The times of the Ladeira da Preguiça: a long-term ethnography of a micro locality in the historic center of Salvador

ABSTRACT

This article describes and reflects on two times that coexist in the current space of Preguiça, one of several micro areas that make up the polygonal of the Historic Center of Salvador (CHS). It is an old “time of closure”, the result of structural changes in the city of Salvador, which developed from the second half of the nineteenth century, and a new “time of (re) opening”, very recently forged by the effort of some young people who live in Preguiça, who created and maintain the Centro Cultural Que Ladeira é Essa? These times were captured and analyzed using the ethnographic method (in fieldwork that has been carried out since early 2019) and the historical method (with research in historical sources and historiography, carried out in 2018). Both methods allowed us to relate the nineteenth, twentieth and twenty-first centuries and to find an impressive continuity between what Preguiça was (openness) and what its current residents expect it to be in the future (reopening), openly rejecting what was made of it in the twentieth century to the present (closing).

KEYWORDS
Ladeira da Preguiça; historic center of Salvador; temporalities; ethnography; Cultural Center Que Ladeira É Essa?