São Luís of Maranhão (Brazil)

portrait of a forgotten heritage

Abstract

São Luís, capital of the State of Maranhão, Magnetic Island, City of poets, Brazilian Athens, Cultural Heritage of Humanity by UNESCO since 1997, lives the neglect of safeguarding its collection nowadays. In 2018, already a bachelor in architecture and urbanism, appearing as a student of the Department of Civil Engineering, for the Engineering course, I carried out a research as an author (graduated) and voluntary scholarship holder of higher education, through the Institutional Program of Scientific Initiation Scholarships – PIBIC (Brazilian higher education scholarship program). This was a follow-up study to a PIBIC grant, entitled “pathologies and treatments for listed buildings in the Historic Center of São Luís - MA” – PIBIC/IFMA/DCC (2017/2018), which allowed, among others, a large collection photo of the original research and the one that followed this one. Namely, the second is entitled “the twenty years of the title of Cultural Heritage by UNESCO in São Luís: politics and culture”, which was intended to be published as a book, but without institutional possibilities to continue with the project, the same was interrupted. The idea of photography takes on several aspects in research that deal with subjects, mainly, related to culture and social expressions, which was idealized with research projects at the Federal Institute of Maranhão, Campus São Luís, neighborhood of the Monte Castelo, and made it possible to analyze the state of buildings listed by the National Historical and Artistic Heritage Institute – IPHAN, in the first study, followed by the political and social influence of the process of safeguarding the material heritage of the city.

It hurts to realize the emptiness that surrounds the collection area, known in different parts, sometimes as the Historic Center, sometimes as Reviver (referring to another project for the delimitation of the historic preservation area in the city by the Municipal and State Government). The photograph shows the charm and nostalgia of the streets of São Luís; the majesty of colonial architecture and the richness of its mansions and tiles. It makes it possible to demonstrate the beauty that this area takes on and the risk of losing a memory that pulsates in the paths taken here. Between 2020 and 2022, as an independent researcher, in order to compose a dissertation project for the Postgraduate Master's Program in History, at the State University of Maranhão - UEMA, in line with memory, I sought to expand this research. In the last part, from 2021, as an assistant professor at the Faculty of Architecture and Urbanism – FAU/UEMA, in the discipline of Interventions in Historic Buildings, this return has been more than fruitful, in order to train politicized professionals with an understanding of wealth, denial and the need to preserve this monument of humanity.