Arquiteturas sufragadas e memórias construídas: uma arqueologia da memória da Remanso submersa-BA

Abstract

The waters that swallowed the city marked a new dynamics in the memory of the citizens of old Remanso. The constructed matter succumbed, but the memories of it created new symbolic dimensions. Due to the impoundment of the São Francisco River to form the present Lake Sobradinho, the city of Remanso, located in the north of the state of Bahia, was transferred to a new location in the 1970s. Great part of the old town still rests under the waters of the lake; however, the memories related to it are a big part of the identity of the waterside population. The present work aims to understand the dynamics in the elaboration of the new memories related to the constructed matter of old sunken Remanso in Lake Sobradinho. The research was based on the analysis of oral narratives from people who experienced the city’s transition from "old" to “new”. There’s also as source material photographic and cartographic documentation in order to show counterpoints between the actual city and the different ones that exist in the collective imagination and individual memories. Thus, based on the results of this research, it’s possible to point out that the memories of the city’s population were constructed based on different temporal bases, taking into account the period of living in the old city, the neighborhood in which they resided and the different attributed values to the different places built. The first basis concerns the memories of the city before the news of the change, plus the appreciation of the physical space and daily life in the old city; the second basis is about the memories during the time of reception of the news, added to the origin of the idea of "low value" attributed to the old city and the adaptation to the new city; finally, the last basis consists of the current impressions of the change, plus the "nostalgic value" relating to the old Remanso. It was also a product of this research the event “Afternoon of Nostalgia: memories of the old Remanso-BA”, which promoted a meeting of the former residents in the Antônio Coelho Rural Museum so as to remember, through the museum's collection and cultural acts, the city that submerged.