De “Deos Guarde” a “Saúde e Fraternidade”: experiências e tensões cotidianas nas ruas de Santos (1883 – 1897)

Abstract

This thesis investigates the tensions and dialogues between the population and public authorities in the application of the Municipal Postures in the city of Santos, the main port in the state of São Paulo, during the turn of the 19th to the 20th century. Permanencies and ruptures are questioned, in a process of constant reinvention of daily practices, in a specific moment of intensification of the port movement and of discussion and establishment of practices of “civility, modernity and progress”. The research was mostly carried out in the Public Archive of the city of Santos/SP, under the custody of the Santos Archive and Memory Foundation (FAMS), incorporating minutes and official letters, in addition to unique documents, fines and Codes of Postures, which constitute a wide range of sources that make it possible to track the troubled daily life of that period. In addition, the Municipal Postures – an instrument that guides this investigation in the understanding of everyday life – become a strategic starting point for understanding times of turmoil and uncertain public policies, as the relationship of these Postures with the city's population can be revealing. The transition from the Imperial Municipal Chambers to the Republican Intendencies raises many questions, mainly in the understanding of the ruling elites. The use of the plural – elites – is justified by the intense political disputes of the period, many compositions and dissolutions of Councils, various groups and multiple ways of understanding the newborn Republic, as well as the expectations of the local civil society such as scholars, lettered people, elites and popular spheres within the city. Therefore, we propose a study of these leading groups using prosopography as an investigative method, understanding how they were organized and how they “understood” (apprehended) the urban space and proposed interventions in the street and to its inhabitants. Intending to go beyond these groups and understanding power in the city as multiple and multidirectional, we seek to investigate other decision-making focuses outside these ruling elites. With this, it was found that there were transnational networks that made changes in the city go through several people who did not formally participate in the local traditional elites: tensions between cork producers and immigrant plotters who acted at the limit of legality (and often breaking it) and that maintained dubious relations with the municipality regarding the application of municipal postures. Thus, issues such as epidemics, disorganized population growth and challenges to the norm and established powers are addressed within these contexts. Finally, this thesis seeks to incorporate all city dwellers, analyzing against the background the documentation in search of possible traces of silencing and concealment, focusing on conflicts that occurred in a movement of “active creating” in the city through confrontations with established powers. The city is seen as a space of conflict, where the street appears as a stage for everyday life, as a space for coexistence and work, for disputes and tensions. In this way, it is possible to apprehend the multiple senses, visions and meanings of experiences on the streets and in the city, some excluded, invisible or even appropriate to hegemonic visions