Produção do espaço e território usado: um estudo sobre o caso da fábrica têxtil Santa Maria, Sorocaba - SP

Abstract

Between the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century, the southeast region of Brazil went through a period of industrialization, mainly supported by the capital coming from coffee. The city of Sorocaba, in the interior of São Paulo state, was among those impacted by industrialization, with several textile factories that altered the urban landscape. In this context, the Santa Maria factory was created in 1892 and ended its activities almost a century later, being demolished in the 1990s. In 1984, upon the closure of its activities, it was acquired by a company that bought the facilities and surroundings of the old factory. Then, the demolition of this industrial heritage began, linked to a residential real estate development that was sold as an innovative project from the perspective of the last decade of the 20th century. However, concomitant with the failure of the initiative and stagnation of the real estate project, various issues emerged among local socio-political actors regarding the losses of the historical heritage. With the intensification of controversy within the legislative and executive powers in Sorocaba, the result was that the site of the factory underwent an embargo, and later the Incorporadora e Construtora Magnum bought the area, having launched a condominium called Villa de Espanha, in which the location of the remaining structures was preserved, with two buildings and the factory chimney remaining. The challenge of this study is to understand how the historical-geographical production of this space occurred based on the notion of "used territory" (SANTOS, 2006) in the east zone of Sorocaba. In this vein, the aim is to understand the actors who constructed the memory and identity in relationships of acceptance and resistance: the working class formed by Spanish immigrants and their descendants over generations, who lived and survived in the surroundings and inside the Santa Maria factory. Therefore, a research is presented that seeks to describe and understand the flows involved in this delimited space: the surroundings of the neighborhood, the daily life of the working village in interaction with the manufacturing processes, the presence of the railroad, and the issues of the 21st century.