A festa que jamais terminou: a memória e o silêncio na reconstrução da identidade paulistana durante os festejos comemorativos do IV centenário do aniversário da cidade de São Paulo (1947-1955)

Abstract

The organization of commemorative festivities demonstrates how social groups are creative agents of historical narratives – preserving memory, silencing, or forgetting – that reframe their cultural identity. Permeated by feelings and emotions, these agents transform the representations of their places into new forms of spatial experiences, as occurred in São Paulo between the years 1947 to 1955. Resentful of the political exclusion caused by the 1930 Revolution - the elite supported the Center of Industries of the State of São Paulo (CIESP) and the political group of the Social Progressive Party (PSP) – they idealized the commemorations of the IV Centenary of the São Paulo capital in the light of a new identity to represent the entire region. For almost half a decade, the leadership position, which promoted the celebrations, was fought over between the São Paulo elite and other groups – dissident politicians and university intellectuals – who saw in the event a form of capital victories – whether political or economic – to your social group. Through the speeches of these different groups, a historiographic scenario is formed. The performance of the Bandeirantes – a symbol of São Paulo's identity – will be the subject of fierce debates between different representatives of the groups that disputed the authorship of the narratives about the commemorative festivities. From the tropological methodology, suggested in Hayden White's Metahistory (1992), it is observed how the interpretative rivalries in the historiographical discourse are consequently polarized in different social spaces – due to the divergent political and ideological visions – in which historians find themselves inserted in the society. Therefore, when evaluating the cartographic concepts of Ilha-Brasil – debated throughout the Querela Bandeirante between the Portuguese historian Jaime Cortesão and the São Paulo historian Sérgio Buarque de Holanda - and the Aspiral sculpture – built in Ibirapuera Park by Oscar Niemeyer – we perceive a redefinition of São Paulo's identity, a regional apotheosis, during the commemorative festivities of the IV Centenary of the capital. The commemorations were intended to distance and forget the historiographical narratives of São Paulo in the 1920s, silencing São Paulo’s regional identity that once only sought its declaration through participation in the formation of the Brazilian territory.