On February 19, a doctoral thesis in Museology was defended at Universidade Lusófona: The Territories of Candango Memories: Urban Removals, Peripheral Territorialities, and Museum Imaginations in the Federal District, Brazil, by student Karolline Pacheco Santos, under the supervision of Clóvis Carvalho Britto.

The academic research explores the memories of workers who migrated from different regions of Brazil to build the federal capital, Brasília (1960), known as candangos, and how these memories remain alive in the peripheral territories of the Federal District. The study analyzes the role of community museological processes in preserving these memories, revealing that, beyond recollections of labor and migration, candango identities are also shaped through narratives of resistance and the struggle for decent housing in the capital designed by Lúcio Costa and Oscar Niemeyer, among other renowned figures of Brazilian modernism.

The research focuses on three preservation spaces in the Federal District—the Museu Vivo da Memória Candanga, the Casa da Memória Viva da Ceilândia, and the Museu Vivo da Memória da Vila Paranoá—to understand how these processes challenge the erasure of institutionalized narratives about the modernist city and construct first-person accounts from the perspective of peripheral territories.

"The official memory of Brasília tends to silence the stories of those who actually built it. These community initiatives demonstrate that candango identities go far beyond the past linked to construction work: they are directly connected to the territorial struggles that shaped the Federal District," explains the researcher.

Using a qualitative approach within the fields of Sociomuseology and Urban Studies, the thesis analyzes documents, interviews, and audiovisual records to understand how these narratives are constructed and redefined over time. The research concludes that the preservation of candango memories, mobilized from the peripheral territories of the federal capital, reveals the impact of the housing struggle in shaping these populations' identities and serves as a tool for social advocacy, territorializing new forms of belonging and identity.

Beyond contributing to the appreciation of the history and struggles of the candangos, this research is part of a broader debate on the social consequences of the commodification of urban space and the displacement of impoverished, migrant, and immigrant populations—phenomena that are repeated in different contemporary urban contexts. The study highlights how these populations mobilize resistance strategies to secure their rights and dignity, emphasizing the crucial role of social movement memories in combating historical erasure. Additionally, preserving these memories becomes a powerful resource for popular education, strengthening critical consciousness and promoting the right to the city. The research also opens space for a broader reflection on the right to memory and the role of community museums as agents of social transformation, contributing to the recognition of history and the reinforcement of popular struggles within the socio-spatial dynamics of the Federal District.