Memória e história institucional: o processo de constituição da Escola Superior de Agricultura de Lavras - ESAL - (1892-1938)

Abstract

This piece of research investigates the foundation of the Escola Superior de Agricultura de Lavras (ESAL), after the institutional theory which states that such organization is a social entity which generates culture among its members. The Escola Superior de Agricultura de Lavras was so named in 1938, although it was founded back in 1908, when the American Reverend Samuel Rhea Gammon, the director of a Protestant school in Lavras decided upon creating a school which would teach agriculture to the region´s youngsters. This institution´s history is hereby revisited through written documents, such as personal diaries and visitors´ books, now belonging to the institution´s memorabilia. As a result from the Protestant idealism, the agricultural school ended up institutionalizing itself through these values. Therefore the main theorical reference in this paper is the reading on what comes to be such Protestant culture, in the classics of the reformist thoughts, such as Martin Luther and John Calvin and the way it emerges in the collective memories of the foundation of the Escola Agricola de Lavras, later Escola Superior de Agricultura de Lavras. The main aim of the research turned out to be, therefore, detecting those early values which were present at the moment of its foundation, based on what has been left as memorabilia by the institution.