Elementos para uma leitura afrodescendente da paisagem minerária, Bairro do Veloso, Ouro Preto-MG (2006-2021)

Abstract

This research aims to learn how historical narratives are relevant in the readings of the landscape and heritage in the context of the city of Ouro Preto-MG, in a place called Serra de Ouro Preto, specifically in neighborhood São Cristóvão, or Veloso. Some years ago, social agents have been researching people who were enslaved on the West Coast of Africa, who had knowledge of mineral extractive techniques and worked in the exploitation of the slopes of Serra de Ouro Preto. In order to study the place that houses several traces of eighteenth-century mining, we adopted the reading of the landscape as a subjective and political act. The ruins present in Veloso make us wonder about the future of the mining past and how later generations dialogue with their ancestors. The agenda of the questions that guide the research gravitates between the notions of landscape, historical narratives and cultural heritage. The references of the bibliography associated with the interviews with the residents of the neighborhood, the social agents and public agents, in addition to the experience of seven years in Ouro Preto impulse the research. The historical narratives about the remaining structures of the 18th century mining presented by the social agents modify the dominant and convergent reading of the landscape of Ouro Preto. Afro-descendant narratives recompose our reading of this place. The plural and controversial reading of the landscape is presented as a possible democratic exercise for urban public management decisions.