AN AFFECTIVE MAP
IN NEIGHBORHOODS
THE BELENZINHO
AND
MOOCA
Written in english by: Katia Camargo Gavranich
SESC SÃO PAULO – CENTER OF RESEARCH AND FORMATION
SÃO PAULO
2016
“People love the maps because they lie, they prevent access to the truth of the people. Generously extended on the table, good-humored, they map the smile of a world that is not of this world. ”
Wislawa Szymborska
Resume
This work aims to rescue the cultural identity of the Croatian-Dalmatian immigration, the 20s of last century, through affective mapping of the territory inhabited, the São Paulo districts of Belenzinho and Moóca. With this, we intend to study the dynamics of the city, under the gaze of a large and important community in São Paulo, whose history remains completely unknown.
Immigrants from different regions of Croatia began to arrive in Brazil in the late nineteenth century, compelled by various economic crises that culminated in the First World War. At that time, Croatia was part of the Austro-Hungarian empire, which was divided after the war, giving rise to what is called “The First Yugoslavia,” formed by the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes. For this reason, we do not have in Brazil no record of the arrival of Croats until the late twentieth century. They were registered as Yugoslavs, Austrians, Hungarians or even Italian, depending on their region of origin. (PUH, 2016)
Family Passport, 1925.
Fonte: CAMARGO, 2014
Even today it is difficult to quantify precisely, the number of Croats and Croatian descendants of existing in Brazil. It is estimated that between Croats and their descendants, this number is greater than 45,000, considering the two most significant moments of the Croatian diaspora to Brazil, first in the ’20s, the second time after 1945.
For this work, we propose the study of the relations of the first diaspora Croatian with the territory in which they settled, the districts of Belenzinho and Moóca, in order to rescue the cultural identity of this very specific group and allow reflection on the dynamics the cities and their population.
The story begins here approach more precisely in the years 1924-1926, when more and more concentrated wave of outbound migrants from the villages of Blato and Vela Luka on the island of Korcula, arrived in Brazil. This island is located in the coastal region further south of Croatia. This territory was part of various empires and countries throughout its history, but as a region has always been known as Dalmatia, that since the times of the Illyrians, about 1000 years BC For this reason, the inhabitants of the region call themselves Dalmatians even in today’s Croatia. As immigration that this work is well concentrated in two villages of Dalmatia, we will call these immigrants Dalmatian or Croatian Dalmatians.
Dalmacija
Fonte: Wikipedia, 2016
Dalmatians came again, driven by economic crises generated at the end of the First World War and due to the presence in those villages the parasite insect vines known for Filoxsera that for nearly half a century destroyed the grape plantations worldwide. This plague devastated the economy of the small island of Korcula, forcing its inhabitants to seek better living conditions in other countries (DORO, 1985).
Precisely in that period, Brazil introduced a new immigration policy, to strengthen the hand of replacing slave labor and people inside the country, promoting in 1924, an intense campaign for the systematic migration of European and Japanese.
In Europe, this Brazilian campaign was promoted by the company Lloyd Regius Dutch. According to a pamphlet published by the branch to its branch in Zagreb, capital of Croatia, could emigrate to Brazil every family that had minimally three members, none of which have over fifty years of age. (TALAN, 1998)
Lloyd’s outreach to travel to Brazil.
Fonte: DORO,1985.
The emigrants were generally deceived by emissaries of Lloyd. They said the stakeholders come to Brazil to work on coffee plantations in the state of São Paulo and soon have their own farms.
The leaflet distributed in the villages, joining the reporting successful few immigrants who had returned from “America” as they called the United States, aroused great interest among the population. Thus, only the island of Korcula, hundreds of families, about 300 enlisted for emigration to Brazil. (TALAN, 1998)
Each of the departures of these families respected an emotional ritual described by Ivo Šišević, in the article “Kako su nasi isljenici putovali u Ameriku” (As our emigrants traveled to America): “Farewells before departure abroad were very moving. That it was for the “new world” visited the neighbors house, and according to ancient custom, saying goodbye to everyone. On the eve of departure, the people in the house preparing dinner called ‘pir’ … The next day, when the steam outlet, the whole village gathered to say goodbye. These were painful goodbyes. (TALAN, 1998).
Emigrants were saying goodbye, especially their mothers, fathers and girlfriends. Debulhavam into tears. As the steam was moving away from the dock, waving white scarves, waving to the emigrants. This scene was accompanied by singing and crying, the calls from relatives and citizens present there. By the time the steam began to take direction, the siren of the ship whistled three times and emigrants sent their last nods. similar rite was when the inhabitants of Blato and Vela Luka left, only in this case, were not only a few individuals, but hundreds of people. The consequences of this emigration were felt for decades. ” (TALAN, 1998)
Prigradica’s departure, 1925.
Fonte: Blatski Fizuli Ustanova i Kulture, autor: desconhecido
The trauma caused by this journey tells us the epic written by Ivan Dragojevic Boško “odlazak u Brazilj LUCANA i Blaćana” (The departure of Vela Luka inhabitants and Blato to Brazil). It is a poem consisting of 130 stanzas, which describes in detail the course of the journey, until the installation of families in coffee-growing farms and their subsequent flight to the city of São Paulo. (TALAN, 1998)
According to historian Norma Marinovic Doro (1987), this epic was written by Sir Ivan, passed orally from farm to farm (immigrants sang his verse while working in the fields) and copied in so-called “farm notebooks,” where immigrants were the accounting (always negative) of their shopping in the sale of the owner of the farm.
It is believed that even spread throughout the state, immigrants kept intense exchange of correspondence through the railways.
Map of the State Railways of São Paulo, 1930.
Fonte: Blog Estações Ferroviárias, 2016
The poems of Mr. Dragojevic can be considered a valuable historical archive and detailed how was the Croatian-Dalmatian immigration in Brazil. This epic was deposited the collective memory of Korčula emigrants. This document is now scanned at the Museum of Immigration in Sao Paulo.
In many reports of immigrants are often present sadness and disappointment: not found on farms anything they expected. There were no houses to accommodate families, only shacks or old slave quarters. The work on the coffee harvest was hard and the little they received every month was for the warehouse, owned by the owner of the farm, which made the settlement regime, in fact a semi-slavery. (DORO, 1987).
Another important report is Mr. Gabriel Santilli, in a letter to his granddaughter in 1979: “Ficamos na Imigração na rua Visconde de Parnaíba, 24, para no dia seguinte irmos pra fazenda de trem…eu moso de 15 anos…Corri depressa, como na guerra. Para todos tinha lugar no trem, menos para mim e minha família, então, entramos no trem vazio, no lugar dos bois…o trem viajou 12 horas sem parar. Chegamos na fazenda Canana, me lembro bem. Era hora da janta, jantemo bem é verdade. Na hora do descanso, cada família com seus filho, escuite bem, foram para uma casa grande e no chão bastante capim seco. Tudus juntos mesmo como boiada”
Coffee farm.
Fonte: Acervo do Museu do café, 1930.
Those who did not support fled to the capital in search of decent work and better living conditions. There is no record of any immigrant stay on the farms after the coffee crisis in 1929. All came to São Paulo, settling in slums in the industrial districts of Mooca and Belenzinho, which operated textile and tobacco industries. Thus, eventually rebuild, geographically, the old villages of origin. Entire streets were occupied by Croatian Dalmatians of Blato and Vela Luka, known in time as “Yugoslavs” or “bichos d’água”, the latter a pejorative name that the local referred to the immigrants from Eastern Europe, who crossed seas and spoke strange and incomprehensible languages. (TALAN, 1998)
Moóca’s District.
Fonte: site da Prefeitura Municipal de São Paulo, 2016
Getting to São Paulo, many of them had little or no expertise, even though most literate. They were of peasant stock and had to adapt to the harsh life of the beginning of industrialization in São Paulo. They worked about 12 hours a day, men, women and children, those from 6 years old. Why have small and delicate hands, the children were destined to lighter work, but no less strenuous. For example, cigarette packaging in the former Sudan industry.
The industries which concentrated a large number of Dalmatians were Cotonifício Crespi, LANIFICIO Fileppo, Matarazzo Industries, Santista Mill, Textile Industry Gasparian and Coffee select. Today, the buildings of these industries have given way to other activities. For example, the Cotonifício Crespi, was transformed into supermarket, but its facade, the style of the industries of the 40’s, has been preserved. The selected coffee building has recently become a major center of telemarketing and the building of Industries Gasparian has been renovated to house a large private university. The old building of Santista mill, renovated, now houses the regional headquarters of the SESC São Paulo.
Moinho Santista Industry, were worked
Fonte: site da Bunge
In those districts of the old suburbs east of the city, then he gave a real reunion between Dalmatians families until then distributed to various farms in the countryside of the state and of course the reestablishment of social relationships experienced in their Dalmatians home villages Blato and Vela Luka. (DORO, 1987)
A “village Dalmatian” in São Paulo formed around its central institutions: the work (in the weavings and construction), the two Catholic churches (the St. Paul the Apostle and St. Joseph of Bethlehem) and the cemetery (the fourth stop). In this “village” neighbors Dalmatians tilled their cultural identity without fanfare through the language (the dialect spoken on the island of Korcula), gastronomy, music, folk dancing and singing in the streets by the religious parties (Páscoa e Natal).
“In the 30s and 40s, the Belenzinho district could be considered a Croatian-Dalmatian district, such the presence of these immigrants, gathered in up to three local associations. Highlight the existence in the neighborhood at that time the Sport Club Dalmatia, carnival blocks formed only by community youth and the creation of groups of folk dances, a choir and a typical musical ensemble strings. As you see, own gatherings of earlier generations of immigrants, destined to disappear with time, when grandchildren and great-grandchildren, as characters in a new local culture, did not feel safe on the strange land that grandparents and great-grandparents stumbled one day ahead. (CAMARGO, pág 23, 2014)
Rua Irmã Úrsula, where they lived.
Autor: Gregório Bacic,
But as represented culturally foreign body in a room that coexisted Italian migrants, Portuguese and Spanish, tried to communicate with these groups in the only language that dominated beyond Dalmatian: Italian, proximity arising from Croatia to Italy and the various dominations of their country of origin by Romans and Venetians. This identification with the Italians practically diluted their brands in those neighborhoods where the Italians predominated. (DORO, 1987)
This reunification behavior and the proximity to the Italian community explained the fact that the communities of a diaspora or immigration would tend to maintain liaison with other groups that invoke similar identity. This bond can come in different forms, through families, religious communities, socio-political and economic ties or the shared memory of a disaster or trauma suffered by members of the diaspora or their ancestors. (BRUNEU, 2010).
In the process of gradual absorption of Brazilian cultural identity, Dalmatians immigrants arrived to create a football club, Sport Dalmatian Club and carnival blocks as record pictures of the 30s and 40s.
Esporte Clube Dalmácia, 1937, how they played.
Fonte: CAMARGO, 2014
Turma d’Amor, 1942, how they danced.
Fonte: CAMARGO, 2014
Affective map can be a new form of engagement of the population in relation to the history of the city. It aims to encourage conservation initiatives paulistanos goods by small groups that can mobilize people or groups in support of a cause. As the Polish poet Szymborska Wyslava (2013), “the maps lie”, speak of “a world that is not of this world.” Already affective mapping of this work aims to reveal the occupation at a given moment by a large and unknown group of immigrants from two neighboring villages located on an island far from Dalmatia, the coastal region of Croatia. The cause in question is made visible as specific as particular group, arrived in the 1920s directly to the Paulista coffee plantations and then moved to textile, in the neighborhoods of Mooca and Belenzinho in the early industrialization of the city of Sao Paulo.
From 1930 until the present day, these neighborhoods have undergone various transformations. Large factories and workers from villages to large real estate projects. What makes these changes produced in immigrant communities and its surroundings?
One of the possibilities to investigate the contemporary social and cultural dynamics to traces of other times is to create integration of places where the various memories intersect and intertwine.
According Lewgoy (1997), paths and circuits appear as reflection and research tools to account for the multiple appropriations differential of urban space, where seats and city roads only make sense if referred to specific cultural practices of groups such as the leisure and religion. After all sociabilities not spring from the void, but arise in areas already rooted in the city’s memory.
A curious fact is that walking around the city you can see that the most recent immigrants, ended up occupying the same areas that immigrants of the early twentieth century. That is, we can study the past and still see their reflections in the present. At that time, immigrants kept in touch with each other despite being spread across the interior of the coffee farms of São Paulo. When the first immigrants began to flee the farms due to poor living conditions, then settled near the textile industries were emerging.
In this paper I propose to map the presence of Croatian Dalmatians in the neighborhoods of Mooca and Belenzinho, in order to uncover aspects of cultural diversity in these neighborhoods and learn more about the cultural identity of these immigrants. It will be possible to build an affective cartography with visits to the main reference points for the Croatian-Dalmatian community.
AFFECTIVE MAP OF DALMATIANS
The route to be traveled by minibus or van with participants guided by guide provides visits:
- Immigration Museum, at Rua Visconde de Parnaiba, for knowledge of its permanent collection, where there are reports, documents, photographs and pieces that refer to the time of immigration.
- Area of ancient textile industries Moóca, through the streets of the Hippodrome and the rails and early Paes de Barros Avenue. There is the unique architectural ensemble of LANIFICIO Crespi, who worked in many Dalmatians, today transformed into a large supermarket chain
- Surrounding the Taquari Street, area where he lived most Dalmatians and where there were large warehouses immigrants; today, there, the process of gentrification, there are high-rise condominiums, from the most popular to the average standard.
- Largo Ubirajara, one of the points of known meeting of the Dalmatian community where, in bars that do not exist, the first immigrants were after work to drink and talk.
- Largo Sao Jose do Belem, where the St. Joseph Church of Bethlehem, in which they gave the highest number of marriages, baptisms and masses of the seventh day of the Dalmatian community. Beside it is the school where many Dalmatians studied, the College Amadeu Amaral, which still preserves the 30s architecture.
- Rua Cidade de São Simão, cul de sac, which still preserves a few houses built in joint effort by Dalmatians and where they resided.
- Rua Tobias Barreto, where the St. Paul the Apostle Church, building dating from the end of 30 years (that appears motivated by the presence in the Dalmatian area). Is there a statue of the Virgin of Blato, Santa Vicenca, donated by Dalmatian immigrants. This church is celebrated every year on April 28 the day of Santa Vicenca, with the presence of members of the Croatian-Dalmatian community
- Cemetery 4th Parade. Where they are buried about 90% of Dalmatians immigrants. The ratio of Dalmatians with death is a cultural identity trait peculiar. To date, visit cemeteries in search of names of immigrants relatives around the world is their habit. When a descendant visit the village of Blato, also sites are keen to show you the graves of relatives who were. In the 40, 50 and 60 was still possible to find people’s homes, photos of relatives in coffins and processions, always accompanied by a band.
- SESC Belenzinho, the old building Santista Mill, where worked many Dalmatians immigrants. One of them used to say that one side of the street if working-hard to earn a living and that the rest would just across the street (at the cemetery). The visit to the SESC.
- Sociedade Amigos da Dalmácia, cultural association with building built in joint effort by Dalmatians, founded in 1959. There, a visit to a permanent exhibition of photos, documents and books and film projection on the Dalmatian immigration, may include tasting tidbits Croatians.
Affective Map of Dalmatians.
Fonte: Google Maps, 2016
This work provides numerous developments, including the elaboration of a map of the region, comparing the addresses of the cultural association Friends Society Dalmatian 60s with current address; recording testimonials from current residents of memories of former residents and how the district is today.
In addition to this mapping of the territory of the Dalmatians, is underway to scan the entire document collection on the Croatian-Dalmatian immigration for future available on the Dalmatian Friends Society website. Also provided are permanent and traveling exhibitions for increased circulation of this collection. That is, there is much work ahead …
REFERÊNCIAS BIBLIOGRÁFICAS
BRUNEAU, Michel. Diasporas, transnacional spaces and communities, in Diaspora and Transnacionalism, Concepts Theories and Methods. IMISCOE Research. Amsterdam University Press 2010.
CAMARGO, Katia Gavranich. Croácia – Cozinha e Memória Dálmata, Editora Escrituras, São Paulo, 2014.
CC BY-AS 3. Mapa da Croácia, com destaque para a Dalmácia, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=130798
DORO, Norma Marinovic. A Imigração Iugoslava no Brasil (tese de doutorado), Universidade de São Paulo, 1987.
ESTAÇÕES FERROVIÁRIAS DO BRASIL: disponível em: http://www.estacoesferroviarias.com.br/ramais/efs-tronco.jpg
LEWGOY. Bernardo José Guilherme Magnani & Lillian de Lucca Torres (org.). Na metrópole: textos de antropologia urbana. São Paulo, DUSP/FAPESP,1996, 319p. Rev. Antropol. vol.40 n.2 São Paulo 1997. Disponível em http://www.scielo.br/scielo.php?pid=S0034-77011997000200009&script=sci_arttext&tlng=es
MAPA AFETIVO DOS DÁLMATAS. Google Maps, disponível em: https://www.google.com/maps/d/edit?mid=1SpQ6xAJEFLjdpgP-o2VakQ6a6y0
MUSEU DO CAFÉ: disponível em http://www.museudocafe.org.br/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/colheita-do-caf–theodor-preising-dc-1930–acervo-museu-do-caf-.jpg
PREFEITURA MUNICIPAL DE SÃO PAULO: disponível em: http://www.prefeitura.sp.gov.br/cidade/secretarias/subprefeituras/upload/Moóca/imagens/mapa_sub_Moóca.jpg
PUH, Milan, A Croacia no Brasil – Histórias de uma Imigração. Crotia Sacra Paulistana, 2015.
SZYMBORSKA Wislawa, in Provocações, 19/11/2013, disponível em https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YnC0a7aCff4.
TALAN, Nikica Hrvatska/Brazil (Ikulturno-pvijesne veze) Croácia/Brasil (relações culturais), edição bilíngue, Most/The Bridge, Zagreb, 1998.