CULTURAL HERITAGE AND PRESERVATION OF MATERIAL GOODS:
THE APPROPRIATION OF URBAN SPACE AND POWER RELATIONS IN THE
CITY OF OLIVEIRA - MG
cultural heritage; urban space; Power relations; Oliveira
The research project entitled "Cultural heritage and preservation of material goods: the
appropriation of urban space and power relations in the city of Oliveira - MG" was conceived
from an intrinsic and personal desire to reflect and propose discussions, at the municipal level,
regarding the current policies of preservation of the material historical heritage of the city of
Oliveira-MG, represented by monuments of ecclesiastical, administrative and legal origin. Such
heritage policies perpetuate the power relations regarding the conservation and delimitation of
the spaces to be protected from erasure and disfiguration in the urban nucleus in question. Over
time, and even before the development of preservationist policies in the municipality, there was
a clear interest among the wealthiest inhabitants of the place to promote the erasure of heritage
elements representative of less privileged groups, such as slaves and immigrants, thus reserving
the "noblest" areas of the urban space for the preservation of an elitist memory. These power
relations thus become the true "mirror of the city", delimiting the areas reserved for the
preservation of the elite's memory, withdrawing from the less privileged groups the right to this
preservation space, having as a consequence the erasing of other representative elements in the
formation of the urban nucleus. Even today, with the recent creation of preservation policies
and historic preservation in the city of Oliveira-MG, little has been done to effectively preserve
the collective memory of these less privileged groups, and for this reason, this research proposes
some discussions and reflections, supported by a national and international theoretical
contribution in the area of heritage, in order to urgently change the current public policies in
progress in the city of Oliveira.