Like any large metropolis, São Paulo has infinite contradictions. Any attempt to describe them is reductionist and often unfair or jingoistic. The largest city in the country is a constant object of analyzes and representations that attempt to examine it as if there were new data to be debated in its gigantism. In general terms, the city is sometimes shown as an unviable and unsustainable model due to its hypertrophy, the lack of planning, and sometimes because it is a space for ingenious solutions to make it more human. São Paulo overflows with itself in so many speeches about it. In the absence of an irrefutable natural or architectural landmark, the city is sufficient.
In the last 30 years, when I arrived in the city to study, I saw the city looking for different paths. Thinking only about administrators, the city elected a woman from the Northeast, another from the four hundredth elite, a black man, a son of an immigrant from Mooca, a representative of the show business and three Lebanese descendants. From right to left, in megalomaniac or more measured management models, with a more or less social outlook, the city's population demonstrates a wide range of affinities and attitudes at specific moments.
There is a historical issue that permeates the look at the city, which is its conservatism and its supposedly integrative way of excluding. The predilections of the “city that doesn't stop”, which is “extremely professional”, which “is in a hurry”, which “accelerates”, which is an “island of efficiency” indicate a supposedly aseptic behavior, without greater links and responsibilities than what happens around it and with the majority of its inhabitants. In the name of the ideology of success, people fall over themselves and continue to ignore what is close to them.
The city of news is divided like this: it starts in Cidade Universitária and progresses to Mooca, when it comes to leisure, cultural options, etc. The confines of the East Zone and the South Zone only appear in the massacres and unmeasured violence. Cracolândia, recently removed from the center, spread across several neighborhoods a problem with a complex solution and marked by immediate decisions. Indifference brutalizes and becomes naturalized as if the issue were just the simplicity of realizing that there are people who wander like lost souls through the streets of the city and for whom there are no alternatives.
The frenetic city seems to have no time to wait for any public policy to yield results, especially in health and education. Or, in some cases, patience is selective and tolerates immense delays in transport projects, such as the subway.
The College Courtyard and what
the city tried to hide from itself
The city that is proud of its emergence from the founding of a school has a curious landmark. The Church and the school, which is not the original building, but is located in the same place, reveals how the city was formed. The construction is on a high point, but with its back to the valley. The front door is not in the direction the view should be. Who did Saint Paul turn his back on? As in the case of recent hygiene policies, the city seems to have a relatively simple formula: gone from view, gone.
Firstly, in the 1560s, he had his back to the indigenous people who were in the most distant villages. Converted Indians, like Tibiriçá, were around the chapel. The others, considered more “savage”, were subjected in regions that formed neighborhoods such as Guaianases and cities such as Itaquaquecetuba and Guarulhos. Villages became concentrations of groups from different societies and rebellions were frequent. Therefore, the city felt protected with its back to where, supposedly, the danger of “wild” and “ferocious” Guaianás and Tupiniquim resided.
In the 20th century, with the railroad, coffee and the advent of the end of slavery, the city was transformed by immigrants. The population went from just over 1870 thousand inhabitants, around 120, to more than 1890 thousand people, in 1890. The immigrants' hostel was in the Brás region, which had a population “explosion”, reaching a quarter of the entire local population. The city, however, expanded in services and construction through districts such as Santa Ifigênia and Consolação which, together, had half of São Paulo's population in XNUMX. The flow indicated the urbanization movement of the elite who, a few years later, built their Elysian Fields.
In the 1870th century, a new migratory movement, notably from the Northeast, made the East Zone the priority location. Penha, which between 1890 and 1200, lost half of its population and had only 1940 inhabitants, was completely reconfigured. São Paulo had, in 1.300.000, more than XNUMX inhabitants. The city grew around factories and working-class neighborhoods. While the “central zone” had a new center and the “effervescent” life was far from the majority of the population.
In the 85st century, the city became a center of attraction for other immigrants, those from neighboring countries or the continent. The city is increasingly Latin American, even if this identity is not well defined. There are more than 15 thousand Bolivians, 12 thousand Haitians and 2001 thousand Argentineans who entered the city between 2017 and 3, according to official data. The unofficial, in the case of Bolivians, reaches approximately 300% of the population of the city of São Paulo, that is, more than XNUMX thousand people. Bolivians are a strong presence in the city. However, unlike other groups that are part of the welcoming narrative for Italians, Lebanese, Japanese and other nationalities, Bolivians suffer various prejudices and stigmas. The group's invisibility to the city as a whole, with most of them doing work similar to slavery in the Brás textile industry, contrasts with the vitality of the gastronomic and cultural threshing floor that takes place in Praça Kantuta, on Sundays.
In a generic and imprecise way, the city prides itself on mixtures and interaction processes. But the foundational landmark boasts, from the top of its foundational landmark, what it did not want to place as a priority in its integration. Government brands and actions were smaller than the transformative demands of its population. The city grew and expanded with the marks of internal inequality. In this sense, São Paulo epitomizes the country.
another city
It is unfair to reduce the city or classify it only by what it does not want to see in front of it or what it has internalized as something natural. There is an incredible amount of creative, dynamic, active people who make the city fascinating and more inclusive. The city of artistic, political, cultural and social movements important to it and to the country must also be recognized.
São Paulo, as I mentioned, was the city that welcomed me 30 years ago. I am not ungrateful and I recognize that I was formed in it, I built deep bonds and identities. Indeed, I love São Paulo and, let's face it, there is more nobility in love that does not capture the excellence of its qualities, but that is constituted within mutual imperfections.
Living in São Paulo gives you the dimensions and conditions to travel anywhere in the world. Specifically, I love São Paulo and I miss what I experienced in the city. The city demands that you locate yourself, that you find some spaces to make it familiar and close. Crowds are formed from atomized beings and bearers of desires and demands that humanize us. If, on the one hand, there is a brutality that makes many issues invisible, on the other, there is an almost instinctive trait of mobilization and transcendence to ensure that there are as many cities as there are people in them. The specific looks, the sounds, the senses that produce the transcendence of inhabiting a space, sharing expectations and destinies with so many different people.
These traits do not make SP an easy city. They make it, solely and exclusively, a space built by people and the contradictions that accompany them. Excess and emptiness are sensations experienced daily in the city of more than 12 million inhabitants. The feeling of being alone, emptied of meanings and explanations is very easy to describe by a resident of Sampa. It is also easy to identify the excesses and chaotic turbulence of your daily life. It's difficult to find someone who is indifferent to São Paulo. Whether because of what it hides or what it reveals.
Congratulations, São Paulo!
