Exhibition at USP Highlights Impacts of Constructions from the Military Dictatorship Era
More than 20 thousand people lost their land and homes with the construction of the Tucuruí Hydroelectric Plant, in Pará, which began in 1974. Another 3 thousand people were expropriated due to the construction of the Itaipu Hydroelectric Plant, in Paraná, opened in 1984. The collapse of the Paulo de Frontin Viaduct, in Rio de Janeiro, in 1971, caused 26 deaths. This is some of the information presented in the exhibition Landscape and Power: Constructions of Brazil in the Dictatorship , on display at USP’s MariAntonia Center until June 30, which addresses the spatial transformations that occurred in Brazil during the military dictatorship (1964-1985).
Based on a joint effort by curators Magaly Pulhez, Paula Dedecca, Victor Próspero, João Fiammenghi and José Lira, the exhibition contributes to keeping the fight for memory, truth and justice alive, this time from an architectural and urban planning point of view, also encouraging the formulation of reparation and memory policies. “We have a very immediate reference to the dictatorship as a period of repression of political and civil rights, of violence, torture and persecution, but, from the point of view of the spatial expression of policies, the research is very early”, explains Magaly Pulhez, architect and curator of the exhibition, to Jornal da USP . “Research on landscape transformations and their impacts is still being created, and little is said about them being a violent process. Spatial expansion was a direct consequence of the authoritarian doctrines advocated during the regime. Despite representing a context of modernization of the country, it was an absolutely authoritarian and conservative modernization, based on the exploitation of labor and the expropriation of land and natural resources. Studying this period involves thinking about all the impacts generated during it”, she adds.
Through photographs, films, drawings, slides, magazines, advertisements, maps, reports and technical documents, the visitor is guided through the processes of transformation of the Brazilian landscape and its consequences that persist to this day, often ignored under the pretext of modernization and progress. The buildings on display, some begun before the dictatorship, others completed only after its end, were used by the military as propaganda for the regime with speeches such as “we are growing”, “finally, Brazil is great” and “the Amazon is gone” — in the sense that development would finally be reaching this region, mistakenly considered empty by many, including those in power, according to Magaly. “The mentality of expanding development and connecting Brazilian regions led to very intense exploitation, both of natural resources and labor forces. These major infrastructure works were closely connected to a discourse of expanding the economic circuit and national security, and are an important portrait of what was indoctrinated into the regime,” he says.
Works such as the Transamazônica Highway, the Itaipu and Tucuruí hydroelectric plants, avenues, roads and roads such as Minhocão, in São Paulo, and Perimetral, in Rio de Janeiro, the São Paulo Metro works and the Rio-Niterói Bridge are just some of the dozens of works carried out during the military dictatorship that changed the national dynamics. Despite being very emblematic of the time, these works are not treated as icons in the exhibition, which sought to draw attention to other aspects and consequences of the regime. “There is a very significant connection between this developmental expansion and the transformation of space as a whole, the countryside and the city. These are processes that must be thought of in association, because they had a lot of influence on each other”, reinforces the architect.
The exhibition reiterates that, despite having been painted as a period of great technological and infrastructure advances, it is still “an advance that takes place in a way disconnected from the reality of the relationship between the industry and its workers, in the sense that workers remain demoted and disqualified. In the case of civil construction, technological advancement is made possible by lower wages and union repression”, explains the architect. In texts that accompany the exhibition’s photographs and documents, these processes are explained in greater depth, divided into five main axes, inseparable from each other.
Urbanization, planning, circulation
In one of the axes of the exhibition, entitled Urbanization, Planning, Circulation , the exhibition explains the process of population growth, which resulted in the compaction of central areas and growth in peripheral occupation. “The process of valuing urban land through construction, as was the case with the Metro lines in São Paulo, especially the north-south line, means that the most impoverished population — mostly the working class — seeks other territories to be occupied. Entire neighborhoods were built by the workers themselves, who had to bear the costs of producing their own homes because they did not have access to the BNH (National Housing Bank) housing program,” says Magaly.
The axis also deals with integrated development master plans, explaining the consolidation of consultancy engineering companies in the country — responsible for developing various projects and services, such as the company Hidroservice, which worked on the construction of the Sobradinho Hydroelectric Plant (BA), the Airport Galeão, in Rio, and the Minhocão elevated road, in São Paulo. Another highlight is the collapse of the Paulo de Frontin Viaduct, in Rio: the work began in 1969, despite several popular protests, and when it collapsed, killing 26 people, it operated at a pace of 24 hours of work every day, made possible by precarious working conditions, according to the texts presented in the exhibition. The viaduct, like most buildings of the period, significantly altered the environment and daily life in which it was built, as it was not designed with the social impacts of its construction in mind.
Contemplating the construction of the Administrative Center of Bahia, the Rio-Niterói Bridge, Avenida Perimetral, in Rio, the bus terminals of Belo Horizonte (MG) and Fortaleza (CE) and the Mineirão Stadium, in Belo Horizonte, the exhibition seeks to reinforce the impacts of constructions that were designed without considering local inhabitants, changing urban dynamics and contributing to the increase in the peripheral population, all made possible by the exploitation of workers and simultaneous expulsion of them from the centers they helped to build.
Housing, speculation, spoliation
Closely linked to urbanization issues, the real estate market benefited from housing financing policies proposed through the BNH and the Housing Finance System (SNH), a benefit that was selectively reflected in the population. As central areas gained value with ongoing construction, the cost of living there also grew. For the middle class, verticalization and densification dominated the market, crowding more and more people into smaller apartments and taller buildings. The metropolitan outskirts gained housing complexes (Cohabs) and the popular classes found in the favelas and self-built neighborhoods the answer to their needs that had never been met, since they received no more than 15% of all the resources managed by the BNH, as explained in the exhibition texts .
The Housing, Speculation, Spoliation axis contemplates the growth of real estate developers, which culminated in the simplification and standardization of plans and also in the growth of closed condominiums, such as the Ilhas do Sul towers, in São Paulo, and walled subdivisions, such as those in Alphaville, so that the precarious working conditions remained the same, as did the quality of the built environment. The low-income population did not passively accept the precariousness of their living conditions, such as the Brás de Pina favela, in Rio de Janeiro, which resisted relocation to a housing complex and won a favela reurbanization project, developed with the participation of the residents themselves. This rupture influenced urbanization policies designed post-redemocratization.
At the back of the main room of the exhibition, an entire wall is dedicated to the report The Great Numbers of Brazil , published by Realidade magazine in 1975. In it, graphs show the evolution of Brazil from an economic point of view, with illustrative graphs on relevant factors such as GDP, the national budget, the development of each sector and population growth. The report, published shortly after the so-called “economic miracle”, illustrates how the Brazilian press publicized the discourse of economic growth and benefits for the country without mentioning that it was made possible by policies of wage cuts and external debt, which would later have high social costs .
Extractivism, production, environment
To carry out the various constructions underway throughout Brazil, the government intensified natural resource exploration activities, as well as the construction of facilities to enable these processes. The mapping and extraction of bauxite, iron, copper, manganese and rock salt are inseparable from the construction of dams, hydroelectric plants and electrification networks, as well as the recolonization of the territory and expropriation of lands and livelihoods of native peoples, explain the curators in the exhibition texts. The Extractivism, Production, Environment axis draws the visitor’s attention to the violence and authoritarianism that permeated the developmental discourse of the time, especially against the rights of original and traditional peoples, explaining the social and environmental consequences of the Grande Carajás Program, the construction of the Anhembi Exhibition Pavilion — which considerably increased the exploitation of aluminum, whose raw material is bauxite —, the Tucuruí Hydroelectric Plant, which cost the lives of around 100 workers, Operation Amazônia and the construction of the Transamazônica Highway.
Again, this intense pace of construction and extraction of natural resources was only possible through the precariousness of working conditions — both through wage cuts and union repression and through disregard for workers’ safety —, which intensified the workers’ struggle for rights, resulting in the strikes in Contagem (1968) and Osasco (1968) and the Tucuruí Uprising (1980), also analyzed in the exhibition. The developmentalist discourse and the expansion of the exploitation of natural resources strongly affected local communities: “The Amazon region has never been empty. It has always been populated, initially by indigenous peoples, then by traditional riverside and extractive peoples, who suffered and still suffer the impacts of this absolutely predatory settlement disguised as progress. They (the explorers) come in, destroying land, contaminating streams, eliminating flora and fauna, and simply destroying the livelihoods of these communities, and to this day they are threatened by this mentality”, explains the curator.
Territory, security, integration
In the Territory, Security, Integration axis , the focus is on how the period of the civil-military dictatorship represented a unique moment of systematization and intensification of processes of territorial planning, regional development, connection infrastructures and establishment of economic activities within the Country, mainly motivated by a discourse of “the need to combat the internal enemy”, that is, the opponents of the dictatorship. In other words, the recolonization of areas with the installation of large infrastructures, aiming to fill “demographic voids”, was a strategy to combat critics of the regime through domination and erasure, according to the exhibition.
Bodies such as Sudene (Superintendency of Development of the Northeast) – also brings the exhibition – were emptied of their initial purpose, being used in favor of monopoly capitalism in the Center-South and regional latifundia, and becoming machines of corruption and social inoperability . Large construction companies were also central to this process of domination, consolidated during the government of Juscelino Kubitschek (1956-1961), but strongly benefiting from protection and incentive policies and their relationship with the state apparatus. In addition to investing in transport, energy, airports, ports, trains and highways, construction companies played a crucial role in the diversification and growth of the sector, supporting the precariousness of working conditions and lowering workers’ wages to do so.
One of the texts in the exhibition deals with the Itaipu Hydroelectric Plant, designed and financed jointly by the Brazilian and Paraguayan governments. Here, the visitor can better understand how the construction, which began in 1973, was a milestone in the authoritarianism of the current government and its advances in domination under the pretext of integration and development. The hydroelectric plant, today the largest in the world, had violent impacts on the landscape, environment and local population, submerging Sete Quedas, an important geographical landmark, and expropriating around 3,000 people from their lands, highlights the exhibition. It was also from its construction that movements emerged that persist to this day, such as the Movement of People Affected by Dams (MAB) and the Landless Rural Workers Movement (MST). In the exhibition, in addition to photographs of the construction of Itaipu, there are also reports written at the time, illustrating popular perception and discourses about government policies.
São Paulo, metropolis city
Through supporting texts, the axis focused on the Metropolitan Region of São Paulo, entitled São Paulo, Cidade-Metrópole , makes it clear to the visitor that the city was an epicenter of spatial changes and clashes between left-wing and right-wing political groups. According to the exhibition, around the 1970s São Paulo became an emblematic representation of the contradictions arising from the conservative and authoritarian modernization that was consolidating in the country, with large volumes of public resources focused on civil construction and the real estate market in the Center, at the same time. at the same time that areas lacking any basic infrastructure are dominated by housing complexes lacking integrated urban projects and with land and condominium irregularities — such as “Cohab de Itaquera” and “Conjunto dos Conjuntos” Cidade Tiradentes — and self-built peripheral subdivisions.
The Metro works, for example, are a clear case in which the middle and upper class population was prioritized to the detriment of the more impoverished and peripheral classes. “Despite having greater demand, the Red East-West line was only completed years after the Blue North-South line, which serves wealthier areas of the metropolis. The last station on the Red line, Itaquera, is extremely far from Cidade Tiradentes, for example, which is home to many of the construction workers of the period. Peripheral expansion was not included in the expansion of the railway network, despite having been a very important project for urban mobility”, explains Magaly.
The consolidation of ABC Paulista as the largest metallurgical and automobile hub in the country was also central in the advancement of resistance against the authoritarian policies of the dictatorship: it was in the midst of struggles against wage cuts and union repression that the famous ABC strikes took place (1977-1978 ), which quickly spread to the capital and other cities in São Paulo, as well as Minas Gerais and Rio de Janeiro. It was from these strikes that the Workers’ Party (1980) and the Central Única dos Trabalhadores (1983) were created, fueling the crisis that ended the regime, as can be seen in the exhibition.
In addition to the images and documents on display, Landscape and Power also has six projections. All projections are compiled from videos and films, portraying urban life, inauguration celebrations, construction processes and other emblematic moments of the dictatorship period, such as the Hundred Thousand March (1968), the strike at UnB (1977) and the refounding event of the National Union of Students (UNE), in Salvador (1978).
The exhibition also has a parallel program: a diffusion course, offered by the four curators and director José Lira, which started on the last day and runs until the first week of May, totaling five classes, every Monday; a cinema exhibition cycle, specifically curated to draw attention to the central themes of the exhibition, which will be held in May, with the dates and schedule not yet announced; and a research seminar, scheduled for the end of June, with the aim of bringing together researchers from this period to discuss themes related to the exhibition and historiography of architecture, urbanism and landscape in the period 1964-1985.