The Politics of Memory is a study of the processes of participative democracy in Ouro Preto, a Brazilian town where colonial architecture and narratives of nationalism converge unexpectedly. While its tangible cultural heritage most evidently manifests the colonial period of its economic acme, the town became a symbol of colonial independence and nationalism – typified in the heroic figure of Tiradentes. Official heritage narratives emphasize national independence, largely obscuring the diverse histories of the people who helped build and lived in Ouro Preto throughout its different historical periods.
One of the book's greatest values is its diligent ethnographic approach to such complex and multidimensional issues as inequality and social and political polarization. The author quickly disabuses the reader of an easy gloss on Ouro Preto's complex historical legacies and shows that, despite the intention of the ‘editors of history’, for many Ouropretanos the historic centre is not a material representation of a heroic national past but a space of socio-economic segregation. Indeed, the very materiality of these baroque buildings awakes memories of a colonial past in Ouro Preto's present realities.
For many of its residents, Ouro Preto is a city of façades, alluding to a stark contrast between a set of conditions: the houses’ preserved frontages and their renovated or otherwise changed interiors; the town's affluent touristic centre and its impoverished periphery; and the official heritage narratives extolling the virtues of national heroism and unofficial ones that speak of enduring privileges and prejudices. This perception of ‘uninterrupted inequality’ is, for many Ouropretanos, an experience of deep-seated, structural inequalities that are rooted in the town's colonial past but which persist and are even reinforced in and through the central place that heritage occupies in Ouro Preto. These working-class residents often describe their experience of sharp distinctions by affirming each socio-economic group's discrete spatial position in the town: ‘their own places’ (‘cada um na sua’); ‘finding your place’ (‘achar o seu lugar’).
The author reflects on these ethnographic findings and suggests that ‘in Ouro Preto, one puzzling relationship is that of geographical proximity and social distance’ (p. 64). ‘Together but not mixed’, the combination of cultural inclusion with social and racial exclusion, has been a well-explored theme by social scientists focusing on Brazilian society. Interconnected networks of unequal relationships forged in close vicinity, and the dynamics of intimidation, co-optation and silent conflicts these often entail – as in the case of Ouro Preto – are often analysed through the lens of prioritizing cordiality and bending legal codes, and hence tied to the vast literature on ‘clientelism’ and ‘the Brazilian way’ (‘jeitinho’). But de Souza Santos’ ethnography goes beyond the notion of the ‘cordial man’ – one who places the values of family and friendship ties above those of the republic.
By bringing into the centre of her analysis such notions as ‘social responsibility’ and ‘reciprocity’, discussing their implications in the complex and tense dynamics of being close but not mixing, the author offers new insights into this important and long-standing debate on Brazilian political culture while diversifying and expanding it. ‘Manda quem pode, obedece quem tem juízo’ (‘those who command do so because they can; those who obey do so because they are sensible’) is a key phrase which runs throughout the book, and not arbitrarily, as it offers a great vantage point from which the author explores power relations as they manifest through acts of moral reciprocity in everyday life.
A central question, explored in-depth in the second half of the book, is how to ensure effective grassroots participation in contexts of deep-seated inequality. In other words, how can Ouro Preto prevent participation in local politics from becoming another one of its façades? Much like Black history – confined to the slave labour in the musty and feared mines outside of the city – residents of the periphery today are largely excluded from the lustrous heritage life of Ouro Preto and from the grassroots politics around it. While the centre depends on a workforce from the invisibilized periphery, its cultural and political life is not equally accessible to all Ouropretanos. From university-owned baroque buildings housing elite students to participative political spaces that fail to represent local diversity, many residents transit Ouro Preto but do not equally dwell in it. Based on their exclusionary urban experience, ‘quality of life’ is linked more to infrastructural development than cultural heritage preservation.
In a place where living conditions for a big part of the population are extremely precarious, and where the availability of public investments is scarce and has to be fiercely disputed, the preservation of cultural heritage is not simply an item on the municipal agenda but inserts itself in the competition for limited resources. It thus ultimately amounts to a choice related to residents’ understanding of a dignified life. If heritage is to be of any significance at all, the author argues, it has to become locally valuable; that is, diverse, useful and future-oriented. And this implies that the end goal of participation (in this case, heritage preservation) should also be questionable for grassroots politics to be really inclusive and an instrument towards the improvement of local lives.
Andreza Aruska de Souza Santos’ first monograph is a rich and sophisticated ethnography of the politics of memory in Ouro Preto written in an easy, flowing style. Drawing on diverse sources and bodies of literature – from heritage studies and political anthropology to in-depth interviews and ethnographic notes based on participant observation to literature and historical archives – this book is of great interest not only to anthropologists, heritage and urban studies specialists, but also to anyone interested in issues of participative democracy, grassroots politics and inequality in contemporary Brazil.
