Goiânia, 90 years - The Earth is Round

Goiania, 90 years old

01/12/2024

Architecture and Urbanism • Culture • History • Books

By ADELTO GONÇALVES*

Commentary on the newly released book.

A deep reflection on the history of Goiânia is what the reader will find in Goiânia, 90 years old, a work launched within the program to commemorate the city's 90th anniversary and which brings together 16 texts presented during a symposium held on October 18, 19 and 20, 2023, at the Historical and Geographical Institute of Goiás (IHGG), by historians, university professors, cultural activists and planning technicians.

The first part of the book addresses historical aspects, while the second presents articles that deal with themes related to urban planning and architecture, with the third section reserved for the discussion of cultural and aesthetic elements.

In the introductory text, the book’s organizers recall that “Goiânia represented the imposition of the human spirit over the wild nature of the cerrado, but it is also an example of the high price we paid for such boldness. In search of the geometric harmony of having a city with circular or square squares, straight or curvilinear streets, trees were uprooted; streams were buried; hills were flattened and marshes were drained. The result, without a doubt, is a beautiful and imposing city,” reads the text written by Eliezer Cardoso de Oliveira, Jales Guedes Coelho Mendonça, Nars Fayad Chaul and Nilson Jaime.

In the article “The 10 years of the book A invention de Goiânia: o other side da change and the traces of cultural genocide”, Jales Mendonça, public prosecutor, doctor in history and president of the Historical and Geographical Institute of Goiás, author of the aforementioned work, launched in 2013 by the Press of the Federal University of Goiás (UFG), when observing that, ten years later, the hypotheses put forward there were all reaffirmed, also recalls the various experiences of capital displacement that occurred in the world, among which the construction of the monumental Saint Petersburg, in Russia, by Tsar Peter the Great (1672-1725) stands out.

It is worth noting that, in Brazil as well, this phenomenon occurred at least three times: the administrative headquarters were moved from Salvador to Rio de Janeiro and from Rio de Janeiro to Brasília, and, in Minas Gerais, from Ouro Preto to Belo Horizonte, after the Proclamation of the Republic in 1889. In Goiás, the movement began in the 1920s and, on May 18, 1933, a decree was issued by the interventor Pedro Ludovico Teixeira (1891-1979) establishing the city of Campinas as the future location of the new capital.

It is worth remembering that the doctor Pedro Ludovico, with the so-called Revolution of 1930, a movement that temporarily removed the elites of São Paulo and Minas Gerais from power, assumed the leadership of the “March to the West”, a public policy created by the government of Getúlio Vargas (1882-1954) during the Estado Novo (1937-1945) to increase the population density and development of the Central-West and North regions of the country.

Obviously, the change of the capital to Goiânia only occurred after much discussion and political pressure, especially from those who felt harmed by the departure of the capital from the traditional City of Goiás, the former Vila Boa.

The region of the old village of Campinas, founded in 1816, located on flat land next to the Meia Ponte River and inhabited by farmers and cattle ranchers, was known as Campanha dos Dourados and its development began, strictly speaking, with the construction of a chapel between 1813 and 1814, as can be read in the text “Campinas, the Church and Goiânia”, written by Antônio César Caldas Pinheiro, PhD in Documentation from the University of Salamanca, Spain, and director of the Institute of Research and Historical Studies of Central Brazil (IPEHBC/PUC-Goiás). Today, Campinas is a very busy neighborhood in Goiânia, home to a large concentration of commercial establishments.

The past history of Goiânia can also be very well followed in the text “Goiânia: the impacts of its creation in Campinas”, by Itaney F. Campos, judge of the Court of Justice of Goiás and member of the IHGG and the Academia Goiana de Letras (AGL), in which we read that, at the beginning of the 20th century, Campinas was a village composed of only 30 or XNUMX houses, “planted in the solitude of the plains of the central region of the Province of Goiás”.

In the text “Goiânia, between the rationalism of technique and the pragmatism of politics”, by Eliézer Cardoso de Oliveira, PhD in Sociology from the University of Brasília (UnB) and professor at the State University of Goiás (UEG)-Anápolis campus, the reader will discover the reason for choosing the name Goiânia for the new capital, born from a contest promoted by a local newspaper in 1933. The name Goiânia received fewer votes than Crisópolis, Heliópolis and Petrônia, but ended up being chosen by personal decision of the interventor Pedro Ludovico.

In fact, in this article, the author also notes that the choice of location was another imposition by the interventor, after a dispute with the religious leadership that defended the choice of Bonfim, a nearby location that today constitutes the municipality of Silvânia, a name adopted in 1943.

In the “Architecture and Urbanism” section, an article that stands out is “Goiânia, a well-born city: living with the capital since childhood” in which Narcisa Abreu Cordeiro, architect and urban planner and partner of the Historical and Geographical Institute of Goiás, observes that in early Goiânia, in addition to administrative buildings, so-called popular houses began to appear, while families with greater purchasing power built residences with characteristics Art Deco styles, today largely demolished. “With the advent of the arrival of the railway and the construction of Brasília, Goiânia moved from the level of eclecticism to modernism, influenced by Le Corbusier (1887-1965) and other international masters”, he adds.

In the article “Landmarks of architecture in Goiânia (1930-1980)”, Eurípedes Afonso da Silva Neto and Lenora de Castro Barbo, both PhDs in Architecture and Urbanism from UnB, explain that Article Deco is present in buildings such as the Palácio das Esmeraldas, the seat of government, in Pedro Ludovico's residence and in another 20 public buildings and monuments, listed by the National Institute of Historical and Artistic Heritage (Iphan) in 2023, with the historian from Goiás Paulo Bertran (1948-2005) as its rapporteur. But they remember that there are other building styles that mark the different eras experienced by the city.

It is worth mentioning, in the last part of the book, the text “Goiânia, 90 years”, in which Nasr Fayad Chaul, PhD in Social History from the University of São Paulo (USP) and retired full professor at UFG, says that “the main public buildings symbolized the Uno Estado Novista, the main streets channeled its destiny to the center of power”. And he draws attention to a theater of Article new located in the middle of the Central Plateau, noting that, architecturally, Goiânia was “the symbol of the modern and the urban in rural land”.

It goes on to say: “Designed for just over 50 thousand inhabitants, (Goiânia) did not think about having millions of people around it, multiplying houses, villages, buildings and urban pressures”. And it defines it in metaphorical language: “At 90 years old, it is already the grandmother of its problems, without control of its street children, without giving the desired spanking to the hands of its terrifying violence, without resolving its menopausal crises of all kinds. It is only the mistress of its lessons on the roads of Goiás”.

Finally, as the organizers of the book acknowledge at the end of the presentation text, “the city still has problems that have not been resolved, since it remains violent and socially unequal.” However, with its modern and gigantic buildings and a population of over 1,4 million inhabitants, it continues to dazzle on its way to 100 years.

Also in the last section, it is worth highlighting the text in which Nilson Jaime, an agricultural engineer and PhD in Agronomy from UFG and a member of the Historical and Geographical Institute of Goiás, outlines the profile of Bernardo Élis (1915-1997), the only Goiás native to obtain a seat in the Brazilian Academy of Letters (ABL). In the text “The chronicler and historian Bernardo Élis: archetype of a general citizen who adopted the wilderness of Goiânia”, Jaime recalls that, in the book Goiás em Salt more (1985), the writer managed to summarize, in 16 pages, the main events that resulted in the creation of what would become the tenth most populous Brazilian city (IBGE, 2022).

Given the limited space available for a review and the impossibility of citing the other texts that make up this work, it must be said that they are all of excellent work and thorough research and that they will certainly greatly assist in the critical reflections that may be made from now on, remembering that, in 2033, on the occasion of the celebration of the centenary of Goiânia, there will still be an opportunity to delve deeper into the discussion about the past and future of this metropolis that, with Brasília, marked Brazil's advance towards the West.

It is also worth remembering that, launched on February 1, 2022, the Goiás +300 Collection foresees the publication, by 2026, of 18 more books, contained in six boxes, on the historiography of the following themes: History – Geography – Memory and Heritage (Box 1); Chroniclers and Travelers – Literature – Original Peoples (Box 2); Afro-diasporic Peoples – Music – Women (Box 3); Brasília – Agriculture – Law and Justice (Box 4); Economy – Human Rights – Goiânia (Box 5); and The First Camps – Sustainability – Education (Box 6). The works are subject to an Editorial Board, formed by 30 doctors and masters, from various cultural and scientific institutions.

*Adelto Gonçalves, journalist, has a doctorate in Portuguese literature from the University of São Paulo (USP). Author, among other books, of Bocage – the lost profile (Imesp).

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