NAVEGANDO NA MEMÓRIA: O PATRIMÔNIO CULTURAL DA EXTINTA HIDROVIA DO RIO IGUAÇU

Abstract

This work aims to demonstrate the existence of a local identity related to the material and immaterial inheritance that has been built from the territorial configuration that the extinct Iguaçu River Waterway, in the State of Parana, Brazil, had provided for the organization of the space in question. It is analyzed the current range of this waterway, using preferentially the mnemonic references from the society involved by it. It is based on two key concepts from Cultural Geography: cultural inheritance and social memory. The spatial delimitation, that is a basis for this research, are the municipal districts of Porto Amazonas, São Mateus do Sul and União da Vitória, in the state of Paraná, and the municipal district of Porto União, in Santa Catarina, amounting 340 km of fluvial bed used by the steamboats. The period when Iguaçu River was navigated was important to the economy of both states, a time distinguished by strong financial flux, specially the cycles of maté and timber, that were both linked to steam transport, which propitiated the appearance of a territory with characteristics of its own, whose organization presents economical, social and cultural elements that have made it so peculiar. It inventoried the tangible inheritance of the extinct waterway in the four municipal districts studied, and performed interviews with their populations, with the aim of verify the representativity of the waterway in the memories of the inhabitants and of the former workers of the waterway. The study proposition for the territorial organization and the demonstration of the existence of a social identity related to cultural inheritance follows the branch of Cultural Geography, considering the feelings and ideas of a group about the space and its cultural manifestations, as derived from a specific activity that has left its legacy.