Social Memory, Conviviality, and Contemporary Antiracism : Valongo, Pretos Novos, Aflitos, and Saracura

The author analyses actions of newly active social movements that, in the cities of Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo, have been engaged in guiding, disputing and defending social memory politics for territories that have been historically understood as Black and Indigenous: Cais do Valongo and Cemitério dos Pretos Novos (Rio de Janeiro); Liberdade/Aflitos and the region of Saracura (São Paulo). They have been considered as places of memory where the Black and/or Indigenous populations have demanded rights, and are objects of cultural heritage policies and/or disputes with the real estate market, the state and other public and private agents. I study how such demands have developed in recent years, their scope and limits on the political agenda of discussion about the struggle for rights in cities, the antiracist struggle and debates about collective memory and rights. The meanings of the notion of conviviality are also a component of the disputes, testing their potentials for a study of this nature.