Ecos do Mulungu: desterritorialização dos lugares, memória e arte como forma de resistência

Abstract

This work addresses the deterritorialization of the former neighborhood of Mulungu, in Paulo Afonso, Bahia, arising from the social, environmental, and urban impacts of the construction of the São Francisco Hydroelectric Company (Chesf) complex. Its objective is to recover local memory within the context of the neighborhood’s (dis)development through urban art. The research is based on both personal and collective perspectives, retrieving memories of urban protagonists who experienced displacement, precarious living conditions, and resistance. The analysis explores concepts such as unsustainable (dis)development, territoriality, and collective memory, linking them to the unequal consolidation of the city and the erasure of popular narratives. The study highlights how urbanization, marked by socio-spatial segregation and the renaming of the neighborhood, contributed to the invisibility of community identity. Themethodology combined documentary and bibliographic research with the collection of testimonies through surveys. As a strategy for reclaiming memory, the work proposes an artistic circuit of lambe-lambe posters placed in significant points of the city, understanding urban art as a democratic tool of resistance, capable of provoking reflection and giving visibility to silenced histories. Echoes of Mulungu seeks to value unofficial accounts, reaffirm the importance of collective memory, and emphasize art as a means of safeguarding the history of a territory shaped by struggle and collective perseverance.