Experiências modernas na Vitória de Santo Antão-PE: máquinas, equipamentos, transformações urbanas e (re) elaboração das práticas cotidianas (1920-1950).

Abstract

This paper takes as problem through a theoretical and methodological approach, based on evidence found in the covered trails, the city of Vitória de Santo Antão, between 1920 and 1950, which is located in the region of Zona da Mata of the state of Pernambuco. Our goal in this study was to explore the daily routine and the changes that occurred in this daily routine caused by the impact of some modern inputs that were allocated in its urban perimeter, namely, the railroad train, the telegraph, the automobile, the cinema, the electric light, the telephone and the airplane. Machines and equipment that were considered as redeemers for ridding the city of backwardness, of insalubrity and of incivility, making it advance like the modern cities of the time, such as Paris, London and some cities in the south. With the arrival of these mentioned inputs, the analyzed sources of the time indicated that there were significant changes, however, they did not prevent the so-called "metropolis in the interior region" from developing in its own area with other dirty, dark, stinking, insalubrious and rural metropolis, not as modern as desired by part of their inhabitants. In order to weave this history we used newspapers, chronicles, poems, magazines, memories of vitorienses that lived in the period investigated, photographies and official documents, which after passing through our scrutiny have become sources and, based on the words of Roger Chartier, they constitute "representations", which revealed the reality of the other's existence in everyday life. Onto those sources we employed the method of reading "evidential paradigm" of Carlo Ginzburg, a method that permeates throughout this study.