O desaparecimento do Arraial e algumas crônicas do fim do mundo

Abstract

This investigation seeks to acknowledge the possibility of incorporating the social imaginary and the speculation to highlight some historiographical gaps in the writing hegemony, specifically on the construction of the newly designed Nova Capital for the Brazilian state of Minas Gerais that took place in the late 19th century. To approach these constructions, we looked through official archives to find the omissions that could make up an “Other-story”, or a history of the Other in the city. As a result, we present a frame of what Modernity meant to 19th-century Brazilian intellectuals and how these frame images linked directly to the disappearance of the urban form of “Arraial”. And along with it, the lack of registers on precarious buildings typical of this colonial period, the “cafuas”. These buildings do not appear in Brazil’s National Historical and Artistic Heritage Institute (IPHAN) archives, nor as part of the historical architectural vocabulary. It is also not correctly registered by the Construction Committee of the New Capital (CCNC). Nevertheless, it advances into Modernity in a way Walter Benjamin would call phantasmagoria: part as urban myths (like “Maria Papuda” haunting the capital since then), part as a type of building that shapes the Morro urban form – nowadays known as “Favela”. Besides that, it is also an imaginary of resistance to both Modernization itself and the Republican government.