Kiss nightclub: how did residents of Santa Maria deal with the tragedy?

The Kiss Nightclub tragedy marked the lives and history of people who lost a friend or family member, but it did not affect them. The case impacted the entire city of Santa Maria, in the interior of Rio Grande do Sul. It’s not hard to find someone who has something to tell about what they were doing on that January 27, 2013 or how the city changed after the tragedy. This is the case of Nicollas Antunes, who was 12 years old at the time. “I was a kid, I was little, I don’t have many memories, but the main one, which they tell me, is that my mother was supposed to be at the club that day. At the last minute, they decided not to go to the club and go to a show closer to our house. That day, my mother lost two friends.” Resident Lucy Polidoro Paim says her son went to the nightclub that night and survived. Even with the relief of having a child safe at home, she feels the pain of the loss of other families. “We lived a year of deep sadness. Every day that passed, when I passed by Kiss, I relived everything. It is an inexplicable thing, only those who have lived it will know, ”she said. Retired professor at the Federal University of Santa Maria, Maria de Lourdes Pippi, lived close to the nightclub. She says that sadness has taken over the city. “The city was really sad. There was no way to forget. Wherever we went, there was a mother, a father or someone suffering. They made it here in the square, they still have it, a tent where they put all the photos and they stayed here”. The psychologist from Eixo Kiss, from the psychoanalysis collective of Santa Maria, Vanessa Solis Pereira, says that this collective feeling comes from a sense of belonging. “It has this dimension of being with a neighbor, with an acquaintance. Most people in town have lost someone in the most direct sense, and we work with the idea that we all have.” The Kiss nightclub fire completes 10 years this Friday (27). Two hundred and forty two people died in the tragedy and more than 630 were injured, in addition to the marks left throughout the municipality.

Agência Brasil