Abstract
In a period of intense change in the political-social-economic context in Brazil, in the 1970s and 1980s, the issue of health is configured in an area of organization of intellectuals, workers, popular movements for health for the construction (beyond) of the Health Reform. In this work, we studied this context and the state of Paraiba, watching the popular mobilizations in health, their relation with the basic ecclesial communities (BEC) and the first human rights center of the state. To this end, we used the method of oral history, focusing on narration and subversive memory, based on interviews with people who were subject-participants in the mobilizations. Thus, we reconstruct the experiences of popular resistance around health in the country and in Paraíba, in dialog with the issue of the Health Reform and its contributions to the redefinition of social change.