Eusébio de Sousa and the creation process of the Public Archive of the State of Ceará in 1932

Abstract

This article establishes an intense dialogue with the historical, political and archival guidelines of Eusébio Néri Alves de Sousa (1883-1947), who was a lawyer, judge, journalist and historian, effective member of the Anthropological, Geographical and Historical Institute of Ceará (Ceará Institute, founded in 1887), director of the Public Archives of the State of Ceará and also of the Historical Museum of Ceará from 1932 to 1942. I highlight Sousa’s historical discourse in several books, official documents, articles he wrote and historical productions, as well as his achievements and directions found in the Public Archive, which dated and legalized the archival tradition and Archive in Ceará as from 1932 (and not in the XIX century), under the influence of historical studies of the Institute of Ceará and paradigms that ruled the Public Archives in the XX century as a "place" of the memory, the historical document, and of history writing, based on the idea that the Archival memory was an auxiliary science of History.