"O Mundo é diferente da ponte pra cá" : a distinção como chave interpretativa da relação entre Aragarças-GO e Barra do Garças-MT

Abstract

This research, wich has an interdisciplinary nature, is part of the Knowledge and Cultural Expressions from Cerrado (Saberes e Expressões Culturais do Cerrado). Our main purpose is collecting how two neighboring cities, Aragarças (GO) and Barra do Garças (MT), sharing the same historical formation and the same cultural dynamic in which they were constructing power speech that denied and decreasing the other in order to declare itself as superior. Therefore, the study sought to elucidate the facts and events that contributed to an interchange of the symbolic, representative and identity power between them, as well as the elements listed on both sides to affirm their socioeconomic and distinctive status. Also, which symbols, characters and monuments were selected by both communities in the promotion of differentiation, and which representations were more expensive to the rise of their social status. The research’s temporal delimitation envolves the foundaion of the garimpeiro cores in the begining of twentieth century until urban consolidation of both towns, in the 1980s. During this period, the two cities experienced an alternation of symbolic power that granted them the distinction, status and social and cultural prestige, delimiting the importance of the social space of self and other. The theoretical bases for the investigation are multiple, but with a relation to Cultural History, such as the use of the concepts of culture, memory, identity, distinction and representation. The study is supported in a diversity of sources, deserving highlights to the national and regional press newspapers, which reported both cities and/or the Vale do Araguaia region between the decades 1920 to 1990; the writings of local memorialists; and also, the oral sources, by means of interviews and questionaries with the pioneers from two cities. The essay is divided in three chapters: the first one approaches the historical context from the appearance of the two cities, their similarities and transformation that contributed to stir the disputes among them; the second chapter gives visibility to the power structures and the distinctive constructions used by people from Aragarças face the neighbor, Barra do Garças; and the third, tried to understand the mechanisms tha propiciate to the city of Barra do Garças lift a speech to stigmatizate the city of Aragarças, evidencing how both cities took turn in the search of symbolic and representative power, with a view to the distinction and social prestigie.