Sobrevivendo ao inferno: experimentos com montagem urbana na cidade de Maceió -AL

Abstract

How can we talk about the right to the city if not even the right to life for the black population is guaranteed before? This work understands that we live in a society where various forms of oppression, such as structural racism, gender and class inequalities, are used to ensure white hegemony arising from coloniality. Therefore, cities are marked by a strong social dichotomy, in which urban lethal violence emerges as a project of control and surveillance of the black population. Through the case study of Maceió, Alagoas, we mapped the Intentional Lethal Violent Crimes between 2012 and 2021 along with data on race, gender, income, education and population density. We found out that there is a racial territorialization of intentional lethal violent deaths in black neighborhoods and that every 18 hours a black person dies in the capital of Alagoas, with young black men being the most affected. Thus, a narrative of fear and insecurity is built around black neighborhoods, mainly due to police actions and the constant dissemination of images of death by the media, directly affecting the urban and architectural production of these territories and reinforcing that these places boil down to violence. On the other hand, we understand that this is not the unique history of the black population and we need to dispute the field of the symbolic as a confrontation, as the concept of Afrofuturism shows us. Then, through the method of urban montage and reflections of African philosophy, we developed photocollages with fragments of everyday acts of Maceió and the black population. We conclude that the images about the city are not static, they depend on who experiences them. The important thing is to make possible other interpretations of black neighborhoods other than those of violence. A form of combat and anti-racism in the field of architecture and urbanism.