Tecendo memórias e vivências: relatos sobre a cidade de Aroeiras-PB (1970-1990).

Abstract

The town of Aroeiras, in the state of Paraíba, from 1970 to 1990, underwent a significant process of urban change. The town‘s spaces and everyday life were gradually reconfigured in different ways. Pondering over such aspects, this work proposes an analysis of the reception of such urban reformations and the various impressions made on the locals. Thus, we believe that those changes have ended up redefining some aspects of urban life without necessarily replacing that small town‘s many long-established customs, rural practices and usual pace. Based on an analysis of some sources, we prioritize some reflections upon how a few locals‘ memories picture specific material urban changes, some experiences they had then, and some nuances of a small town. In order to understand the dynamics of the town, highlighting its material and structural changes, as well as the latter‘s impact on urban living, memory is an important locus for comprehending small-town life experiences and, at the same time, making different views of urban life visible. We bring those narratives about Aroeiras to light as a means to understand social and cultural practices, that is to say, we seek to prioritize various ways of experiencing and living such an urban space, those actions that define the specificities of a historical process as it is registered in the locals‘ minds. The narratives elaborated from each eyewitness‘ viewpoint, concerning the spatial reformations they saw, experienced and gave meaning to — taking into account the fact that urban life has its daily routine somehow impacted when the town they live in is being reformed —, make things meaningful and elaborate discourses of relevance regarding what is being implanted. Thus, we use oral history as a research technique for we give a high priority to how changes in the urban structure have been perceived and interpreted by those who lived in the town by then. So as to make such aims real, we carried out thematic interviews with people who lived either in Aroeiras or in the nearby countryside (or who had houses in both) by the time we focus on here. Those subjects, while sharing their personal experiences, provide us with the threads to sew this piece of writing. Those individuals also produce the social and cultural context they dwell in. Their narrated experiences are valuable memoirs by people who, through their own practices, constitute the town where they live, too.