This article works with what is announced, an objectively declared meaning, and with what is only enunciated, dependent on a broader context of meanings entwined with each other, in the narratives of two collections of personal documents from the Public Archive of Mato Grosso. Adopting as a reference the organizations (arrangements) of two collections, it points out how self-narratives sought to build “public evidence” and a “place in history”, at the same time that they left clues to the counter-history of personal negotiations and social contradictions.
Keywords: personal collections; self-narratives; document handling; Mato Grosso.
