From Sete de Setembro to Dois de Julho:

cabocla land, life and memory in the center of Salvador

Abstract

At the beginning of the 20th century, symbols of republican patriotism were raised to monuments, reforming-stamping urban centers, as did the Avenida Sete de Setembro in Salvador, in its opening and toponymy. But what did these onslaughts of ruling power try to omit? The arrival of modernity in Brazilian cities pushed the black population to the margins of [monumentalized-spectacularized] spaces now destined for the elites. However, such subjects found themselves impelled either to make their onw quilombo community on the margins of such monuments, or to profane them with their own daily rituals. Both movements found in the ruins – physical and symbolic – the conditions of possibility to [re]produce these modes of existence in the city. In order to understand how these processes deal with the current onslaughts of hegemonic powers [public and private], we invoke Dois de Julho, a neighborhood that touches Avenida Sete and honors, in its toponymy, the date commemorating the independence of Brazil in Bahia. We seek, in the territory, the cabocla presence of those people who acted on the front lines of the war of independence, but above all those who fight every day for the right to remain in the place with which they constituted life and sustenance.