BAMBURRISTAS DE OPALA

In a country known worldwide mainly by the export of raw materials, including those of mineral origin: precious stones and gems, the city of Pedro II - PI, known as' Land of Opal ', stands out as being the largest producer of gems, opal of good quality in the world. The workers of garimpos, unlike the other subjects of the production chain and the arrangement of opal production site, such as, entrepreneurs miners, jewelers and lapidários, meanwhile, have enjoyed little of the financial bonds and / or symbolic extraction of this gem. The purpose of this dissertation was to understand how the workers of opal garimpos of the municipality of Pedro II, as a group vitimized by a historical process of social invisibility, build your memory and negotiate their identities in the midst and outside the productive chain of opal and how they have been questioned by local production arrangement, while public policy of integration into production in the period from 2005 to 2007. From twelve semi-structured interviews, covering the various segments of the productive chain of opal, it was made use of the method of analysis of content-based Martin Bauer and George Gaskell, prioritizing the qualitative dimension; addition to the field visits, search literature in primary and secondary sources supported by Tim May, supported by theoretical concepts of Henri Bergson, Maurice Halbwachs, Michael, Le Goff, Pierre Nora, Emilia Godoi and Dione Moraes, among others. It was found that the subjects studied, despite the historical process of social invisibility, build their identities from the area of opal mining camps and their practices opal miner as well as negotiating with other subjects; prevail make a collective memory that shows their victimized condition of social group and develop strategies for reacting to pressure from other groups claiming for themselves the history of opal in Pedro II.