How do Archival Policies Arise: The 1st Auction of National Memory and the São Paulo State Archives System (Saesp)

ABSTRACT

At the beginning of September 1983, after two days of exposition of letters, documents and manuscripts of the History of Brazil, the 1st Auction of National Memory would take place at Maksoud Plaza Hotel, in São Paulo. The documents, many of them of public nature, belonged to a private collector and, on that date, could not be auctioned due to an injunction founded on the Sphan Federal Decree-Law n. 25 of 1937. The event would finally be held on September 22, 1983, which consummation would have gone unnoticed by the press. This paper, sustained on the Auction catalog, on the stories about the event published at the time and on the theoretical reflections about the historical value and the nature and characteristic of documents, aims to discuss the legality of private collections formed by documents produced by public authorities as well as the impact of such an event to the creation of São Paulo State Archives System.

Keywords: 1^st Auction of National Memory (Brazil); archives; documents; file systems