Nicolas Marié

Melted gold and national bodies: The hermeneutics of Depth

and the value of history in Brazilian racial politics

In this paper, John Collins examine the transformation of Salvador, Brazil’s Pelourinho
neighbourhood. This place will experience changes in the sense that It will be transformed
into a patrimony center, allowing so, a commodification of resident’s life. Mention that
this neighbourhood has an extensive Iberian baroque architecture which makes this place
of Brasil, unique, historic and emblematic. It is also the first capital, and the former
administrative center of the Portuguese south Atlantic.
The author star to talk about a specific case in this neighbourhood during the rainy season
in 1999, when the marble entranceway of a ruined colonial building of the 18th century
thundered to the ground due to the rain. Once here, intervened the head social worker of
IPAC (responsible for the artistic and patrimony of the state of Bahia). Because of the
damages the inhabitants of the building were going to receive an indenisation but were
forced to leave. He showed that most of the inhabitants affected were not happy with the
procedure of this measure and started to lie and hide some important documents to the
IPAC.
These measures were the firsts steps to allowed to transform this historical center into a
UNESCO tourist and historical center. The author explains more specifically, that one of
the inhabitants of the building, Malaquias, had a discussion with the head social in where
we could guess some aggressivity and anger in his words. This is because he considers
itself a living object of the patrimony. He is aware of the possible manipulation of the
documents describing everyday life and that affects the racial identities, personal
deficiencies and flow of money.
At this point it is important to mention some characteristic about the cultural heritage.
This one, is a processed that starts after a legal file and it is configured as a shared property
of a determinate community. At the international level, UNESCO and ICOMOS can
supervise the associations reginal states etc… But in the last moment, these last ones will
decide the managing of it instead of UNESCO and ICOMOS.
The author argues that until 1990 the residents of Pelourinho’s middle class inhabitants
and Afro-Bahian were not in favour of the psychological grounded models of subjectivity,
as no one could know well itself and the IPAC activities had little impact on their lives.
And most important, that the racial identities (typically differences between black and
white) were not hold to any lineal transmission of culture or genes.
Even if the racial discrimination exists (knowing that there is no one way to be Brazilian),
he tries to understand why this historic location of Salvador is so concern about racial
being, and his history tradition resulting in important politic results.
In Pelourinho, the race, money and history have determined in a big part the mobilisation
of afro-Brazilian politics.
The author tries to talk empathise that either the autocrats of the IPAC and Pelourinho
residents are seeking similar things and in the middle of 1990 decade they started doing
it without adjusting to any popular disposition of the race o historical history that often
people attributes to Brasil.
Brasilian base of nationalism talks about the fact that brazil is a mixed-race nation due to
the racial identities that is more situational than any other country. Therefore, the author
doesn’t totally agree with this statement, but he agrees that it is a part of the constitution
of the modern Brazil. Also mention the interesting opinion of Roberto da matta that
describes Brazil as an extremely hierarchical society.
Nogueira argues that racial prejudice functions in relation to marks when it takes form in
relation to appearance, however when the prejudice can come from just by the ethnic,
then this problem can be an issue of origin. This concept of relationship between marks
and origins is seen in this historic center of Bahia.
The author is against abording the ideological racial changes by the identities, he things
it is better to do it by what Webb Keane calls “semiotic ideologies”. In this way the state
and citizen must understand the production of value around forms of culture and history.
He says that this work of becoming “properly historical subjects” had strong effects on
belonging to a nation in were it was presented as the racial democracy.

Now I will explain some fact and history about this Bahian neighbourhood.
The pre-eminence of Bahia decreased when the Caribbean of Brasil in the XVIII century
started to produce sugar. And the number of inhabitants also decreased after 1763 when
Rio de Janeiro started to be the capital. Around the final century of XIX the owners of
big houses started to leave the neighbourhood to go near to the beach and lived these
houses normally to the family or domestic servants. The district started to be called “city
of women” as generally poor women considered as dishonoured went there in order to try
to earn some money with works as servants. Rich mans also went there to live with
mistresses of Est Europe, in where often, the domestic service was also complemented
with prostitution.
All these facts made that in the XX century this diversified district was composed of
several different identities such as powerful mans, black women, women from Europe,
therefore it has not been an impediment to create a fraternal community. A public
authenticity has been created in the sense that rich men that were laughing at people from
Bahia, started having interracial relations in houses of prostitutions. In the decade of 1980,
residents started creating marginal neighbourhoods inside the collapsing mansions but
keeping their facades. This special and characteristic community later will attract the
UNESCO that will be declared patrimony of Humanity in 1985.
In 1992 IPAC did a reform of a total cost of 100 million, the purpose was to attract new
citizens in order to attract capital to Bahia and take the control of the national policy.
Therefore, they did that with an exhibition of blackness. This reform consisted in a reform
of Pelourinho and celebrations of the African roots. In this case, they adopted the opposite
strategy than did Brasilia. As, in Brasilia, they bet for a modern project, but in this case,
they adopted a reform based on the reconstruction and commercialisation of minorities.
There was a conservative political coalition that was running from 1990 to 2006. Then,
the public culture has changed more rely on social justice. IPAC forced to leave to more
than 5000 people in 20 years it was justified by a supposed objective relied on an
ethnographic study, therefore the personal interactions with the author and the bureaucrats
shows that it is was not totally like that.
The file of IPAC justifying the urban reform plays an ideological role as it completes the
histories of the Brazilians and helps to hide the fact that there are not much inhabitants in
Pelourinho, the authenticity of the historical center is the priority of the state.
“being ourselves for you,” this is a phenomenon that is subject to interest for
anthtropolgistcs. In this case it is a reference to the people that self-consciously perform
the role of popular actors while IPAC is presenting itself as the cultural tradition.
In 1967 the state of Bahia started a new project in order to make the residents of
Pelourinho as representatives as the buildings are and IPAC were creates. IPAC first
started with a study of the prostitution and its families, as during the 70s and 80s Afro
Brazilian working class was targeted to be in this world of prostitution. Once there, the
stereotyped interactions between IPAC and the residents started, at the same time, these
residents were being moved, or going to jail, dying but they were receiving indenisations.
In order to increase this amount of indenisation, the residents manipulated the number of
people living in the buildings by inviting more familiars into their houses. After this
strategy was discovered and no more possible, they started by employed multiple
identities.
But, this attempt to control and managed the population has contrary effects. In the
process of restoring the old Bahia the remembers of these residents of Bahia stayed
attached to all this population that has moved, remembering the immorality of old
decades. The state has employed one of the main tropes of the racial democracy, by
moving away the black by a progressive whitening. IPAC also intensified the links to
heritage of the residents through these studies and indenisations.
The effort of IPAC to shift from an “assistentialism”, having representors of the bahian
culture healthier and more moral but moving away the blackness made that only a 15%
of resident’s families stayed in Pelourinho in 1992. But the ones that managed to stay are
those that use IPAC techniques against theme, by keeping the dossiers… It is surprising
the fact that this Afro Brazilian resistors without any apparently education background
had managed to seize social science.
The author argues that the reforms made during the 1990 help to create an explosion of
the number of stories and story details even if these ones already existed. This kind of
stories are related to skeletons, treasures… Most of these stories and myths wants to
capture the fact the state has appropriated their way to be and to enhance working class.
In 1999 IPAC restored the Praça da Se, the emblematic place where was created the first
cathedral of Brazil. During this restoration they found out approximately 100 human
skeletons.
Here started a conflict between the narratives invented by the politicians and the police
during the official inauguration and between the working class, that rejected the
possibility that the bodies were of Portuguese nobles and affirm that were slave’s bodies
robed by IPAC. This work class residents of Pelourinho started to explain to the visitors
their stories.
This process of indenisation was in fact as well a process of conversion of homes and
habits into this community. The possessions of the nation that were confiscated by the
state were then sold in the international market; therefore, we can say that the culture was
conceived as a resource in which the state was warning a monetary compensation. The
state was steeling to the residents their individual rights of the residents to transform the
patrimony in money and to divide it instead it was thinking only about the collective
property. In the example of before with Malaquias, he was proclaiming his right to receive
money as he feels himself as a form of patrimony that attracts money and because of the
knowledge that IPAC has of him.
The histories about the bones were shifting during the time, it has some versions that it
was politic victims then that it was African slaves. So, in 1999 this bahians work class
people stood at their nation’s symbolic origin and declared themselves descendants of the
slaves on the basis of race even if that contradicts what the literature of history of Brazil
says. A generalize reckoning on descent from slaves is basic to the arguments about the
race mixture, most Brazilians claim a brown identity even it does not come from Africa.
The interpreters hired by the city hall started to approve the presence of slaves in 1999
even if they were payed to correct this as the rumoured identity had finally become a
sanctioned reality. This is partly because in Brazil the race has long been approached as
an issue of appearance rather than biology (like in United States).
The Brazil's Black Movement has worked intensively to foment a racial consciousness
that might take appearance into account as a mark of descent, and thus corporate identity
of race elsewhere in the world. In Brazil, racial identification is usually contested,
negotiated, and situational, this fact has made to the author to conclude that in Salvador's
Pelourinho of the 1990s, a heritage-based protection and resuscitation of objects has
generated a popular concern.
The details of the production of history are critical to alterations in Brazilian racial
consciousness in a region long configured as Brazil's African heart. IPAC has tried to
clean the Afro Brazilian population that was configured as unruly, immoral and tinged
with prostitution.
In the other hand, the different means practiced by the residents of knowing and
representing selves, as well as the shared stories and cultural practices are based on a
fiction of content for the worldwide patrimony programs. In general, we believe that
culture is something characteristic of modern nations and societies, therefore, a racial
substance that endures and is passed down might also begin to appear natural.

Finally, to conclude I would like to mention some other things.

The author claims that racialized truths, which are at base claims about what people are
"really" like are interpreted as known through a careful lecture of surface signs such as
the colour of the skin, the hair, the size of the skull, the dress, the musical taste...
This population made possible not only to produce value through the work in cane fields,
shop floors ... but also around the representations of everyday habits and the manage of
people's practices and identities. It appears that the black bahians that are attracting money
to Pelourinho do a lot of effort to support the truth and the falsity, the authenticity and the
belonging and expulsion from the polity.
This paper suggests the importance of the democratic imperative to the postcolonial Latin
American republics as it help to configure the ground of political belonging and the
individual collective identities in a new way.
The attempts done by the citizens to explain history, on its majority invented, it is mainly
based on cultural repertoires that describe multiples forms of exploitation or domination
such as de sexual inequality
It is a fact that historians cannot always known the truth, Pelourinho case is a clear
example as in here, external actors had appropriated the culture with a discrete medium
as a tool for economic empowerment.
During the 20th century, peoples and states came to know and represent themselves
through them and their history has become a true.
To finish to say that IPAC took away homes and works in order to turn into some of them
in patrimony and others in exiles.