Recriando espaços, inventando lugares: memória e oralidade sobre as transformações urbanas em Pombal (1930-1950).

Abstract

City, memory, past, representations, materiai transformations and its symbolic questions arc some concerns of me written narrative presented here, ft intends to be a scientifical path through which we invite the reader to walk with us. Moved by these interests, this path intends to present the results of our research related to representations generated by symbolic and material transformations experienced in the municipality of Pombal, State of Paraíba between 1930 and 1950. As analytical issues, we seek to understand if those transformations happened in the urban space in the municipality of Pombal were experienced and are recalled collectively, what are the more significant changes which we kept in the memories of our narrators and which are the memories and feelings of those people related to the events under study. By using the methodology of oral history, we explored the meanings constructed in the memories of old people. According to oral evidence, it was also possible to observe other representations created about the same event than those in the written document constructed by official discourse of the Munieipiialy Board and the local historiography, in this sense, our narrators told representations about transformations happened in Pombal which were less a personal experience and idealizations of progress and more meanings attached to the íèeiing of social exclusion. The memories of old people reconstruct in the present some cultural practices shared in the past. They are representations about the city in that historical moment and its material and symbolic transformations, construction through oraliry other sceneries, people, stories and uses of space.