About history, memory and heritage in southern Brazil - monuments to Azoreans in Porto Alegre and Florianópolis

Abstract

This text studies the history of monuments to Azorean immigration in the cities of Porto Alegre and Florianópolis. The Azorean im/migrants, when moving to South Brazil, brought with them their way of life and their beliefs and here they organized themselves socially and economically, despite the natural difficulties of the 18th century. In the 19th and 20th centuries other immigrant groups arrived here, among them the Germans (1824), the Italians (1875) and the Japanese (1908). In the occasion of these communities' arrival anniversaries in Brazil, their leaders - alone or together with local, regional and national governments - organized celebrations and many erected monuments in honor of their pioneers, marking, definitively, such dates through the use of marble, bronze, cement or iron, among other materials. In order to build these monuments, besides the wishes of the proposing group, documents, plans, models, photographs, memories and recalls of events were sought after. The speeches delivered on the inauguration day were also remembered, along with photographs and newspapers, which gives us the dimension of their importance for the community that built them. During the elaboration of this text, we sought, in the history of the Azorean group, to reaffirm its importance through the monuments built in their honor and also to question the actuality of these two places of memory as material heritage of these two cities.