating to the Captaincy of S\u00e3o Paulo, in addition to preparing the researchers technically for the work. She stated that the team was able to microfilm and catalog around 300,000 documents.<\/p>\n According to historian Ana Canas Delgado Martins, director of the Overseas Historical Archive (AHU) and a researcher at the History Center of the University of Lisbon, Bellotto also \u201cinfluenced more than one generation of archivists\u201d on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean. In 1989, she was a professor on the documentary sciences course at the School of Language and Literature of the University of Lisbon. She published two articles in Cadernos de Biblioteconomia, Arquiv\u00edstica e Documenta\u00e7\u00e3o <\/em>that year. \u201cThe articles awakened and accentuated the need to reflect on various facets of archivist practice and sharpened the desire to update and produce knowledge, coinciding with a period of archive renovation and archivist training in Portugal,\u201d says the AHU director.<\/p>\n Canas, who met Bellotto in 2006, describes how much the USP researcher cared about other people. \u201cEspecially young people from Brazil who were part of the Resgate project and who may have felt less supported during periods such as Christmas. The house where she lived in Lisbon, in the Campo de Ourique neighbourhood, was also their house, in a way,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n Bellotto was a member of the M\u00e1rio de Andrade Library\u2019s advisory board between 2013 and 2016, during the management of Luiz Armando Bagolin, now a professor at IEB. \u201cWhen I told her that I needed her help because I had no experience in archives and libraries, she was happy to help. Although she did comment that I wouldn’t need much, since I was so young and fearless,\u201d recalls Bagolin. To deal with the practical problems faced by the library, Bellotto suggested that the most important change would be to breathe life into the space, \u201cto get people coming in and make them feel good.\u201d Bagolin only has one regret about the period. \u201cShe asked me to try to create an archival course, with participation open to young people from low-income backgrounds. I was not able to achieve that goal,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n Her theories on document typology and diplomatics (studying the formal structure of the document, its legal nature, and the context of its production) were explained in books such as Arquivos permanentes: Tratamento documental<\/em> (Permanent archives: Document processing; TA Queiroz, 1991), Diplom\u00e1tica e tipologia documental em arquivos<\/em> (Diplomatics and document typology in archives; Briquet de Lemos, 2008), and Arquivo: Estudos e reflex\u00f5es <\/em>(Archives: Studies and reflections; UFMG, 2014). According to Camargo, the latter contains the most complete expression of her thoughts on document species and types. The former is widely referenced in university courses and entrance exams in Brazil.<\/p>\n One of the projects she left unfinished was to publish a commented edition of the government diaries of Lu\u00eds Ant\u00f3nio de Sousa Botelho Mour\u00e3o (1722\u20131798), who was colonial governor of the Captaincy of S\u00e3o Paulo in the eighteenth century and the subject of her doctorate and the books Autoridade e conflito no Brasil colonial<\/em> (Authority and conflict in colonial Brazil; Brazilian Secretary of Culture, 2007) and Nem o tempo nem a dist\u00e2ncia<\/em>: Correspond\u00eancia entre o Morgado de Mateus e sua mulher <\/em>(Neither time nor distance: Correspondence between the Morgado de Mateus and his wife; Aletheia, 2007). \u201cIt was a lifelong interest for her. She had been really dedicated to this monumental work,\u201d says Camargo. \u201cNow we plan to publish a posthumous edition as a tribute to her.\u201d<\/p>\n Helo\u00edsa Bellotto was married to fellow historian Manoel Lello Bellotto, who died in 2011. Camargo says her vast personal library will be donated to USP\u2019s general archive, which she helped to systematize. \u201cIt is an extremely specialized library, in addition to her personal archives and unfinished work,\u201d summarizes Camargo.<\/p>\n In the UnB interview, Bellotto summarized her view of archival science, saying the fascinating thing about the profession is \u201cbeing able to organize the information contained in documents in a way that makes it accessible to those who need it.\u201d And she pointed out that \u201cnobody goes looking for a document for pleasure\u2014they do it because they need it for professional or private reasons\u2026. Well-organized archives are therefore vital for people, society, and countries.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Historian Helo\u00edsa Bellotto helped modernize document management in Brazil","protected":false},"author":613,"featured_media":479151,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1348],"tags":[241],"coauthors":[1619],"class_list":["post-479146","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-obituary","tag-history"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/479146","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/613"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=479146"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/479146\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":479159,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/479146\/revisions\/479159"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/479151"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=479146"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=479146"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=479146"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=479146"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}