Os homens da ordem e a ordem dos homens: ordenamento urbano e policiamento em Belo Horizonte

Abstract

The construction of Belo Horizonte between 1895 and 1897 is included in a historical context of social and economic political institutions transformations, in the state of Minas Gerais. Decide about the relocation of the capital, choose the appropriate place and forge construction project motivated the elites involved in this process to want a capital that toasting the arrival of civilization and rationality, modernization and progress of Minas Gerais. This project, however, would also need to grapple with a conflict and discontinuity’s reality. The urban center became an arena of a multiple relations web of power and property, political and administrative decisions and social segregation. Immigrants and poor migrants crowded through the streets of the metropolis trying to establish their selves, but were defeated by the government. Sanitary doctors, bureaucrats, engineers and police would act in that direction. In this work we have looked at the problematic construction of the Belo Horizonte’s city, as well as about the early years of their habitation, focusing in particular on the complicated web of social relations established therein from the conflict of interests and social groups. We have studied the work of engineers, sanitarians and police who, acting from new assumptions of science of that time, will struggle with the resistance of disadvantaged groups to whom the history would reserve, sometimes the silence, other times the theater lights.