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Conditions of belonging: life, historical preservation and tourism development in the making of Pelourinho-Maciel, Salvador da Bahia, 1965-1985

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Title	Conditions of belonging: life, historical preservation and tourism development in the making of Pelourinho-Maciel, Salvador da Bahia, 1965-1985
Author	Smith, Micaela Alicia
Author email	micaelas@usc.edu;micaelas@usc.edu
Degree	Doctor of Philosophy
Document type	Dissertation
Degree program	American Studies and Ethnicity
School	College of Letters, Arts And Sciences
Date defended/completed	2012-08-02
Date submitted	2012-08-06
Date approved	2012-08-06
Restricted until	2012-08-06
Date published	2012-08-06
Advisor (committee chair)	Gilmore, Ruth Wilson
Advisor (committee member)	Gomez-Barris, Macarena Lloyd, David Sanchez, George
Abstract	Conditions of Belonging focuses on the development of Pelourinho-Maciel from 1965-1985. It argues that the making of Pelourinho-Maciel, and the particular rationale market development discourse produced by the city, state, and international elite, relied on the symbolic presence of the longtime residents in the beginning just as much as it required their structured absence in the end. ❧ Pelourinho-Maciel is the colonial center of the old city of Salvador da Bahia, Brazil, and consists of the largest and most important collection of baroque and rococo architecture in the Americas. As the oldest Brazilian city, and one that for two hundred and fourteen years was the seat of the Portuguese empire (1549-1763), Pelourinho-Maciel is synonymous with times of colonial splendor and the labor of enslaved Africans. The campaign to restore Pelourinho-Maciel for tourism development began in earnest during the late 1960s, as local urban developers and state managers began the extensive process of petitioning the United Nations Educational, Science, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) to make Pelourinho-Maciel an UNESCO World Heritage Site. Yet setting the conditions and priorities for how Pelourinho-Maciel should be restored was no easy task. While UNESCO recommendations mandated that the original community benefit from tourism development, the military regime (1964-1985) had radically different ideas of how economic development should proceed. During the regime, absolute security and development was enforced—meaning absence of conflict and economic growth at any cost. Economic growth was maintained through an orientation toward profit rather than welfare. As a result, the highly censored press contested these recommendations by describing UNESCO officials as foreigners intervening with no sense of the local issues. The “local issues,” decried the critics, were the increasing numbers of Black prostitutes and thieves living within the abandoned colonial mansions. Yet as many sociological surveys contested, prostitution was already in decline, based on a policy of residents moving out “of their own accord”. ❧ Since the 1930s, Pelourinho-Maciel had become isolated and abandoned by the local state as the elite continued to move out of the colonial neighborhood in search of housing with more modern amenities. A growing number of poor Afro-Brazilians took up residence as the neighborhood proceeded to decline, subdividing the colonial mansions into small partitioned rooms. Local residents worked in the city center as well as in the nearby areas as shoemakers, book-binders, laundry washers, street vendors, domestics, laundresses, seamstresses, hair stylists (Espinheira 1971, 57). Thirteen percent of the Maciel population had lived in the area for more than twenty years and in the same building. 27.5% in the same category had lived there for eight to twenty years (Espinheira 1988, 9). These numbers demonstrate the sense of permanency residents felt living in their homes and of the duration of their relationship as renters to their landlords. Throughout the 1970s, a debate ensued among journalists, UNESCO officials and sociologists as to whether, and if so, how, living and working conditions should be improved for the local poor as a result of the restoration process. ❧ The history of Pelourinho-Maciel as a history of the neighborhood’s long-time residents provides us a rich site to explore the ideology of development as its practices and logics were being imagined and implemented across and within multiple scales throughout the 1970s. The constantly shifting relationships between local, state, and international technicians demonstrates that the development of Pelourinho-Maciel was a multiscalar project with a particular focus on fixing one place: to make a colonial “living museum” and produce both the material and symbolic narratives to define Pelourinho-Maciel as a “living” historical monument (Azevedo 1994; Romo 2010). A focus on the residents, and how they were described and discussed in the debates surrounding their status as valid residents of Pelourinho-Maciel, brings to the fore issues of race, class, gender, and sexuality in the history of Pelourinho-Maciel’s urban renewal and state development strategies. Yet the logic of development in the making of Pelourinho-Maciel does not follow one continuous single narrative. Rather, the logic of development, as employed by the various city, state, and international actors, relied on multiple narratives, sometimes overlapping and sometimes contradictory.
Keyword	Afro-Brazil; Pelourinho; Salvador da Bahia; history; 20th century; Latin American development; urban renewal; UNESCO world heritage preservation
Language	English
Part of collection	University of Southern California dissertations and theses
Publisher (of the original version)	University of Southern California
Place of publication (of the original version)	Los Angeles, California
Publisher (of the digital version)	University of Southern California. Libraries
Provenance	Electronically uploaded by the author
Type	texts
Legacy record ID	usctheses-m
Contributing entity	University of Southern California
Rights	Smith, Micaela Alicia
Access conditions	The author retains rights to his/her dissertation, thesis or other graduate work according to U.S. copyright law. Electronic access is being provided by the USC Libraries in agreement with the author, as the original true and official version of the work, but does not grant the reader permission to use the work if the desired use is covered by copyright. It is the author, as rights holder, who must provide use permission if such use is covered by copyright. The original signature page accompanying the original submission of the work to the USC Libraries is retained by the USC Libraries and a copy of it may be obtained by authorized requesters contacting the repository e-mail address given.
Repository name	University of Southern California Digital Library
Repository address	USC Digital Library, University of Southern California, University Park Campus MC 7002, 106 University Village, Los Angeles, California 90089-7002, USA
Repository email	cisadmin@usc.edu
Archival file	uscthesesreloadpub_Volume4/etd-SmithMicae-1127.pdf

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Title	Page 1
Contributing entity	University of Southern California
Full text	! ! !! CONDITIONS(OF(BELONGING:( ( LIFE,(HISTORICAL(PRESERVATION(AND(TOURISM(DEVELOPMENT(IN(THE(MAKING(OF(( ( PELOURINHO8MACIEL,(SALVADOR(DA(BAHIA,(BRAZIL,(196581985( !!! by! ! Micaela!Alicia!Smith! ! !! ! !!!! A!Dissertation!Presented!to!the! FACULTY!OF!THE!USC!GRADUATE!SCHOOL! UNIVERSITY!OF!SOUTHERN!CALIFORNIA! In!Partial!Fulfillment!of!the! Requirements!for!the!Degree! DOCTOR!OF!PHILOSOPHY! (AMERICAN!STUDIES!AND!ETHNICITY)! ! August!2012! !! Copyright!2012!! ! ! ! ! Micaela!Alicia!Smith