Searching for an age group who lived their youth among populations remnant of former runaway slave communities in the northern Espírito Santo State (Brazil) and also at the Atlantic Rainforest, this research had the main objective of identifying the social memories of younger days in these communities, relating the representations of this past and the environmental and social changes that recently impacted their region. Eleven men and women were interviewed, with ages varying from 40 to 61 years. The data, processed by content analysis technique, demonstrated a hiatus at the relation of the participants with younger generations which had not been experienced with respect to their ascendants; as well as the implications of this social-environmental transformation that, while acting on the communities archaic structures of territorial and temporal constitution, worked as a prime agent both in the distancing between generations, and on the selection of the more relevant mnemic shapes.
social memory; youth; traditional populations