A República dos Patos ou a construção da cidade republicana no sertão das Geraes : representação, memórias e conflitos. Cidade de Patos, 1889-1933

Abstract

This research has the intention to discuss the construction of the republican city in the backwoods of Minas Gerais, taking as object of reflection the city of Patos, between 1889 and 1933. The choice of the object is due, first, to a gap in reflection about the cities in the period in question, although the intellectual production on the theme has striking gains, little is thought about the process that led to the establishment of towns, notably the mining interior. Now the city of Patos, today Patos de Minas, has a unique urban core that is a side dialogues with major projects of urbanization of the time, as the Paris of Haussmann Baron and the Pereira Passos’ Rio de Janeiro, for other hand also reflects the Lusitanian way to people. The urban core that originated the city is thus cut in two. A part, consisting north, behind the Church of Santo Antônio de Pádua, it was like that "seeded" as enshrined expression of Sérgio Buarque de Holanda, with an intricate network of alleys, narrow streets and alleys; while to the south, the core corresponds to the urban model of "civilized city" of the nineteenth century, with wide streets and avenues, arranged on the board format. Despite the peculiarity that urban conformation, the survey revealed that printed on it, as a palimpsest, the clash between two rival political groups: the Presbyterians, led by Family Dias Maciel and Catholics, led by Borges family. At the same time, research has shown that if the city was space and object of the conflict between the two groups, was also to other social subjects: the working classes who have gone "off" of the dispute between "Borges and Maciéis". Thus, in the process, be inferred at least "three cities of Patos": on which they lived and "worked" the Maciéis in apparent political interference; that they lived in the Borges, and from which they arose as opposed to Maciéis; and finally, the city where the poor lived, blacks and underprivileged, plagued by syphilis, alcoholism and poverty, in the suburbs of the Várzea and the "Beira da Lagoa".