O processo de construção do Patrimônio Cultural no Amazonas

Abstract

The urban transformations that happened in the city of Manaus, capital of Amazonas state from the 1970s on - after the Manaus Free Trade Zone was created generating the advent of an era of material progress at any cost - have installed a model of modern city that, even if it had not completely developed, has generated an undemocratic urban space, stage of growing contradictions and exclusions. The establishment of this model has had, among its positive aspects, the raise of a consciousness of historical preservation among citizens of Amazonas state. From 1980 to 2000, such consciousness has followed and supported the process of construction of a cultural heritage in the state. It has also helped to structure a conscience of citizenship among different social and urban contexts in the state. The observation of institutional, governmental and non-governmental initiatives of heritage preservation in Manaus has been used here as a base for a reflection about the complementary fashion of such parallel actions, that if at one hand are normally politically opposed, at the other hand converge towards a larger visibility of the heritage. In Amazonas state it has not constituted itself in an isolated fashion, but within a historical perspective as part of a larger process, national and global, that has been focused here under a panoramic approach. Its development in the specific context of the state in northern Brazil that has the strongest identification with the geography where it is inserted - the Amazon rainforest - provides such heritage with particular regional cultural characteristics that result from a growing appropriation of local knowledge and the consecration of nature as part of cultural heritage.