Mariana Vaz

Latin American Studies: Theory and Method

Summary of research´s methodology

Activism in the 2000 decade as an act of testimony in a comparative case study of the
Brazilian NGOs #EusouAlex and Vida Pará

1.Background
According to Human Rights Watch, 2019 violence in Brazil has reached a critical state:
“Violence has reached a new record in Brazil, with some 64,000 killings in 2017. Police
solve just a small fraction of homicides. Unlawful killings by police feed the wave of
violence. Weak state control of many prisons facilitates gang recruitment.”. Although the
country has a great story of violence, poor income distribution, and social injustice, civil
organizations were gradually created especially after the democratization period in the 1970s
to demand social improvements and protection of human rights. According to the national
institute of research ,IPEA, in 2017 there were more than 820,000 NGOs in the country,
working for better conditions in education, health, individual freedoms and equal access to
rights, access to information and freedom of expression, dignity at work, children's rights and
adolescents, for the respect to the environment, among many other guidelines (IPEA 2017).

2. Hypothesis
Is there a correlation between activism and traumatic experience? This study intends to
investigate trauma and memory as transforming agents that exercise a function analogous to
that one developed in the concept of “witness literature.” Marcio Sellingmann (2011) defines
this concept as not only the claim to truth that witness literature puts forward but, more
important in this case, the process that leads from catastrophe to creativity and that turns the
victim into a writing witness with the power to suspend forgetfulness and denial
(Sellingmann,2011). For Prof. Shoshana Felman (2000), the trauma - and the traumatized –
are bearers of both the "disease" and the "cure." If so, could it be established similar parallel
to "witness literature"concept for activism? Does the traumatic experience of urban violence
have the potentiality of the trauma to transform catastrophe into political mobilization?
This study will be conducted through the analysis of two case studies: the case of the
#eusoualex NGO created in 2015 in Rio de Janeiro by Mausy Schomaker after the
assassination of her son Alex and the NGO " Vida Pará" created in 2007 by Ricardo Oliveira
in Belem do Para after the death of his mother and sister.
Therefore, this study will examine this relation contrained in that two regions-North and
Southeast-in the 00´s decade.

3.Research Strategy: Mix methods

4.Research Design: qualitative interview research on two studies cases + quantitative research
to evaluate correlation cases of urban violence x number active NGO and collectives as forms
of activism
The interviews will contemplate two cases: one in the southeast x one in the north region of
Brazil
The correlation survey will consider national territory with historical series from the
democratization decade (1980) until nowadays.
5.Justification of methods: the goal is to compare the two most different regions in terms of
education, population, urbanization, income and wealth distribution to isolate those variables
to compare the relation between the number of cases related to urban and rural violence and
the number of NGO´s in those regions.
6.Restrictions/Limiting Conditions: quantitative research will only be able to collect data of
NGO´s that are correctly registered
7.Ethical guidelines
.Anonimity of participants need to be considered due to the nature of the research.
. Questionnaires and must be presented with anticipation and results/transcripts may be
accessible to the interviewees, so the process is transparent with all parts.

References
Marcio Sellingman-Silva
Shoshana Fellman
Michel Foucault
Michael Mann
Adolfo Adorno