Modernity for whom?: the black people and the paulistana urbe.

Abstract

This paper establishes a context from the migration field processes for urban territory, with the black groups actors and immigrants, especially Italians to reflect on the processes of urbanization in São Paulo. Guided by an elitist and Eurocentric modernity character, printed - in the second half of the nineteenth century and the first decades of the twentieth century - in the central areas of the metropolis, it leads us to identify consequences of the presence of black groups inhabiting their regions. On behalf of a civilizational project based on the European projection beautification and progress, carried forward by an incipient urban bourgeoisie, hygienic actions of extreme violence and expelled segregate such populations. So we ask: Modernity for whom? More than a city seeking a pseudo development, his ideal was white, European, there was space for blacks. The sought modernity became selective and discriminatory, a materialized movement in the urban fabric that highlighted a privilege at the expense of others invisibility.