Alongside the railroad line: black territory and the place of the white in the urban occupation of Teofilio Otoni in the mid-twentieth century

Abstract

This paper aims to analyze the formation of urban spaces in Teófilo Otoni in the 1950s and 1960s, featuring the territories appropriated by the local elite as opposed to the community of a largely black hand labor that has established itself over the Bahia and Minas Railway borderline. By the appropriation of black territory category, this study search to visualize the construction of relations of solidarity, fighting and resistance, as well as the strategies of teófilo-otonense elite used for emptying and fragmentation of black consciousness. By the highlighting of the myth of German immigration as a tool to enhance the power of local hegemonic groups, the conduct of this study aims to present as consequences of this conflict the debate on the absence of demonstrations against the closure of the railway in 1966.