History, memory and argumentative tactics in urban land conflicts: Trapicheiros and Horto, Rio de Janeiro
Whether in the countryside or in the city, land tenure in Brazil is marked not only by huge inequality but also by widespread cadastral irregularity. Long-established settlements may suddenly face threats of removal, either through legal or extralegal means. The fight to stay must rely on several pr...
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| Format: | article |
| Status: | Published version |
| Publication Date: | 2024 |
| Country: | Brasil |
| Institution: | Universidade Federal de Pernambuco (UFPE) |
| Repository: | Revista Rural & Urbano |
| Language: | Portuguese |
| OAI Identifier: | oai:oai.periodicos.ufpe.br:article/262081 |
| Online Access: | https://periodicos.ufpe.br/revistas/ruralurbano/article/view/262081 |
| Access Level: | Open access |
| Keyword: | conflitos fundiários regularização fundiária metodoloiga história oral memória land conflicts land tenure regularization methodology oral history memory |
| Summary: | Whether in the countryside or in the city, land tenure in Brazil is marked not only by huge inequality but also by widespread cadastral irregularity. Long-established settlements may suddenly face threats of removal, either through legal or extralegal means. The fight to stay must rely on several professionals, including the historian, who chronicles the evolution of the settlement and sometimes even tracks down the real estate deeds for land tenure regularization. This paper addresses a) some methodological issues about historical research on ongoing land conflicts and b) the tensions that arise from the historian’s work with memory and the discursive tactics employed by the settlements and their adversaries. To flesh out such issues, I examine two urban land conflicts in Rio de Janeiro: Trapicheiros, a small slum; and Horto, one of the city's most well-known and publicized land conflicts due to its size and insertion within the Botanical Garden. We conclude that the historian’s empathetic approach to memory tends to be less effective than the critical incorporation of memory in dense historical reports. |
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