Na contramão da via Mangue: artes e astúcias na reinvenção do cotidiano de ex-moradores das localidades "Xuxa" e "Deus nos Acuda" em Recife-PE.

Abstract

In this dissertation I analyze the impacts imposed on the daily life of residents in two poor neighborhoods in Recife -PE, called "Xuxa" and "Deus os Acuda". These inhabitants were expelled by the government from the area which they occupied in the edges of the Boa Viagem mangroves, because of the construction of the Via Mangue. This road was proposed to solve, according to its creators, problems related to urban mobility , environmental preservation and public housing in the southern area of Recife. In a cultural approach, this qualitative research aims to discuss the strategies used by public managers to justify and facilitate the Via Mangue project, specifically regarding to the expulsion of the inhabitants of these areas, reflecting the tactics of the subjects in the reception of this. The specific objectives are: to analyze how were produced and practiced spaces, as well as sociability in Boa Viagem district, giving special attention to the experience of the residents of the localities "Xuxa" and "Deus nos Acuda"; problematize the discourses of public managers as part of the strategies in the context of relations of social forces, in which the social inclusion and the dignity of the residents of the localities appear as arguments for the implementation of the Via Mangue project; to analyze how the population of "Xuxa" and "Deus nos Acuda" appropriated the city hall project, its tactics and gimmicks in the struggle for recreating spaces and identities. These objectives were discussed in a structure of three consecutive and connected chapters, respectively. To perform the analysis, I used the concept of "space", "place" , "tactic" , "strategy" and "ownership" according to Michel de Certeau , the concept of "identity" according to Stuart Hall and Tomaz Tadeu da Silva. This work can be classified as oral history because its sources are reports of former residents’ memories from "Xuxa" and "Deus nos Acuda". Furthermore, print and electronic journalistic publications were used as sources. Interviews, field observations, photographic analyses and literature searches were performed. The method used was Discourse Analysis. I concluded that the expulsion of the residents from the localities was a process marked by contradictions which did not eliminate, but shifted boundaries of spatial segregation and caused cultural rootlessness and impaired the environmental conditions of those residents. The expelled population, however, did not have a passive attitude towards the strategies of the government, instead, they developed a productive and peremptory attitude in the recreation of their daily life, braking the strategies of the government which resulted differently than originally planned.