Entre o caos e o progresso: transformações urbanas e econômicas na cidade de Piranhas-AL através da Estrada de Ferro Paulo Afonso (1878-1883)

Abstract

The railway network, in the first steps of the capitalist world, was a symbol of modernization and progress and a protagonist in the process of market circulation. It has a significant burden on economic transformations in all territories that had the opportunity to act. The village of Piranhas, being located in the commercial stretch of navigation in the North region, had the happiness of becoming the starting point of this important railway line that came to complete significant commercial route, through which it became, in the present century, a National Heritage. The process of implementation of the Paulo Afonso Railroad fulfilled beyond its primary objectives, which were the connection between the high and lower São Francisco allowing the commercial circulation along the non-navigable stretch and supporting the victims of the drought of 1877 refugees in this locality, the opening to new social, economic and urban perspectives in Piranhas and the other villages that made up its route. The advents of drought, responsible for attracting a significant part of the railway workforce, and the incidents that plagued the construction path, made Piranhas, among the most disadvantaged points of this route, enjoy in this period (1878-1883) social assistance, public services and new alternatives of subsistence that were once non-existent, fundamental for this population to be able, at this moment, glimpse and feel the capitalist commercial "wheel".