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VIII - Chapéu
Hat - Bixiga
Paulo Santiago
Well, my name is Paulo Santiago de Augustinis, I'm 78 years old and my first contact with Bixiga was in the 60s. I lived with my family on Rua Paim, number 340, which is now the back of a school in the area. My memory of an object, of something important that marked my life was Adoniran Barbosa's little hat, which was donated by Dona Matilde, who donated the hat and a few other things, a lighter, some of Adoniran's things, after his death.
This material is kept at the Bixiga Museum. I'm one of the founders of the museum. We even made a bust of Adoniran, which is in Praça Dom Orione. I see Bixiga as having all the conditions to be a very important neighborhood for São Paulo, it already is.
And it's had several eras. There was a period when it suffered a lot when the East-West Radial was built, which split Bixiga in half - even the Teatro Oficina itself must feel it, because it passes right in front of it, it's a very, very striking thing. I don't think it would be possible today, but at that time Rui Barbosa street was opened, the Armandinho viaduct was built, which is over Brigadeiro, and at a time when people were saying that Bixiga had died.
There's even a movie called Bixiga no Zero in which, at the end of the movie, they say that Bixiga no longer exists, it's dead. Bixiga was reborn, reborn in the 90s of the last century, 2000, 2010, I always say that we're not going to get anywhere by walking the same path, and the path we're walking is a difficult one. I think Bixiga has a very good characteristic. It's losing something. For example, we're losing the Vai-Vai samba school, which is moving to the Marginal. So the school's presence in the neighborhood is already more difficult.
It's a neighborhood that needs very little - we have about a thousand listed buildings, and there's a trend that thinks these listed buildings should be demolished. I don't think so, I think these buildings should be preserved, because they show a bit of what São Paulo was like in the past.
It's one of the few places where you can walk around and think about a city from the last century, the 19th century, the 20th century. It no longer exists, we have a presence, Bixiga has a very strong presence, both the black community and the Italians and the Northeasterners. These are three very strong cultures, with very strong music, very strong cuisine and a very strong presence.
This makes Bixiga something totally different in São Paulo. And there's also the strong presence of Teatro Oficina, which shows that not everything can be done with money only. I remember Silvio Santos (late owner of Grupo Silvio Santos, former owner of the land plots around Teatro Oficina) , who was a figurehead, with a lot of prestige, a lot of money, a lot of contacts, with high-level contacts, with approval from a very famous architect, Júlio Neves, who did those crazy projects.
And when everything seemed to be lost, there would be the Don Quijotes from Teatro Oficina and then it would stop and start all over again and it was a great war, it was something that lasted a long time but it shows that it is possible, that is, and if it is possible in a small space like a theater, that compared to the gigantic works that exist out there, the Teatro Oficina is an emblematic thing and managed to preserve the space despite Silvio Santos destroying the synagogue, destroying a lot of things, it exists, it will be transformed and it will become something good for the neighborhood.
Now, Bixiga is not a neighborhood, Bixiga is not a district, Bixiga is a territory. I consider Bixiga, for example, between two dates of the 1932 Revolution, July 9 and May 23 (two large avenues named after milestone dates of the Constitutionalist Revolution). And that's where Bixiga is. That's where Antônio Bixiga's farm used to be, on the Anhangabaú. São Paulo ended there where the Anhangabaú subway is, and from there, from Ladeira da Memória on is where the slaves were sold, many of them escaping across the Saracura River, which is under the 9 de Julho avenue, and formed the kilometer of Saracura in that region of Vai-Vai.
At the beginning of the last century, that area was known as Little Africa. There were a lot of black families living there, a lot of things, and then, with the arrival of the Italian immigrants to try to whiten them up, they came together, but then they mixed. There's something very interesting about the Italians, for example, a large part of Vai-Vai's samba-songs were composed by Italian descendants. There's also a lot about the Achiropita festival, which is made up of blacks and northeasterners.
Vai-Vai will be 100 years old in 2030 and Achiropita will be 100 years old in three years' time. But the way the Achiropita festival is treated, with security cars and police, it's wonderful, but what were the Vai-Vai rehearsals like? The Vai-Vai rehearsal had to get some... Zinc sheeting, wood pieces to close off the streets there, at São Vicente down there there wasn't a single police car, there was nothing, there were half a dozen motorcycles driving around.
So you can see the difference. I always say, for example, Getúlio Vargas, the Getúlio Vargas Foundation, for dozens of years, that land belonged to the city hall. And I imagine that if they were going to build a subway and the subway went through there, in place of the GV, they would rent a building on Avenida Paulista, they would say, look, you stay here while we build the subway, then we'll build a much nicer building for you, see?
So we notice these things. Samba school means noise. And when carnival or pre-carnival starts, people go to the Public Prosecutor's Office asking them to send the Vai-Vai somewhere else because it's making noise. Now, when it's Achiropita, nobody asks the Public Prosecutor's Office to send Achiropita to Marginal.
But Vai-Vai is going to Marginal. They destroyed Vai-Vai's headquarters. I always talk to people: imagine those headquarters, in 50 years' time, in 100 years' time, that would be a samba workshop. It would be a place that would be marked with a beautiful territory. People used to say, wow, but this is where those magnificent parades were held.
No, it was passed over. Now there's the Salacura quilombo, which is doing a very strong and beautiful job of trying to recover all of this past, so that all of these archaeological pieces, which are very valuable, can be preserved. There's this thing, there are places like oficina or quilombo de saracura that go to the front line, that fight like quijotes, that move with all their tools And it's a lesson in citizenship, because it works with the press, it works with public authorities, it works with mobilizing the community So, with this, it makes a small group...
Invincible. It hits, but it stays.
… Well, the presence of Adoniran's hat, when... When I received Adoniran's hat, which had great symbolism, because it was his trademark, the hat with the butterfly tie, that sailor's lighter, all those things were things that really marked Adoniran's presence, the scarf he wore when it got cold.
And Adoniran was already a bit old, and he used to spend the afternoons there at Rádio Eldorado in... where the old Estadão used to be, on Martins Fontes street. And several times he would go out and pass by the Bixiga Museum and have a chat. And if there was a chair or a comfortable sofa, he'd sit down for 15 or 20 minutes and snore there to relax.
Back to samba. Culture is criminalized in Bixiga. You have, for example, Madeira de Lei, which is a very strong group that performs samba on Friday nights at 13 de Maio Street and Conselheiro Carrão street. And it's an impressive thing, in other words, instead of the public authorities intervening and saying, “no, wait a minute, this is a samba venue, this is culture, this brings people from all over the place, people from abroad come and say, come on, let's go, there's a samba in the evening and so on."
What happens? I'll tell you a little story, I was invited to take part in a meeting at the battalion because the problem, the issue was the samba at 13 (de Maio st.), the samba organised at 13 ended up being summoned on at the battalion, so I went up to the PM battalion near the Teatro Oficina as well to check what was going on.
The police said, well, here's the thing, we're going to have to put an end to the samba events. And I said, but why end the samba? The sacristan of the church, when the Friday night mass was over, which was around 7:20 to 8:00, he would come out to the door and say, for the people from Madeira de Lei, who already had their instruments tuned up and so on, “you can start!”. And the samba would start after the mass. In other words, most of the members of Madeira de Lei, which is a group that has been doing samba in the neighborhood for over 40 years, had come from Achiropita church and, in some way, participated in the Achiropita community. There was no rivalry between them.
Then, at that meeting, the guys said, look, here's the thing, when it's 5 o'clock in the afternoon, several cars start arriving with those trolleys that are used to put up the Styrofoam cooling boxes and they stop there, they stand there in front of the church and when it's half past 7 o'clock, 7 o'clock, they take the trolleys out, take the cooler boxes out and start selling. Unfair competition with commerce, not to mention the fact that they sell some strange drinks and so on. Wait, I said, but this is a question of inspection, in other words, the town hall has to go there, and call in half a dozen inspectors; then the inspector who was there said, “no, but they (the informal sellers) beat us up, if we go there to talk to them, they won't accept it.”
What do you mean? So, city hall is there, the Military Police is there, there's the Metropolitan Civil Guard, and yet there's another problem. Because from Madeira the Lei ends at 11 o'clock pm, 11 and a bit, so far so good. But then there's this guy's bar that continues playing music afterwards, playing pagode, I don't know what, and it goes on…
<I said, no, but wait, you have to call PSIU (Silence reinforcement regiment), right? Then a guy from the town hall said, “no, PSIU is only working until 10pm now, because there's no staff”, so... Oh, come on, that's PSIU's problem, put the staff on later, 10 o'clock, the noise isn't even starting, is it? Nowhere in São Paulo. So that's the problem with PSIU.
The lack of presence of the public authorities causes segments to start fighting.