The MOBRAL at Pontal de Minas Gerais: between volunteering and faith (1970-1985)

Abstract

This article discusses the history of MOBRAL (Brazilian Literacy Movement) in the municipality of Ituiutaba in the period between 1970 and 1985. This project arose in the context of the Civil-Military Dictatorship by Law 5.379/1967 that proposed functional literacy to young people and adults. It started its activities in 1970 with a wide dissemination and mobilization by the spoken and written press. The program aimed to reach the entire national territory with the main goal of eradicating illiteracy, proposing a period of 10 years for this purpose. The research addresses a small part of this history in the interior of Minas Gerais, observing its implantation and some results, using oral history as a source with the social actors involved (professionals and students), documentary sources such as newspapers and legislation of the period. The MOBRAL in Ituiutaba reveals similarities with the national scenario, that is, in charge of civil society with the support of the Catholic Church and supported by the municipal government, it gave organicity to its actions, within the authoritarian logic of that moment. It was a program marked by improvisation, whose teachers had no training beyond high school, and acted after a brief training, being sufficient just to have had good school performance. We believe that MOBRAL was another vehicle used by the Civil-Military Dictatorship in order to train the workforce with the rudiments of reading and writing, in addition to generating voters who could, through voting, legitimize the government's authoritarian actions. Thus, the results obtained were quite limited also in cities in the interior, far from the great centers of power.