The city and the accident: Goiania, Brazil and Cesium-137

In 1987, in Goiânia, capital of the state of Goiás (BR), two waste pickers found a radiotherapy machine, used to treat cancer patients, inside a ruined building. Among the pieces of the machine that they carried there was a capsule that contained Cesium-137, a highly radioactive material. The capsule was opened and the substance was responsible for contaminating, maiming and even killing a significant number of people and contaminating a portion of the city, leaving scars beyond the urban space. This study starts from the problematization of memory and forgetfulness in the face of disasters that occurred in an urban context expressed in a material and immaterial way in the city. It seeks to defend that there may be a strategy for erasing negative events in cities as a way of coping. Seeking to understand the processes of memory and forgetfulness and from the understanding that these phenomena are manifested in the city, we look for signs that may reveal fragments of memory and erasure of the disaster. To face this challenge, the assembly methodology - proposed by Georges Didi-Huberman - is used as an investigative practice, to achieve the objective of this research, which consists of investigating the dynamics between the city and the accident that occurs through memory and forgetfulness about the disaster expressed in a material and immaterial way in the city of Goiania. (author)