At 35 Rua Buri, in the Pacaembu neighborhood of São Paulo, a Norman-style mansion evokes memory, history, and resistance. It was there that the historian Sérgio Buarque de Holanda (1902-1982) lived between 1957 and 1982 and wrote part of his work. The house symbolically returns to its place as an intellectual meeting place this Friday (May 29th) at 14 pm, with the opening of the “Buarque Cycle,” whose first event, “The Historian's House: Sérgio Buarque on Rua Buri,” includes an exhibition and lectures.
The initiative, carried out in the context of the celebrations of Unicamp's 60th anniversary, reconstructs, through books, photographs, documents and mementos, the environment of the author of Brazil roots (1936), whose collection has been preserved at the University since 1983, divided between the Central Archive of the Unicamp Archives System (Siarq/Unicamp) and the Rare Books Library (Bora).
The event aims to expand the cultural and academic activities developed at the residence, which currently hosts training activities for the Municipal Department of Education of São Paulo. "It is the first step in a collaboration between the University, the Public Archives of the State of São Paulo, and the Municipal Department to broaden the range of cultural and academic activities offered at the site," highlights the exhibition's curator, Thiago Nicodemo, professor at the Institute of Philosophy and Human Sciences (IFCH) and director of the Public Archives of the State of São Paulo.
Nicodemo dedicated about 15 years to studying the work of Sérgio Buarque and published two books about the historian. The Weaving of the Lived – A Vision of Paradise and the Work of Sérgio Buarque de Holanda in the 1950s (Edusp, 2008) and Modern Allegory – Literary Criticism and History of Literature in the Work of Sérgio Buarque de Holanda (Unifesp, 2014), in addition to An introduction to the history of Brazilian historiography 1870-1970 (FGV, 2018), which also addresses his work.
“Sérgio has always been a very strong intellectual reference for me. Not only for the interpretation of Brazil that he constructed, but also for the way he articulated history, literature, culture, and public life,” he says. “I always dreamed of connecting the collection with the house in an organic way, respecting the author's memory but also pointing towards the future,” he states.
The proposal is to establish a “technical cooperation” to transform the house into a permanent space for research, memory, and public circulation of knowledge. “This house is not just a historical building. It concentrates intellectual, political, and affective experiences and helps to understand not only the work, but also the environment of intellectual sociability that marked its trajectory,” he emphasizes.
Co-curator of the exhibition, Luccas Maldonado, PhD in History from Unicamp, emphasizes that Sérgio Buarque's archives played a decisive role in consolidating the humanities within the university. For him, the project also involves a discussion about the democratization of access. "It's not just about studying the archives, but thinking about how to use and organize them."
During the initial site visits for the project, Nicodemo was accompanied by journalist and writer Fernando Morais, who, during his tenure as state secretary of education in 1982, was the first to propose preserving the residence and turning it into a research center for public school teachers. The property was only formally acquired by the City of São Paulo in 2007.
The 450 m² house occupies almost the entire plot on Rua Buri. There are gardens in the front and back, where the historian's ashes were deposited. The residence became known for the circulation of artists, researchers, students, journalists and friends. Among the frequent visitors were Vinícius de Moraes, Tom Jobim, Antonio Candido, Caio Prado Júnior, Florestan Fernandes, Fernando Henrique Cardoso and Chico Buarque, one of the seven children of the couple Sérgio and Maria Amélia.
There are accounts of parties that lasted until the early hours of the morning, but the house was also a space for listening, shelter, and resistance during the military dictatorship. With the phone tapped, the family created codes to warn each other about arrests and political persecution.
The Buarquean Cycle will continue in August, when historian Lilia Schwarcz will coordinate a panel celebrating the 90th anniversary of... Brazil roots.
Precious collection
The collection of Sérgio Buarque de Holanda at Unicamp is one of the most important documentary collections at the University, with manuscripts, letters, photographs and personal documents gathered in Siarq, and books, periodicals, awards and furniture from his library in Bora.
Janaína Santos, coordinator of Siarq, highlights that the opening of the Buarquean Cycle “demonstrates how archives and research and educational institutions can work together.” For her, the partnership between Unicamp, the State Public Archive, and the Municipal Department of Education can generate numerous possibilities for cooperation.
"Exhibitions, outreach activities, guided tours, educational programs, seminars, research projects, and initiatives aimed at training students and teachers and bringing archives and knowledge production closer to wider audiences, for example," he states.
Santos emphasizes that Siarq, together with Bora, is central to this process. “Unicamp houses a heritage of enormous historical, intellectual, and cultural value, which has been preserved, organized, and made available for research over the years. In this sense, Siarq and Bora contribute not only as guardians of this legacy, but also as active agents in its dissemination,” he adds.
Bora coordinator Danielle Thiago Ferreira points out that the arrival of Sérgio Buarque de Holanda's collection at Unicamp contributed to the creation and consolidation of structures focused on the preservation of special collections, both at Bora and at Siarq.
For Ferreira, participating in the symbolic occupation of the house on Rua Buri also represents a way of returning the memory of the space to the public. “We want to leave this legacy. Not only the memory of the historian, but also of the house itself and what it meant,” he states. For the exhibition, books with the historian's annotations and images from the intellectual's former library will recreate part of the mansion's original atmosphere.
The coordinator of Bora also highlights that Sérgio Buarque's collection remains among the most sought after by researchers. "Many works have dedications, underlining, and annotations made by him. This is very important for researchers because it allows them to follow how he read and engaged with the texts," she explains.
At Siarq, part of this memory is organized into card files, which will also be presented at the event. Technical supervisor Telma Murari recalls that the collection, initially incorporated into the Unicamp library, gradually passed to the Archive, helping to strengthen the structure dedicated to the preservation of personal and institutional archives. “When the work of disseminating the archives began, the University started receiving many other important collections. This helped to strengthen the institution that exists today,” she says.
PROGRAMME
14:30 PM: Opening of the Buarque Cycle, with Thiago Nicodemo
15 PM: 40 Years of the Sérgio Buarque de Holanda Collection at Unicamp: Assessment and Perspectives – Danielle Thiago Ferreira and Janaína Andiara dos Santos
15:30 PM: Archives in Dispute: An Analysis of Buarque's Memory – Luccas Maldonado and Thiago Nicodemo. Moderated by Leopoldo Waizbort
When Buri Street became a movie theater
Before reopening to visitors with the event "The Historian's House: Sérgio Buarque on Buri Street," the mansion in Pacaembu was revisited by cinema. In 2002, director Nelson Pereira dos Santos (1928-2018), of films such as Dried lives e Memories of Prison, launched Brazil roots, a biopic dedicated to the historian. The film transformed the residence on Rua Buri into a kind of affective territory of Brazilian intellectual history.
Part of the filming took place in the family's own home and part at Unicamp. The documentary mixes historical images of Brazil, photographs of the family, scenes of daily life at home, and readings of excerpts from... Brazil rootsIn one scene, Sérgio Buarque appears walking through the house, in one of his rare video recordings. The film also recaptures the atmosphere of gatherings that marked the address for decades as a space frequented by intellectuals, musicians, students, and journalists, with conversations about literature and politics that lasted until the early hours of the morning.
While revisiting the author's intellectual journey, the film constructs an intimate portrait of Sérgio Buarque: the father, the grandfather, the host surrounded by friends, the man who traversed modernism, the university, and the years of the dictatorship without abandoning his belief in an independent Brazilian thought.
The testimonies help to compose this portrait. Close friends like Antonio Candido and Paulo Vanzolini appear alongside the historian's children and grandchildren. In one of the most striking interviews, Maria Amélia, Sérgio Buarque's companion for decades, recalls episodes from family life with humor and sensitivity. Among the narrators of the documentary is Zeca Buarque, the historian's grandson, who studied History at Unicamp and was the film's assistant director.
In 2004, the filmmaker spoke about the documentary in an interview with TV Unicamp. Check it out.
