Abstract
Between inform, retain and understand there are innumerable meanders unknown to researchers who manipulate and analyze primary documents guarded by archival institutions. The activities that originated the documentary production deserve to be scrutinized, so that they show the historical conditions that made possible its manufacture, revealing the nature of the archives that house the so-called sensitive documents that, due to their singular characteristics, constitute challenges for those who make use of them. This article is dedicated to the reflection on such documents, regarding their relations with the information they bear and the memory that one wishes to reconstruct. It also problematizes the testimony as a methodological resource and its scientific validation in the search for the truth of facts and events that generated the documents produced by the Brazilian Dictatorship regime, between 1964 and 1985, reflecting the experiences of those who opposed the regime. The analyses of Inês Etienne Romeu testimony, the only survivor of the House of Death in Petrópolis (RJ), opens the discussion about the political game caught in the struggle for the elucidation of the country's recent past.
Keywords:
Sensitive documents; Testimony; Information and memory; Brazilian Dictatorship