IN-PERSON Barcelona. Section B

Abstract

The Western frontier expansion was central to the Brazilian nation-building process and creating a national identity. Like previous monarchical governments, the young republic relied on the foreigner’s gaze to interpret and modernize the country. At the turn of the century, a new spatial and social category came into play, legitimizing political divides and creating new regional separations. With this process, the Brazilian sertão (back lands) becomes more than a climatic definition, more than the opposition to the littoral. The sertão’s backwardness and lack of civilization counterpoint the coastal region’s culture, beauty, and modernity. This centre-periphery relationship is not limited to geographical spaces; it extends to the individuals who inhabit both regions. A relationship that dictates who is allowed within the central space and, more specifically, gives voice to the group able to narrate history, create national identity, and define national heritage. In this presentation, I focus on the specific vision of sertão in defining Brazilian identity and how architecture became a symbol of national heritage in the 1930s, in contrast to the perspective of the historical monuments of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.