The foundation of the city of Goiânia, in the 1930s, brought to the State of Goiás a policy considered to be modernizing in several areas. The creation of a leper colony, that is, an institution that isolated and cared for patients affected by leprosy - or leprosy –, in the region known as Senador Canedo, was, at the time, considered a very advanced measure. The institution became known as Santa Marta Colony. This name refers to the figure of Martha, sister of Lazarus, the leper who, in Christian tradition, was resurrected by Jesus - given that leprosy is known to be the disease that is most often described in old historical accounts from the various civilizations of the world.
It is necessary, therefore, to understand the reason for the creation of the referred colony in Goiânia and also the reasons why its way of dealing with the sick was so contested in the following decades.
At the end of the 19th century, the concern with leprosy in Goiás was already huge. This was due to the large increase in the number of people affected by this disease. The likely reason for the increase in cases would have been the belief in the supposed curative power of hot springs in the Rio Quente region, in Caldas Novas. According to historian Leicy Francisca da Silva, in the article entitled
Colonia Santa Marta and Hansen's Disease in Goiás, since 1830 many people with the so-called “Lázaro's disease” moved from neighboring states, such as Bahia and Minas Gerais, towards the warm waters of Goiás. This significantly increased the number of healthy people who became infected with leprosy through contact with water. Only from the intervention by Pedro Ludovico in the state of Goiás, under the nomination of Getúlio Vargas, the leprosy problem was effectively seen as a public health issue.Throughout the 1930s, the entire country was undergoing a turbulent political reconfiguration. Getúlio Vargas had led a revolution that had placed him at the head of the country and would only come out of it in 1945. It was in this context that Vargas appointed several interventors for several Brazilian states. Pedro Ludovico, when representing the centralizing and modernizing policy of Getúlio Vargas in the State of Goiás, established a program for the problem of lepers in the state, founding the Colônia Santa Martha.
The program consisted of transferring leprosy patients from all places considered unsuitable, such as small children. hospitals in inner cities, for a single location, which would function as a small town, with its own dynamics. Thus, the health policy for leprosy consisted, basically, in the confinement of patients. This idea was defended at the time by the sanitary physician Belisário Penna (1869-1939). Penna understood that the construction of a city suitable for leprosy patients was the most humanitarian measure to deal with the problem. However, this measure brought with it several other problems for the inmates, such as the deprivation of coexistence family and social and the stigma of being a "leper", generating a growing wave of prejudice and discrimination.
The history of Colônia Santa Marta changed after the popularization of curative treatment for leprosy in the 1950s. The discovery of the cure for the disease produced a consequent discrediting of the sanitary policy of isolation of the sick. Especially from the 1960s onwards, there was strong pressure from society against this type of sanitary model, as well as a challenge to asylum institutions. In the last decades of the 20th century, patients in the colony who had access to treatment were able to leave confinement. However, as a large part of them had been excluded from the family for many years, problems related to reintegration into society became recurrent.
Currently, in the place where the former colony worked, the Santa Marta Sanitary Dermatology and Rehabilitation Hospital is located. The old physical structures of the building are also preserved with the help of IPHAN (Institute of Heritage Brazilian History and Art) with the aim of preserving the memory of this period of Brazilian history and Goiana.
By Me. Cláudio Fernandes
Source: Brazil School - https://brasilescola.uol.com.br/historiab/a-historia-colonia-santa-marta.htm
