Traces of epidemics in the fringes of pain: memory of Spanish flu from a local history perspective, Botucatu (São Paulo state), 1918

This article takes a local history perspective to scrutinize how the memory of suffering that surrounded the Spanish flu epidemic of 1918 in Botucatu, São Paulo state, has been evoked, challenged, and transmuted over time, producing representations in strategies and practices, and understandings that end up constituting a meaning-making social reality. In this historiographic endeavor, historical vestiges were brought together from a variety of the city’s archives between September and October 2021 in a bid to reveal the historical processes that were accreted and deposited in the social fabric and fibers, and which, under the processes of time, were changed and reworked, bringing forth the ineffable mark of Spanish flu.

Epidemics; Influenza pandemic 1918-1919; Public health/history; Public health profiles/history; Brazil