Sensibilidades e representações urbanas na transferência da capital de Minas Gerais

Abstract

This study analyzes the urban representations generated as a consequence of the rupture experienced at the time of the transfer of the capital of Minas Gerais, in the last decade of the 19th century. The construction of a modern city, Belo Horizonte, as the new Capital of Minas Gerais, managed to encapsulate the newly-installed brand of Republican power in Brazil, replacing the old Ouro Preto, seat of Government and indisputable symbol of colonial domain and the administrationof the recently-deposed monarchy. The contemporaneous urban images evident in political discourse, in chronicles, newspapers, sundry records and even literary writings are expressive of a new urban sensibility emerging from the process of the Capital's transference. Apparent are feelings and perceptions that oscillate between nostalgia, enchantment and fear caused by the simultaneous actions of the abandonment of one capital city and the invention of another. Many of these images have been incorporated into the urban imagination and still contribute today to the formulations of the identity of both cities - Ouro Preto and Belo Horizonte.