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Basic Education Movement; Catholic church; School space; Radio schools; Archdiocese of Natal.
In the midst of changes going in Brazil in the 1960, the Catholic Church sought to reconfigure itself by adopting a more progressive posture and focused on acting in the social environment, dedicating itself to contributing to the country's development, as well as to alleviate the inequalities of a scenario marked by social injustices and illiteracy. It was in this context that in 1961, the Basic Education Movement (Movimento de Educação de Base-MEB) was created from an Agreement between the CNBB and the Federal Government, with the objective of implementing, through the network of radio schools, basic education with the rural populations in the North, Northeast and Midwest regions of the country. This way, this research aims to analyze the construction of the school space by MEB in a context of political and social changes involving the Catholic Church and the State in the 1960s, in the rural environment of the Archdiocese of Natal, emphasizing performance and role of some subjects, notably the monitors. For this reason, I seek to understand how this space was built, meaning and converted into a place through the actions and performance of the MEB subjects. The sources consulted consist of documentation existing in the Metropolitan Archive of the Archdiocese of Natal and available on some internet sites. This research will be carried out from the perspective of social history and new political history and from the perspective of a “history seen from below”, through the critical analysis of the sources and the historiographical dialogue with some works on the subject. From this path, it was possible to perceive the elements, discourses, tensions and the strong political role of the Catholic Church in the construction of this school space, as well as the protagonism of the monitors, who, when fighting for a more just and humane world through education, were building a private school space and converting the MEB into a true “pedagogy of popular participation”.