Representações sobre Paulo Freire nas páginas da revista Catolicismo (1975-2008)

Abstract

The main objective of this paper is to analyze the representations produced by Catholicism magazine about Paulo Freire during the years 1975-2008. Founded by Plinio Corrêa, Geraldo Sigaud and Antônio Mayer in 1951, the magazine was the main means of communication of the Brazilian Society of Tradition, Family and Prosperity (TFP), being placed, since then, as the spokesman of the fight against Marxism, liberalism and rationalism. It was in this context that the magazine considered Paulo Freire as a red danger whose ideas should be combated. Thus, in this paper we analyze two moments in which Freire appeared more frequently in the journal: between 1975-1986, when the pedagogue gained international prestige for the success of his literacy method, applied at the time in African and Latin American countries; and between 2002-2008, a period in which the editors of the journal accused the government of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva of building an education model based on Freire's ideas. For this investigation, we selected the seven issues published in Catholicism between 1975-2008 that made references to Freire, and used, as an analytical perspective, the notion of representation presented by Roger Chartier. As a result, we identified that Paulo Freire was considered in the pages of the magazine as the mentor of a literacy method that sought not only to teach young people and adults to read and write, but to form an obedient mass to the Marxist revolutionary thought, disseminating, on a large scale, communism and enabling the advance of antidemocratic projects in Brazil and Latin America.