Memory of the Social Movements in Subúrbio Ferroviário, Salvador, Brazil,

Transcription

1 emory of the Social ovements in Subúrbio Ferroviário, Salvador, Brazil, Proposal Salvador, capital city of the state of Bahia, is the third largest Brazilian town, with 2.4 million inhabitants.1 Home of an important Black population (82%), whose cultural contribution has become in the last decades a key to the increasing performance of tourism as an economic activity, Salvador is however shaped as a space trespassed by strong social and racial discrepancies. Those are reflected, for instance, in the high proportion of houses built in nonconformity to the urban planning and to the city ordinances, as well as a loose, albeit very effective, residential segregation, by which the poorest families and the overwhelming majority of the Black population are pushed into the peripheral neighbourhoods, which lack basic public services (education, health care, sanitation, transportation), and are strongly criminalised by local mass media and by the very State police apparatus. The population boom in Salvador has begun by the 1940s and got to its higher absolute net immigration figures by the 1970s, following a governmental modernization and industrialization plan based on oil as well as on an emerging civil construction sector (where the local capital previously accumulated by the export agriculture was invested in). The promise of job opportunities and higher living standards brought into the growing town families mainly from the rural areas within Bahia. Yet the newcomers experienced a great harsh to settle in Salvador the start of industrial modernization entailed the first urban land invasions (as the authorities would name them) or occupations (as the social movements would prefer). Subúrbio Ferroviário [rail road suburbs], one of the 17 city's administrative divisions, holds a population of 262 thousand in a 41.5 km² territory along All Saints Bay. Dotted by middle class summer houses until the 1940s, the place begun to be settled by newcomers in search of jobs, either in regular and lawful ways (in habitation programmes sponsored by the State) or in unauthorised, improvised houses usually built in areas rejected by the real estate agencies, like flooded riversides, mangroves, marshes and hillsides. Along the 1970s, the struggle for habitation has brought about an important, decentralised, multifaceted, highly participative social movement, which later diversified to reach issues related to family, childhood and youth, gender relations, violence, access to public services, labour market and job training, and racial discrimination. 1 All population figures as of the last official census, in

2 The history of social movements in Subúrbio Ferroviário in the 1970s belongs to the prehistory of the so-called new social movements in Brazil, which spread widely in the following decade. Although this issue has been substantially well studied since then, the researches have tended to focus on the broader context of its appearance, as well as in its greater political implications. Even case study monographs privileged nation-wide movements, or those which had a more stable structure and could count on larger financial resources movements not seldom linked to the Catholic church or to the leftist political parties created or revived in the last years of the military dictatorship ( ). Researches centered on lowly structured movements during the military dictatorship have been scanty. oreover, scholarship has tended to isolate the social movement under consideration from the broader social agency on the criterion of its aims, disregarding the fact that many an activist did take part in a number of distinctly targeted movements, or in the same kind of movement in different neighbourhoods. Besides, many facilities were shared by, say, associations of mothers and groups of popular theatre. To think of the social movements as a heterogeneous but articulated set, in the context of a region that experiences a shared situation of urban exclusion, as this project intends to, has not been a task regularly carried on by Academy. The proposed project fits in the main preoccupations of SEPHIS, especially in regard to the issue of equity. The making of the social movements in Subúrbio Ferroviário was conditioned by a situation of residential, symbolic and economic marginalization, inherent to the highly hierarchic development model fostered by State agencies, the reproduction of which was sustained by the continuous and daily imposition of distinctions of race, class origin and gender, as well as by the refuse or failure of the Government to ensure this subaltern population an effective parity of rights in relation to the middle and higher classes which lived in central neighbourhoods and monopolised the fruits of modernization and industrialization. On the other hand, the struggle against this situation of structural marginalization in Subúrbio Ferroviário fashioned an activism related to prizing of the Black racial identity, to the affirmation of the local cultural expression, to the forging of neighbourhood ties and to the solidarity among women, whose doubly subordinate position (in the wider society and within their own households) was matched by their intense participation in and by their role of articulation between - a range of distinct social movements. This project intends to contribute to the visibility of theses movements and to the perception of their relevance to the local history as well as to the present challenges faced by the population which inhabits Subúrbio Ferroviário, especially the younger generations. It aims at fostering the renewal of the social movements, either in terms of sensitizing potential new activists, either in terms of reformulating perceptions, strategies and perspectives informed by 2

3 an assessment of the path tracked since then. This objective becomes even more crucial in face of new development plans sponsored by governmental agencies, which propose the incorporation of Subúrbio Ferroviário coastline into a greater economic exploration model encompassing the whole of All Saints Bay, based upon nautical tourism. On the reasoning of qualifying and embellishing the beaches, this model threatens to expel the local population, whose presence is regarded as uncongenial with the sensibilities of the imagined tourists (White, European, highborn), given the symbolical association of the current dwellers with dirty, ugliness and criminality. In order to preserve the memory of these social movements' emergence and agency from 1970 to 1980, we intend to recur to unstructured interviews and life histories with activists recognized as such, who lived in Subúrbio Ferroviário during the 1970s, leaders as well as simple participants in the social movements, beside persons who did not live but acted in the area within diverse organisations (especially Catholic church sectors and political parties). We consider that the production of oral sources, in this case, may allow a more comprehensive approach of processes insufficiently studied up to date, as well as an emphasis in the daily practice of social activism, rather than in the official history of the most wellstructured and successful movements. Beyond that, the oral sources and the preservation of memory grant the subjects a greater prominence, since, as they are permitted to express their views about the past, they surmount the role of mere objects of the researchers and get to mean their own political agency in face of history. A number of these activists has been already identified and contacted by members of the research team in previous occasions, be it in the context of academic research, university extension projects or social activism. Beginning with this group, and by the proceeding know as snowball sampling, we intend to reach a set of activists (about 50 or 60) representative of the plurality and the reach of the social movements in the said period. The focus on the daily practice of the movements and their members will be reflected in the axes of investigation which will guide the interviews, as for example: migration and settling; neighbourhood, family and motherhood; labour, transportation e urban itineraries; race, culture and discrimination; criminality, police violence and relation with the several instances of the State; marginalization, identity and cultural expression; organisation, mobilisation and articulation among others that surely will come up from the contact with the interviewed. These interviews will compose a documentation fund to be deposited in a local university (contacts have been made with History Department of Federal University of Recôncavo Baiano 3

4 [Universidade Federal do Recôncavo Baiano], but other institutions are not discarded). This fund, because of the methodological characteristics described above, will represent an important research resource not only to scholars interested in history of the social movements, but also to those interested in the daily life of the populations made subaltern by means of the recent process of modernization and industrialization in the state of Bahia. Another feature of this project will be the register of daily scenes from public spaces of the several neighbourhoods of Subúrbio Ferroviário, in order to build small videos, incorporating to the present scenes excerpts from testimony of the past struggles fought over those spaces. To make this material accessible to a wide audience, contacts have been initiated with the public television of the state of Bahia. Small thematic radio programmes with excerpts from the interviews are also intended. In this case, the propagation will occur through the many existing neighbourhood loudspeaker services. An important feature of this project is its intention to articulate, along its course, distinct generations of researchers-dwellers-activists. The research will be coordinated by a former resident of Subúrbio Ferroviário, whose path toward the University and the Social Sciences was intertwined with her participation in more than one social movement operating in the area in the early 1990s. The field research will be conducted by two students: a graduate History student and a senior undergraduate Education student, both of whom have awaken to the issues of gender and race, respectively, as they entered social movements in the late 1990s. Finally, the project aims at incorporating, as field assistants, four young students preparing for the university admission tests, who envisage possibilities of social transformation mediated by academic knowledge and perspectives open thereby, and whose tracks in social activism are at the very beginning. This is another way by which this project intends to foster the continuity of a profound, plural and lively, albeit recent, activist tradition in Subúrbio Ferroviário. 4

5 Budget The project was planned to run along eight ms, from the identification of the persons to be interviewed, passing through the interviews, the categorization, the making of small radio and video pieces, to the creating of the documentation fund and the preparation of an internet site. The planned phases are described below: interviewed Identification of the persons to be Interviews Categorization of the interviews aking of small radio programmes aking of small video programmes programmes Dissemination of video and radio Preparation of an internet site Creation of a documentation fund The costs involved are shown bellow (in US dollars): Item # s Value Total General coordinator 1 8 * * Field researchers ,340.0 Field assistants Bus transportation ,

6 tickets 0 Consumption material Digital voice recorders Small video programmes 1-1, ,500.0 Small radio programmes Building of internet site Hosting of internet site 1 - * * Total 0 9,950.0 * institution counterpart 6

7 Relationship / partnership between the research team and the social movements All members of the research team have been activists in social movements operating in Subúrbio Ferroviário for some time. Cristiane Santos Souza, who will coordinate the research, has entered the social movements by the way of secondary students organisations, in From 1993 onwards, she joined a group of popular theatre in Subúrbio Ferroviário, and later the Catholic Church Base Communities (although not a Catholic herself), where she was responsible for articulating a range of social movements and political parties and promoting seminars and debates in the area. In the same period she worked as a teacher for the neighbourhood association at Vale do Paraguari, and participated in the efforts to strengthen Periperi Educational Centre, a communal school, and assure its economic viability. These experiences have directed her towards the University and the Social Sciences. Once an undergraduate student, she joined the students organisations at Institute and University levels, and broadened her interests in the social movements in search of an articulation among different peripheral regions, she was one of the founders of the organisation named Sowing Art and Culture, a cultural expression initiative linking Subúrbio Ferroviário and ussurunga (another densely populated, marginalized area in the opposite side of the city). Since she obtained her.a. degree in Anthropology (with a dissertation on one of the poorest shanty towns in Subúrbio Ferroviário), in 2002, she has been working in state universities. In 2006, she won a grant from Carlos Chagas Foundation to develop a one-year-long project called Violence and masculinity knowledge and research experiences in the making of new perspectives of social action and insertion among the youth of Subúrbio Ferroviário. Ediane Lopes, one of the field researchers, has entered social activism also as a secondary student. The failed attempts to found a school level student representation has resulted in the formation of a group of popular theatre. As an undergraduate student she participated in students organisations and joined a leftist political party. As the course approached its end, she was attracted to the issues of gender and was accepted in an important research group at Bahia Federal University, the Group of Interdisciplinary Studies on Woman. This was matched by her insertion in the popular feminist movement in Salvador, and her activism in support of the female participants of the organized struggle for habitation. In 2006 she participated, as an intern of the Violence and masculinity project, what marked a return to Subúrbio Ferroviário (she lived there as a child), and the possibility to articulate gender with other important issues such as race, class, violence, youth, and access to higher education. She is now a.a. degree student in Social History. 7

8 Haroldo Barbosa, the second field researcher, has entered in the late 1990s the Catholic Church Base Communities. There he could approach issues related to poverty, class and race discrimination and experience ways of popular and local organisation. He participated as a student in one of the Catholic church initiatives, a preparatory course for the admission tests run by public universities, the Quilombo Educational Cooperative. During the Education undergraduate course he kept in contact with these organisations, and later became Pedagogical coordinator of the same preparatory course, now run almost entirely by former students. His participation as an intern in the Violence and masculinity project directed him to the theme of his graduation monograph, now under preparation (a comparison among some educational and cultural initiatives in Subúrbio Ferroviário). The four field assistants will be selected among the youngsters who participated in the Violence and masculinity project. During the last year they had debates and workshops on the main themes and related issues such as gender relations, race, class, family and generations, among others. They were also introduced to basic notions of social research, conducted interviews, built their own genealogical trees, draw maps, took photographs, collected and analysed newspaper articles related to Subúrbio Ferroviário, and presented their results to the local public in two seminars and two newspaper editions. ost of them are now preparing for university admission tests, and eager to proceed with their newly inaugurated careers as social activists and investigators. They founded a group to foster the debate of these themes, and are currently preparing a small book to be distributed in the secondary schools of the area, which will be published by the Centre for Studies and Social Action, one of those successful new social movements in Salvador, backed by Jesuits. The project proposed by way of this application will count on a number of partners, either social movements or universities. Among the social movements, the main partner is the Social Action of the Parish of Saint Blas of Plataforma (which hosted the Violence and masculinity project, and backs the Quilombo Educational Cooperative ). This organisation will cede the facilities where the research team will meet regularly. Other movements have expressed their interest in contribute to the research by contacting activists and introducing the research team to them. Among the Universities, Bahia State University will provide works hours of the general coordinator; History Department of Federal University of Recôncavo da Bahia has agreed to host the document fund generated by the project, as well as the internet site; the Group for Research and Studies on Youth, Identity, Citizenship and Culture of the Catholic University of Salvador will supervise the conduct of the work and also provide academic exchange about its proceedings. 8

9 Dissemination Plan This project intends to make its results accessible to a wide audience by: 1 Showing of 5 small video programmes (30 seconds each) in the public television of state of Bahia, along 1 m, 5 times a day. 2 Transmission of 10 small radio programmes (5 minutes each) in the several existing neighbourhood loudspeaker services in Subúrbio Ferroviário, along 1 m (the frequency and number of transmissions will be accorded in an individual case basis). 3 Internet site containing downloadable files of the small videos and radio programmes, beyond small texts about the social movements in Subúrbio Ferroviário during the 1970s, and a virtual space of open exchanges between social movements participants, Sub[urbio Ferroviário dwellers and the general public (forum). researchers. 4 Creation of a document fund in a local university, open to all interested 5 Distribution of DVD copies containing files of the small video and radio programmes to the interviewed (there will be no copyright charge, so this material can circulate unrestrained by the nets build by the very social movements). 9

10 Contact Cristiane Santos Souza Address Rua Doutor João Pondé, 448, ed. Soninha, ap. 102, Barra Salvador Bahia Brazil Telephone numbers (mon-wed) (thu-fri) (cell phone) addresses 10