Abstract

Introduction

In this article, which is an essay, we theoretically and methodologically reflect on a research project, which sought to find out how residents of favelas in Rio de Janeiro coped with the Covid-19 Pandemic, considering the collective memory of other limit situations they experienced.

It is also the translation of a dialogue between the authors, resulting from experiences that bring us closer to popular education and methods capable of incorporating Freire’s principles in the way of doing research in favelas and poor neighborhoods, to better understand the daily life of the territories together with the people living there. We take this perspective in participatory research projects.

In recent years, we have incorporated popular health surveillance into our agenda, to investigate the participation of social agents in networks of production and circulation of health knowledge as well as actions aimed at improving living and health conditions in the places under investigation and expanding and improving the quality of public services in favelas and poor neighborhoods.

Social participation in the Brazilian National Health System (SUS) should be re-signified from the perspective of emancipatory health promotion (EHP)¹1 Porto MFS, Pivetta F. Por uma promoção da saúde emancipatória em territórios urbanos vulneráveis. In: Czeresnia D, Freitas CM, organizadores. Promoção da saúde: conceitos, reflexões, tendências. Rio de Janeiro: Editora Fiocruz; 2009. p. 207-29., bringing to the center of the debate the social networks established by residents and collectives of the place, fed by knowledge and experiences, as well as social practices, capable of not only helping the SUS information system, but also bringing it to life.

Therefore, we integrate a set of reflections, research experiences, and debates aimed at territorially based popular health surveillance that has become stronger and shown a path where the focus is on popular movements and practices²2 Machado JMH, Pivetta F, Silva JFS, Bonetti OP. Vigilância popular em saúde em tempos de pandemia: proposta de um caminho. In: Freitas CM, Barcellos C, Villela DAM, editores. Covid-19 no Brasil: cenários epidemiológicos e vigilância em saúde [Internet]. Rio de Janeiro: Editora Fiocruz; 2021 [citado 30 Jul 2022]. p. 397-411. Disponível em: https://books.scielo.org/id/zx6p9/pdf/freitas-9786557081211.pdf
https://books.scielo.org/id/zx6p9/pdf/fr...

3 Porto MFS. Pode a vigilância em saúde ser emancipatória? um pensamento alternativo de alternativas em tempos de crise. Cienc Saude Colet. 2017; 22(10):3149-59. ^-44 Sevalho G. Apontamentos críticos para o desenvolvimento da vigilância civil da saúde. Physis. 2016; 26(2):611-32.. We understand “Popular Surveillance” as a field under development, through tensions and contradictions, and involves confronting social reality, interpretations about the health of populations and their life projects.

For us, popular surveillance has been developed in the processes and forms through which people who live and work in favelas and poor neighborhoods constitute life protection networks, which include daily practices of social support. These connections make the production and circulation of knowledge possible, make local problems visible, question the conditions of health services in the SUS and even question and relativize data and conclusions of academic knowledge.

“The standard does not meet our needs” is a complaint from Camila Santos, a resident who leads the collective “Mulheres em Ação no Alemão”(^e(e)https://pt-br.facebook.com/mulheresemacaonoalemao/, https://www.instagram.com/meaa.oficial/), regarding the standardization of sanitary protocols in the Covid-19 pandemic. This statement, followed by arguments in the debate of a local problem situation, triggers knowledge about the way and dynamics of life in the favela that also helps to question the analysis of topics such as gender, domestic violence or coping with the pandemic.

In dialogue with “this standard does not meet our needs”, we questioned ourselves and were questioned in our research on the use of the expression popular surveillance in daily research with residents: could this word sound weird and distant in projects developed in territories under intense oppression, armed violence and where residents live with insecurity, being the target of generalized suspicion? In this case, couldn’t the expression vigilance lead to distrust, discomfort, and even fear?

Therefore, more than a topic of action research, and concept, for us, popular surveillance has become a device for enunciation in the academic debate in the field of collective health. Enunciation means questioning and making visible reflections related to the shared production of knowledge, based on Freire’s work, as a fundamental path to advance in the field and to develop public policies. Popular surveillance presents itself as an instituting movement, which proposes agendas to local health services so that, in fact, they can respond to the dynamism of the territory in its urgencies and needs⁵5 Cunha MB, Pivetta F, Porto MFS, Zancan L, Souza FM, Francisco MS, et al. Vigilância popular em saúde: contribuições para repensar a participação no SUS. In: Botelho BO, Vasconcelos EM, Carneiro DGB, Prado EV, Cruz PJSC, organizadores. Educação popular no Sistema Único de Saúde. São Paulo: Hucitec; 2018. p. 79-101. .

From this perspective, in this essay, we aim to contribute to the debate on popular surveillance from our position as researchers in favelas and urban peripheries and as political subjects, establishing a dialogue with the academy and public policies. This reflection is based on the experience of the Manguinhos Territorial Laboratory (LTM), as well as on investigations focused on popular health and environmental practices in urban subdivisions in the outskirts of the Metropolitan Region of Rio de Janeiro⁶6 Dominguez M, Cunha MB. A produção do espaço na metrópole do Rio de Janeiro: a disputa pela água no Jardim Catarina, São Gonçalo. In: Amoroso M, Brum M, Gonçalves R, organizadores. Olhares contemporâneos sobre bairros populares, Rio de Janeiro. Rio de Janeiro: Letra Capital; 2022. p. 163-87.. We revisited reports and articles based on that experience and the field material of the last survey, particularly establishing a dialogue with the questions raised by the residents.

Issues that seem fundamental to the debate of popular health surveillance will be addressed in three axes of analysis: 1) Territory, daily life, and the production of life; 2) The method as a principle of action: the expanded community of action-research; 3) Reinvention: between limits and utopias.

Territory, daily life, and the production of life

We reflect here on the territory and its relationship with daily life, based on the concepts of “Lived Space” by Henri Lefebvre⁷7 Lefebvre H. La producción del espacio. Madrid: Capitán Swing; 2013. and “Used Territory” by Milton Santos⁸8 Santos M. O retorno do território. Observ Soc Am Lat [Internet]. 2005 [citado 20 Out 2021]; 6(16):1-13. Disponível em: https://wp.ufpel.edu.br/ppgdtsa/files/2014/10/Texto-Santos-M.-O-retorno-do-territorio.pdf
https://wp.ufpel.edu.br/ppgdtsa/files/20... . The authors’ conception has helped us understand popular territories, historically marked by processes of dehumanization, such as provisionality, uprooting, and invisibility⁶6 Dominguez M, Cunha MB. A produção do espaço na metrópole do Rio de Janeiro: a disputa pela água no Jardim Catarina, São Gonçalo. In: Amoroso M, Brum M, Gonçalves R, organizadores. Olhares contemporâneos sobre bairros populares, Rio de Janeiro. Rio de Janeiro: Letra Capital; 2022. p. 163-87.^,99 Pivetta F, Cunha MB, Porto MFS, Zancan L. Promoção da saúde e conhecimentos emancipatórios: aprendizados com pesquisa-ação nos territórios de favelas. In: Figueiredo GLA, Martins CHG, Akerman M, organizadores. Vulnerabilidades e saúde: grupos em cena por visibilidade no espaço urbano. São Paulo: Hucitec; 2018. p. 383-403.. These places are under a state of permanent surveillance, because of violence, especially police operations, present in the ordinary life of the population.

Considering the particularity of the favela and the periphery of Rio de Janeiro, we seek a brief dialogue with these concepts, anchored in the process of production and reproduction of life in the different spaces we study and work at.

In his theory of the urban space, Henri Lefebvre presents space as a social product. For him, more than resulting from the dialectic between temporalities and spatialities, the production of urban space is the result of praxis itself. Praxis is seen as a movement capable of opening fissures within social structures, which makes it possible to unveil elements of reality that are barely visible. When thinking about the social space of these urban territories, these perspectives intersect through the encounter and confrontation of the actions and life projects of the various social agents that, in a way, will produce different territorialities in different historical contexts.

Everyday struggles take place in the “lived space” through practical experience and the historical confrontation of structural urban problems. For the author, even in the face of the oppression that popular territories suffer due to the imposition of hegemonic representations of space (produced by planners, economic agents and the State), there will always be a remaining movement, of possibility, that in the space of the lived is expressed through social practice.

Thus, we can also understand popular knowledge as a result of the dialectic between the dimensions of lived and perceived, between the “slow” time¹⁰10 Valla VV. A crise de interpretação é nossa: procurando compreender a fala das classes populares. Educ Realidade. 1996; 21(2):177-90 of experience and the time of provision, supported by the social reality that combines a past of shortage and a present of urgent necessities¹⁰10 Valla VV. A crise de interpretação é nossa: procurando compreender a fala das classes populares. Educ Realidade. 1996; 21(2):177-90. By establishing itself in daily life, this knowledge opens up how territories and popular practices have been historically erased and made invisible, even as reference spaces to build and implement public policies. In the favela, the popular way of life rises and points to possibilities of building spaces of representation and new communicative processes between the territories of the city.

Another theoretical pillar that highlights the everyday/territory relationship is Milton Santos’ concept of “used territory”¹¹11 Santos M. Técnica, espaço e tempo: globalização e meio técnico-científico informacional. São Paulo: Hucitec; 1994., which is understood as mediation between the world, society, and the place. It is the use of territory, and not the territory itself, that makes it the object of social analysis. “Based on the reality in the territory, we find the possibilities of building new spaces and establishing the new operation of the territory”¹¹11 Santos M. Técnica, espaço e tempo: globalização e meio técnico-científico informacional. São Paulo: Hucitec; 1994. (p. 255).

Throughout the Covid-19 pandemic, we observed this solidarity in the locations where we researched, bringing new dynamics to the territories, contributing to the growth of support networks, and to the resignification of preventive measures. At the same time, these dynamics caused certain conflicts, such as tensions between the collectives and some residents, who questioned the limits or criteria of donations of food and cleaning supplies.

In another study, we showed¹²12 Dominguez M, Klink J. Metrópoles em tempos de pandemia: mapeando territórios subversivos nas RMSP e RMRJ. Cad Metrop. 2021; 23(52):927-47. that the “lived space” was in conflict with preventive health measures in a context of health and social crisis. This is the case, for example, of the guidelines determined by a hegemonic perspective in the field of classical epidemiology¹³13 Castiel LD. Ensaio sobre a pandemência: quando personagens e micróbios da ficção-científica saem do filme e invadem o planeta, um acompanhamento crítico de enunciados sobre a Covid-19 em meios de comunicação leigos e técnicos [Internet]. Rio de Janeiro: Fiocruz; 2020 [citado 30 Jul 2020]. Disponível em: http://observatoriodamedicina.ensp.fiocruz.br/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/ENSAIO-SOBRE-A-PANDEM%C3%8ANCIA.pdf.
http://observatoriodamedicina.ensp.fiocr... , supported by a view of health that restricts the social and cultural dimension in determining the health-disease process.

We can assume that these tensions, lived as experiences of local conflicts, mainly translate the contradictions between the used territory and the social world, which expose the limits of action in a society marked by inequality, injustice, and violence. In this regard, we recall that, for Santos, daily life is the framework for action and the place of the limits of action, which potentializes or constrains political activity and the exercise of citizenship¹⁴14 Santos M. Por uma geografia cidadã: por uma epistemologia da existência. Bol Gaucho Geografia. 1996; 21(1):7-14..

Daily life, as a synthesis between experienced spatialities and temporalities, allows us to understand the plurality of social agents and the multiplicity of places where political action takes place. Also, it allows us to think about the social experience and the cultural, political, and ideological facts identified there, as responsible for instituting the social movement and popular knowledge from which the impossibilities and limits of the social world emerge, as well as the possibilities of producing health and life.

From this perspective, immersed in daily life, where we develop research, and are affected by it, we seek to know and understand the forms of existence and reproduction of life, to know and recognize all the possibilities of existing in their differences, forcing us to give existence status to these places and their potentialities¹⁴14 Santos M. Por uma geografia cidadã: por uma epistemologia da existência. Bol Gaucho Geografia. 1996; 21(1):7-14.. Moved by this perspective, we are tracing the paths of an EHP, with the artisanal work of shared knowledge production through the CAP with favela residents. It is through the territory that we can build emancipatory alternatives as “something viable and unprecedented”¹⁵15 Pivetta F. Comunidade ampliada de pesquisa-ação: uma contribuição metodológica para a promoção emancipatória da saúde nos espaços urbanos [tese]. Rio de Janeiro: Escola Nacional de Saúde Pública Sergio Arouca, Fundação Oswaldo Cruz; 2021..

The method as a principle of action: the extended action-research community (CAP)

The development of a methodology capable of incorporating the territory used as a fundamental dimension for the production of knowledge about different problems that emerge from favelas and urban poor neighborhoods is a fundamental challenge in popular surveillance, which we have sought to respond to since 2003. Here, we present the path through which we work and reflect on it by means of an extended action-research community, in order to contribute to the methodological debate of popular surveillance.

We have been constituting the CAP Method as mediation with the territory for the production of knowledge about the different topics that emerge from the place, anchored in in-person meetings and in the simple tools created to carry out research and immersed interventions in the territory¹⁵15 Pivetta F. Comunidade ampliada de pesquisa-ação: uma contribuição metodológica para a promoção emancipatória da saúde nos espaços urbanos [tese]. Rio de Janeiro: Escola Nacional de Saúde Pública Sergio Arouca, Fundação Oswaldo Cruz; 2021.. It is the gear of EHP conceived by the LTM, based on the approaches of Social Determinant of Health (SDH) and Popular Education, whose idea and strength is in the approximation with the daily life of the place, seeking to understand the processes of health-disease production and sharing information and reflections resulting from the exercise of comprehension with the residents⁵5 Cunha MB, Pivetta F, Porto MFS, Zancan L, Souza FM, Francisco MS, et al. Vigilância popular em saúde: contribuições para repensar a participação no SUS. In: Botelho BO, Vasconcelos EM, Carneiro DGB, Prado EV, Cruz PJSC, organizadores. Educação popular no Sistema Único de Saúde. São Paulo: Hucitec; 2018. p. 79-101. .

This is an epistemic challenge, which points to the need to overcome the gap between, on the one hand, the macro-structural and collective plan, and, on the other, the conditions and potential of the subjects in more personal and community plans linked to daily life and place¹⁶16 Porto MFS, Rocha DF, Finamore R. Saúde coletiva, território e conflitos ambientais: bases para um enfoque socioambiental crítico. Cienc Saude Colet. 2014; 19(10):4071-80.. This perspective is in line with Freire’s popular education, based on critical dialogism and the communion of liberation¹⁷17 Freire P. Pedagogia do oprimido. 30a ed. São Paulo: Paz e Terra; 2001.. In practice, this means approaching the territory to read the world through the exchange of knowledge between researchers and residents. “Reading the world”, a central concept of Paulo Freire, gives the meaning that we conceive to the word shared in the production of knowledge, as a dialogical action.

As Victor Valla and Eduardo Stotz¹⁸18 Valla VV. Educação popular e conhecimento: a monitoração civil dos serviços de saúde e educação nas metrópoles brasileiras. In: Valla VV, Stotz EN. Participação popular, educação e saúde: teoria e prática. Rio de Janeiro: Relume-Dumará; 1993. p. 101-12. mention, it is life – that is, the problems that people face to ensure their survival, the reference for popular education, and for our regular performance in the territory.

CAP is a way of producing knowledge collectively, a space of approximation with the daily life of the territory from the encounter between residents and researchers, with their knowledge and experiences. Through it, we seek to understand the territorial dynamics and advance from a shared perspective, building a comprehensive and dialogical view of the living and health conditions of the territory.

The CAP Method is structured in three main dimensions: 1) everyday life as a gear of CAP’s dynamics, 2) social agents in motion; and 3) spiral artisanal work and its tools. These are principles of the method which make it possible to incorporate in its dynamic research the problems, the limit situations and the viable and unprecedented situations experienced by residents, as well as by the investigation team itself, in dialogue with them¹⁵15 Pivetta F. Comunidade ampliada de pesquisa-ação: uma contribuição metodológica para a promoção emancipatória da saúde nos espaços urbanos [tese]. Rio de Janeiro: Escola Nacional de Saúde Pública Sergio Arouca, Fundação Oswaldo Cruz; 2021..

Daily life as a scale of action and relationship is the space of observation and analysis, which delimits the space-time in which we act and defines the lens through which we perceive the territory, allowing us not only to identify and experience, but to understand the limit situations faced in the territory. The experience of daily life makes us perceive these situations, whose conversion into a topic to produce knowledge takes place procedurally and is prepared by the CAP as an object of reflection-action, that is, the object of praxis.

A limit situation can be compared to the popular expression “dead end”, which places us before our limits and challenges to understand the processes of the social determination of health, identifying not only the extraordinary events of the territory but also their profound and long-term effects on people’s living and health conditions¹⁵15 Pivetta F. Comunidade ampliada de pesquisa-ação: uma contribuição metodológica para a promoção emancipatória da saúde nos espaços urbanos [tese]. Rio de Janeiro: Escola Nacional de Saúde Pública Sergio Arouca, Fundação Oswaldo Cruz; 2021..

In methodological terms, interlocutory analysis and mediation take place at different times and involve a diversity of social agents in motion¹⁹19 Cunha MB, Pivetta F, Dominguez MT, Sousa FM, Costa VC. Lugar de fronteira e de conhecimento nas pesquisas em educação popular: uma reflexão sobre os agentes sociais em movimento. In: Marteleto RM, David HMSL, organizadoras. Cultura, conhecimento e mediação de saberes em saúde: diálogos da informação e da educação popular [Internet]. Rio de Janeiro: IBICT; 2021 [citado 22 Out 2023]. Disponível em: http://ridi.ibict.br/handle/123456789/1229
http://ridi.ibict.br/handle/123456789/12... . This means that residents who develop actions in the territory and who, despite not having an institutionalized role, have a particular observation position of what happens in their localities, thus building a reflective and critical view of their lives and the world in which they circulate¹⁹19 Cunha MB, Pivetta F, Dominguez MT, Sousa FM, Costa VC. Lugar de fronteira e de conhecimento nas pesquisas em educação popular: uma reflexão sobre os agentes sociais em movimento. In: Marteleto RM, David HMSL, organizadoras. Cultura, conhecimento e mediação de saberes em saúde: diálogos da informação e da educação popular [Internet]. Rio de Janeiro: IBICT; 2021 [citado 22 Out 2023]. Disponível em: http://ridi.ibict.br/handle/123456789/1229
http://ridi.ibict.br/handle/123456789/12... . Established in spots, where “social structures” are in action, according to Bourdieu²⁰20 Bourdieu P. A miséria do mundo. Petrópolis: Vozes; 2008., they have critical visibility and knowledge that supports us in the task of understanding the dynamics of the way of life and the social responses of these territories, within the scope of broader processes that mark the city.

In fact, they are the key to the CAP’s dialogue in and with the territory, because, unlike the established leaders, they facilitate and expand the dialogue with the territory in the face of conflicts between different collective organizations and local social movements, favor a broader and more creative approach to emancipatory struggles in the favelas, and unveil invisibilities, opening new research and action agendas¹⁵15 Pivetta F. Comunidade ampliada de pesquisa-ação: uma contribuição metodológica para a promoção emancipatória da saúde nos espaços urbanos [tese]. Rio de Janeiro: Escola Nacional de Saúde Pública Sergio Arouca, Fundação Oswaldo Cruz; 2021.^,1919 Cunha MB, Pivetta F, Dominguez MT, Sousa FM, Costa VC. Lugar de fronteira e de conhecimento nas pesquisas em educação popular: uma reflexão sobre os agentes sociais em movimento. In: Marteleto RM, David HMSL, organizadoras. Cultura, conhecimento e mediação de saberes em saúde: diálogos da informação e da educação popular [Internet]. Rio de Janeiro: IBICT; 2021 [citado 22 Out 2023]. Disponível em: http://ridi.ibict.br/handle/123456789/1229
http://ridi.ibict.br/handle/123456789/12... .

To coordinate the activities of a CAP, we established what we call the CAP Nucleus – the engine of its methodological dynamics, with five to eight participants, among researchers and social agents. The CAP Nucleus, by listening daily and widely to the territory, defines the strategies, movements, and activities of a CAP. These actions include the definition of a problem situation (developed as a topic in the process) and the dynamics of approaching the residents, highlighting the forms and languages to establish dialogue and the gradual incorporation of them into the activities, considering the diversity of points of view on the subject in question.

Finally, we highlight that the artisanal and spiral work of a CAP seeks to respond to the dynamism of the territory. Artisanal in the sense of inventing or re-signifying concepts and research tools, based on the concrete reality posed by socio-historical needs, and which seeks a change in ways of thinking and knowing through popular education. And, also, as a creative imagination based on the meaning of daily work, which is incorporated into the production processes by the autonomy of CAP participants. Thus, it attempts to materialize an EHP, in interaction with daily life, seeking, in different ways, to promote the appropriation of knowledge and the production of meanings, as a way of promoting the autonomy of the subjects of the CAP.

The spiral is a representation of the movements of a CAP and an analytical category to think about the work that at the same time expands and cannot stop, because it moves to the rhythm of urgency²¹21 Cunha MB, Frigotto G. O trabalho em espiral: uma análise do processo de trabalho dos educadores em saúde nas favelas do Rio de Janeiro. Interface (Botucatu). 2010; 14(35):811-23. doi: 10.1590/S1414-32832010005000028.
https://doi.org/10.1590/S1414-3283201000... . It is work that also expands, while materializing in cycles of production-circulation-appropriation-communication²²22 Zancan L, Pivetta F, Sousa FM, Cunha MB, Porto MFS, Freitas J, et al. Dispositivos de comunicação para a promoção da saúde: reflexões metodológicas a partir do processo de compartilhamento da maleta de trabalho “Reconhecendo Manguinhos”. Interface (Botucatu). 2014; 18 Supl 2:1313-26. doi: 10.1590/1807-57622013.0457.
https://doi.org/10.1590/1807-57622013.04... or CAP’s movements, which we carry out to elaborate a comprehensive view of a given topic. A CAP involves four steps: the initial one, with the constitution of the CAP Nucleus and elaboration of the topic, its problematization through the expansion of the dialogue, with the incorporation of different social agents in the process; the articulations and networks with mediators and social agents of the territory; the systematization, which resumes the protagonism of the work of the CAP Nucleus, of organization and analysis of field data that started when preparing the topics, and the collective reflections that were recorded in field reports and workshops and meetings, audio and video, and, finally, the activities that articulate various movements of spreading information and knowledge produced²³23 Sousa FM, Cunha MB, Zancan LF, Pivetta FR. Comunidade ampliada de pesquisa-ação: um guia de pesquisa [Internet]. Rio de Janeiro: ENSP, Fiocruz; 2021 [citado 8 Ago 2022]. Disponível em: https://educare.fiocruz.br/resource/show?id=clo2m5K4
https://educare.fiocruz.br/resource/show... . Spreading knowledge in different materials and media, such as workshops and audiovisual notebooks, when appropriate, creates new meanings and actions.

As in Rancière, the CAP method does not constitute

A path that competes to create spaces and ways of creating new languages to express the vision and understanding of the world of subjects and social groups, to counter the narratives that stigmatize them²⁵25 Rancière J. El método de la igualdad: conversaciones con Laurent Jeanpierre y Dork Zabunyan. Buenos Aires: Ediciones Nueva Visión; 2014..

Reinventions, between limits and utopias

The CAP seeks the answers to its challenges, in its artisanal and spiral dimension. In dialogue with the daily life of the territories, and under the principle of action, even under limits, it seeks to reinvent itself. This is what happened in recent years, while conducting a project during the Covid-19 pandemic, when we discussed the process of recreating the method. Here we share some results of the methodology of the project.

In 2020, when the pandemic was declared, we were communicating with some partners in the territory of Manguinhos and with employees from the favelas of Alemão and Rocinha, where we had already worked before. In April of that year, taking on the challenge of continuing to produce knowledge in a new and complex context, we prepared a project involving these three favelas, where a set of problem situations had already been announced(^f(f)“A Covid-19 como situação limite: experiências e memória histórica na produção de conhecimentos em saúde com favelas do Rio de Janeiro”, coordinated by Marize Bastos da Cunha. Inova Fiocruz Program Knowledge Generation - Coping with the Pandemic and Post-Pandemic Covid-19 Strategic Orders. Call No. 3/2020. Opinion CEP/ENSP CAAE No. 40901620.3.0000.5240). Together with partners – the Instituto Raízes em Movimento do Alemão, the newspaper Fala Roça da Rocinha, and the collective Mães de Manguinhos(^g(g)https://www.cepedoca.org.br/institucional/instituto-raizes-em-movimento/, https://falaroca.com/, https://www.instagram.com/maes.de.manguinhos/?hl=pt), we faced a new endeavor: creating proximity in the distance.

Our experience in favelas, and especially with the actions developed there, showed that there would be a confrontation of the health situation by the collectives that were present in these territories. It is the so-called “we for us” evoking the mobilization, organization, and articulation of collectives over problems that challenge their daily lives and engender forms of protection of life. And they show the limits of the State in advancing public policies that dialogue directly with popular organizations and social movements and guarantee their citizenship rights.

The starting point of this research was exactly the mobilization of the collectives of these territories, which stand out in the responses to the health crisis and its social impacts, and in the support to SUS actions. However, we assume that the practices and knowledge inscribed there are not unprecedented, as they are supported by how people live in the favelas and by the memory of previous experiences, where the networks of local activists and residents constituted the living body of the confrontation.

We name the challenges experienced in these territories as limit situations, incorporating the concept brought by Paulo Freire. It is within the limit situation that there are actions that seek to overcome and deny what is perceived as given, that is, historical determinations conceived as insurmountable barriers. The limit act implies critical objectivization and action on the limit situation¹⁷17 Freire P. Pedagogia do oprimido. 30a ed. São Paulo: Paz e Terra; 2001.. We also conceive the pandemic as a critical event²⁶26 Das V. Critical events: an anthropological perspective on contemporary India. New Delhi: Oxford University Press; 1995., which penetrates deeply into the locality and is anchored in its daily life, and it should be understood from the perspective of the subjects who experience it.

Thus, the research sought to understand the dimension of collective memory and local culture in the social determination of health in territories subjected to vulnerability processes, as well as the forms of participation and popular surveillance present in the responses to the Covid-19 pandemic, asking how they can strengthen an EHP.

We accumulated knowledge on the use of digital tools in previous experiences, where we learned from favela collectives some ways of producing and spreading knowledge, especially through virtual networks²⁷27 Sousa FM, Cunha MB, Pivetta F. Aprendizados com grupos de favelas: o uso de ferramentas virtuais em uma pesquisa participativa. Rev Latinoam Cienc Comunic. 2021; 19(35):156-65. doi: 10.55738/alaic.v19i35.667.
https://doi.org/10.55738/alaic.v19i35.66... . However, the pandemic scenario brought us the urgent need to recreate the method. Considering the centrality of daily life in CAP, our main question was how to follow the dynamism of the territory remotely.

The main questions were: how to organize knowledge production processes through digital communication channels? How to keep the principle of action alive through these channels, in view of the recurring problems of internet access and the difficulties in the use of digital tools, especially by older residents? These were questions where multiple issues were inscribed, such as democratization of access and control of the internet network in the localities, learning with digital tools and paths that allowed approximation and reception at a distance.

Anyways, it was the limit situation of the method. And for us, the generating question was imposed: what do we need to learn from this unprecedented historical moment? From the perspective of popular education, it is, above all, a qualification process in action. We discussed collectively in CAP, throughout the research, the problems that arose because of the impacts of social isolation on people in the favelas and the conditions of these localities. The fact that we worked together, in a spiral, allowed us to advance in the developing the methodology and in recreating the method.

The first stage, the initial artisanal movement, was dedicated to the CAP creation in each territory, to the dynamics of aggregation and reception of the team, with communication groups being created in virtual networks and ways of sharing audio files, videos, photos, and texts. And also, virtual meetings for debate and collective reflection on important topics: from the situation of each favela where we worked to the ways to develop research during social isolation, without endangering the participants and the team. We highlight here the Training and Planning Meeting, held every morning over a week, which allowed us to have a daily proximity, with a deepening in issues related to research. And, above all, it contributed to strengthening the bonds between people, by also configuring itself as a space for reflection on our existences and experiences.

To support the reception and face the physical distance, in moments of so many changes, suffering and pain, we held monthly meetings with the team, and weekly or biweekly meetings of each CAP – Alemão, Manguinhos, and Rocinha, and meetings of the field team with the coordination, in view of the intensification of activities; in addition to study sessions(^h(h)Given the frequency of use of communication platforms and the need for autonomy and security for each CAP to hold meetings, without feeling at risk, a Zoom license was acquired, ensuring that the entire team could use the platform to carry out their activities.).

The reinvention of the method required breaking with the centrality of the workshop as the main tool for dialogue and problematization. For the survey of problem situations and the definition of the topics and their problematization, we initially resorted to individualized contacts, followed by a survey with people from the territory who were not in charge of initiatives to face the pandemic. The surveys, in the form of conversations with residents, were carried out by WhatsApp, and when possible in person.

Interviews with these social agents with an open script were the main tool, both in the first phase of the research, focused on the situation of favelas and the responses of collectives and residents to the pandemic and its impacts, and in the second moment, focused on the memory of borderline situations of the past. They were performed by two or three members of the local CAP, through the Zoom platform, recorded in audio and video and shared with the local team.

In addition, we organized remote conversation circles that worked as a dialogue device of the local CAP with different social agents of the territory, such as people who followed health actions, young people, and old residents. Considering the autonomy of each CAP to evaluate the possibilities of in-person interviews or conversation circles, some of these activities were carried out in person after the most critical period of the pandemic in 2020. However, the in-person procedure required greater organization of the team, in order to guarantee health protection and the technical conditions for audiovisual registration.

Finally, in the last phase in the field, by expanding the relational and dialogical dimension of the method, we created what we call “chats”, referring to one of the meanings of the term used by young people from favelas and poor neighborhoods to name party and fun events, or even conversations. Thus, the review became the meeting in which CAP invites two or more people to talk informally and having as mediation the fact that they live or work in the same territory. While reviewing and talking, the participants exchanged life experiences, remembering past difficulties, moments that marked their lives and the favela.

We sought to develop the research focusing on the qualification process in action, triggering both new digital tools and participatory dynamics, as well as other ones built in the collective practices of the favelas, present both in the act of “laying slabs” or chatting with friends, neighbors, and family. These were ways of reinventing the method, and we also reinvented ourselves, researchers, and residents, who participated in the process. Therefore, we reaffirm, albeit at a distance, the CAP as a space for problematizing and understanding the problems of the territory, but also for creating trust and affection, which can be used to vent, demand, share challenges, and even analyze the political conjuncture²⁷27 Sousa FM, Cunha MB, Pivetta F. Aprendizados com grupos de favelas: o uso de ferramentas virtuais em uma pesquisa participativa. Rev Latinoam Cienc Comunic. 2021; 19(35):156-65. doi: 10.55738/alaic.v19i35.667.
https://doi.org/10.55738/alaic.v19i35.66... .

Final considerations

“Our shouts turned out into screams”, said Camila Santos, explaining: “I say that before in the favela there were shouts, now shouts became screams”. And, after presenting the various fronts of actions that she and local partners developed in the territory, she concludes: “as far as I am concerned, we prioritized the shout that was louder”.

We begin this conclusion with Camila’s analysis, reinforcing our method of establishing a dialogue with the analysis of the interlocutors in the favelas, and because it indicates one of the issues addressed in this essay: the multiple temporal dimensions inscribed in the territory and in their daily lives. Screams and shouts translate what, for us, is in the movement of structures and under the dynamics of daily urgency. Screams, expressions of various problems experienced in the lived territory, historically produced by the processes of production and reproduction of inequality, are recurrent. Perhaps, for this reason, they are naturalized and invisible. The screams echo when a critical event is present, such as the pandemic or a massacre, which ends the lives of several people. It is the shout of mothers looking for their children’s bodies that screams more seriously, as well as hunger.

Knowing and understanding shouts and screams together with social agents on the move, who accumulate an extended and critical view of the daily facts in the territories, is what we seek to achieve through CAP. And this is what we propose as a way to contribute to Popular Health Surveillance. It is from there that we follow the limits that constrain political action and the exercise of citizenship, but also the solidarity¹⁴14 Santos M. Por uma geografia cidadã: por uma epistemologia da existência. Bol Gaucho Geografia. 1996; 21(1):7-14..

Expanding the dialogue in the territories, especially with regard to the processes of health-disease production, broadens our perception of the historical social process. It is a movement that, under the principle of action, contributes to a greater understanding of the plot inscribed in the daily life of the lived space. And yet, for the perception of daily life as a process of reconstruction and reproduction of life in the favela, where contradictions shout, but possibilities can scream. Therefore, this is a qualification process, in which different social agents participate, and which does not occur without valuing the knowledge and experience of each person.

This is how we insert ourselves into the debate on popular surveillance, which we conceive as an enunciation device in the field of public health in the face of challenges related to the shared production of knowledge. In this process, the aforementioned social agents in movement assume centrality, due to their epistemic, ethical, and political position, whose knowledge and experience are the key that allows us to understand screams and shouts, differentiate them, and analyze their impacts on health.

Here we highlight the position of women. In our own research team and in the territories where we operate, we observe them as protagonists of actions, reflections, and debates throughout the Pandemic, being fundamental in the surveillance of public services of urban and social infrastructure. They also acted on the front lines: in the registrations, identifying the needs of the most vulnerable residents and localities; creating materials, including those for the media, with guidelines appropriate to the reality of the territory; and organizing records of the numerous experiences and practices, in the form of reports or communication on social networks.

They are the ones who have been shouting and screaming in daily life and, in particular, in the face of limit situations, showing something like a pedagogy of care, which contributes to rethinking the conception of care in the field of public health.

In dialogue with this pedagogy of care that emerges from actions in the favelas, the CAP is an ethical and epistemic conception, simultaneously theoretical and methodological, of being with the other while thinking and acting reflexively, learning to deal with different temporalities and spatialities, to feed the principle of action.

Resuming some of the recreations of the method, we synthesized those that, in their operability, allowed us to sustain this principle and the exchange network, producing ways to create proximity in the distance. WhatsApp groups, Zoom meetings, and circulation of information and knowledge through Instagram, ensured that we maintained contacts, conversations, consultations, exchanges about the daily life of the territory; the Instagram channel worked as a dynamic device for the circulation of the residents’ narratives and collective reflections. Remote messages, in short videos and audios, were a space of care and sharing of daily life, nurturing the exchange of ideas, anxieties, fears, dreams, and personal learning. The resignification of surveys and chatting as research tools expanded the possibilities of exchanging life experiences and knowledge.

We follow this movement, making dialogue and sharing what structures CAP as a way of interacting with the favela territories and as an ethical-poetic-political project, in the sense of establishing dialogue with the other, linked to creative thinking about ways of doing things that produce life. It is political in the sense that it aims to contribute to collective action, which forges paths in favor of a humanized, solidary, and fraternal city project. This is the motto for our reflections on the daily life with CAPs¹⁵15 Pivetta F. Comunidade ampliada de pesquisa-ação: uma contribuição metodológica para a promoção emancipatória da saúde nos espaços urbanos [tese]. Rio de Janeiro: Escola Nacional de Saúde Pública Sergio Arouca, Fundação Oswaldo Cruz; 2021..

Acknowledgements

Instituto Raízes em Movimento, Jornal Fala Roça, Mães de Manguinhos, and Camila Santos from Mulheres em Ação at Alemão.

References

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