Paisagens narrativas: desvendando as transformações de Macaia (MG) pela inserção do lado da usina do Funil

Abstract

This work raised, analyzed and discussed the landscape transformations in the Macaia District, Bom Sucesso, MG, in its material and immaterial aspects, before and after the construction of the lake that constituted the Engenheiro José Mendes Júnior Hydroelectric Power Plant, known as the Funnel. It was sought to understand how these transformations touched and even altered the lives of people, knowing the landscape perception revealed by the way man relates to the natural and built processes of each place and each time. In order to do so, we initially sought to understand the environmental and urban transformations of the analyzed area and the processes of recognition and selection of the elements of nature that were part of such transformations, verifying the impacts on the daily life of its population. Next, we sought to unveil the landscapes produced by analyzing the narratives that revealed individual and collective perceptions, imbricated by their meanings and values attributed in each time that is striking for the history of the locality. It has been identified that, pervading all the times of the place, the idea of an always exploited nature persists, whose evidences are present in the material human interventions and in the memory of the population. The research shows that, after the implementation of the Hydropower Lake, the action of controlling mechanisms, usually associated to the real estate market, influenced the imaginary aspect of the local inhabitants, interfering in their previous references, mainly by the man-nature connection, mainly, the exploitation of natural components as a tourist resource and alteration of the territorial dynamics of land use and occupation by the construction of the second residence. The narrated landscapes emphasized the conflicts of the new reality with the preexisting and the social efforts of adaptation to the transformations that occurred, allowing to understand that not only the urban, social and economic environment are altered by the implantation of a hydroelectric plant, but also the subjective aspects and immaterial that construct the identity of places.