Banca de QUALIFICAÇÃO: GIOVANNI ROBERTO PROTÁSIO BENTES FILHO

Uma banca de QUALIFICAÇÃO de DOUTORADO foi cadastrada pelo programa.
STUDENT : GIOVANNI ROBERTO PROTÁSIO BENTES FILHO
DATE: 08/11/2021
TIME: 10:00
LOCAL: meet.google.com/gyr-isrx-vgf
TITLE:

Between the river and the sea: Rocas neighborhood and its relationship with other spaces in the city of Natal (1900-1950).

KEY WORDS:

City; Urban; Suburb; Natal; Rocas neighborhood.

PAGES: 152
BIG AREA: Ciências Humanas
AREA: História
SUMMARY:

This thesis aims to investigate the urbanization process of the city of Natal, as well as its suburbanization process, in the first half of the 20th century, having as a privileged object in the analysis the neighborhood of Rocas. From the reading and critique of sources such as newspapers, government reports, laws, decrees, photographs, as well as the historiographical production on the theme of urban history of Natal in the period under review, we realize how some spaces in the city were favored during its process of urbanization/modernization and how the neighborhood of Rocas, in addition to being physically located on the banks of the river and the sea, was also on the margins of that process and, in a certain sense, on the margins of history. The projects, urban plans, street design, legislation regulating spaces and their inspection, which had the sanitary ideology as the spearhead of their actions, had a segregating and excluding character, as they were related to the desires of the elites to guarantee the improvement and modernization of the city, based on technique, rationality, the domain of nature and progress. Rocas was only officially elevated to the category of neighborhood in 1947, through Law No. 251, which divided the city of Natal into eleven neighborhoods, nine of which belonged to the urban area, of which Rocas was a part, and two of them belonged to to the suburban region, the neighborhoods of Quintas and Carrasco. This law was approved during the municipal administration of Sylvio Piza Pedroza (1946-1950). Before that, the identification of the Rocas region, for administrative purposes of the city, was very confusing, as we find in Rocas sources being associated with the spatial categories of “village”, “community”, “suburb”, “suburb” and even even in the neighborhood, as Januário Cicco had done when dealing with Rocas in his “Como se hygienizaria Natal: algumas considerações sobre o seu saneamento” (How to sanitize Natal: some considerations about its sanitation), published in 1920. Rocas was the place of residence for a good part of the working class in the city: fishermen, laundresses, domestic servants, port workers, workers on the Central Railroad of Rio Grande do Norte, small traders, among others. Until the 1930s, the image of Rocas was identified as a place of social marginalization, danger, unhealthy conditions, disorder, poverty and crime. From the 1940s onwards, mainly during the administration of Sylvio Pedroza, the urban imagery about that neighborhood gradually changed, being related to the space of tradition, culture and popular festivities. The young mayor, projected by the city's ruling groups and the press as a modern and progressive man, made changes or “improvements” in the city's urban structure, putting poor neighborhoods in the spotlight in his projects. In view of this, it is also part of our objectives to identify what motivated this change in perspective on the neighborhood of Rocas. Thus, shedding light on a part of the city, the neighborhood of Rocas, which was on the sidelines of the urbanization process in Natal for a good part of the period under examination, we are able to visualize other forms of perception, conception and organization of spaces and social relations in the city; as well as we can better perceive the shuffling of social logics, identifying, for example, the actions of the dominant groups regarding the neighborhood of Rocas and their effects on the daily lives of its residents, even if in a very fragmented way.

BANKING MEMBERS:
Interno - 2277360 - MAGNO FRANCISCO DE JESUS SANTOS
Interno - 1088824 - RAIMUNDO NONATO ARAUJO DA ROCHA
Presidente - 1149437 - RAIMUNDO PEREIRA ALENCAR ARRAIS