Da patrimonialização global ao patrimônio-territorial amazônico: a singularidade da Feira do Ver-o-Peso em Belém do Pará

Abstract

The object of this research is the Ver-o-Peso Fair, located in the city of Belém do Pará, as a popularly activated territorial heritage. That is, it intends to understand the fair as a territory where sociocultural practices and popular memorials, ancestral knowledge and doings, maintained by subjects historically subalternized by the processes of territorial formation in Latin America, resist; and to investigate what risks this heritage-territory faces in the face of urbanization, especially the processes of global patrimonialization. The following objectives are proposed: to identify and analyze which elements and practices of Amazonian culture give notoriety to the Ver-o-Peso Fair, as a popularly activated territorial heritage facing risks in the face of the global patrimonialization process; to identify who are the subjects that activate and how the popular activation of the territorial heritage of the Ver-o-Peso Fair is constituted; and to identify which risks the territorial heritage faces in the face of global patrimonialization. Thus, we start from the dialectical relationship between the urban economy, global patrimonialization and activated territorial heritage, to investigate the fair from the problem-questions: Which elements and practices of the Amazonian culture consecrate the Ver-o-Peso Fair as a popularly activated territorial heritage, facing risks in the face of the global patrimonialization process? And more specific questions, such as: Who are the subjects that activate the territorial heritage of the Ver-o-Peso Fair and resist the processes of global patrimonialization? How is the popular activation of the territorial heritage of the Ver-o-Peso Fair, faced with the process of global patrimonialization? What are the risks faced by the popular cultural elements and practices that make Feira do Ver-o-Peso a territorial heritage in face of global patrimonialization? The geographical approach to the research is guided by the historical-dialectical materialist method, starting from the inter-scalar dimension of the universal – particular – singular movement of contemporary urbanization, in order to understand how the mechanisms of global patrimonialization are particularized in the Central Area of Belém and land on a social fact represented by a territory appropriated secularly by sociocultural relations. In this way, the cultural dimension of the territory is privileged, whose thesis is based on the perspective of heritage utopisms, as a theoretical-methodological proposal focused on the Latin American reality, seeking to understand the spatial contradictions and social vulnerabilities generated by the universal Eurocentric logic of global urbanization/patrimonialization particularized in the Ver-o-Peso Fair. And at the same time, capture elements and values of spatial order that activate and highlight the Fair as a territory guardian of memories and ancestral social and cultural practices. The research found that heritage utopianisms are already underway at the fair, ratifying the thesis that: the Ver-o-Peso fair is an Amazonian heritage-territory popularly activated and fundamental for the maintenance of ancestral life, from the metropolis. It is represented by the singularities of handicrafts, herbs and medicinal remedies, typical spices such as Maniva and Tucupi, and Afro-religious elements and practices. However, it is impacted by contemporary urbanization mechanisms, such as: urban requalification projects and heritage policies aimed at the tourist market, which trigger risks of re-signification and loss of identity. Thus, the thesis brings a contribution to the debate of the contradictions linked to heritage, to rethink new proposals for preservation, from the existential perspective of the subjects that compose it.