History of Porto Alegre

Throughout the entire 20th century, the city strove to expand its urban network in an organized way and provide it with the necessary services, achieving significant success, but also facing various difficulties, at the same time as it developed its own expressive culture, which, at some moments, influenced other regions of Brazil in many fields, from politics to the plastic arts.

Also in 1752, Jerônimo de Ornelas, feeling harmed by the Azorean occupation of the tip of the peninsula, sold his land to Ignácio Francisco, although the letter of confirmation of his sesmaria contained the obligation to leave half a league from the lake towards the interior as an area of public use.

In the following two decades there were already several potteries in activity, indicating a growing demand for construction materials such as tiles, floors, and bricks; shipyards were already building ships to order for Rio de Janeiro, commerce was being structured, and city councilors were concerned with the beautification and cleanliness of streets and public places.

He also reported other problems, which occurred despite the goodwill of the captaincy's governor, the Count of Figueira, such as the delay in soldiers' wages, the inefficient judicial system, and the administrative and social confusion generated by the arbitrary actions of military chiefs against the population, who took possession of other people's income and property, often violently.

[8]On April 26, 1821 the first public manifestation of political contestation broke out in the city, when the Chamber, disobeying the determinations of the Portuguese Constitution that had been sworn by the Regent Prince Dom Pedro, elected a ministerial board, which governed from February 22 to March 8, 1822.

The governmental authority was felt at the estancias and river crossings with the collection of tithes and tolls....[3]On September 20, 1835, as a result of economic and political dissatisfaction, and culminating a series of disagreements with the central government, a republican and separatist revolt, the Farroupilha Revolution, broke out in the city.

[11] The chronicler writes:There, neither sex, nor social position, nor age counts; everyone must follow this game or close their houses and windows tightly.... We have been assured that in Rua da Praia, these disputes reach such a point that gentlemen and ladies push each other, in the end, into the river, which is very shallow here, and despite their refined toilette and silk dresses, trench coats and patent boots, they get duly wet.

Their families were very close-knit, disciplined and cooperative with each other, which made it possible to form an influential cultural nucleus within the capital, doing press and holding theater performances and classical music concerts in their native language, where an audience of educated people, enthusiastic about the arts, "well-dressed and even beautiful.... Lovely ladies and gentlemen.

The elite had already matured to the point of maintaining varied interests in art and nurturing a significant cultural life, where the first local intellectuals and educators of real merit shone, such as Antônio Vale Caldre Fião, Hilário Ribeiro, Luciana de Abreu, who were joined by others from outside, such as Apolinário Porto-Alegre, Inácio Montanha and Karl von Koseritz.

The influx of French and German influences provided additional cultural elements to trigger the first modern renovation movements in the field of art in the capital, which in 1880 already had more than 40 thousand inhabitants but was still constructing houses and large buildings in the old, deep-rooted colonial style, such as the Church of Our Lady of the Conception, a project by João do Couto e Silva completed that same year.

In order to manage the development process better, the municipality took upon itself responsibility for many public services, such as the provision of piped water, lighting, transportation, education, policing, sanitation and social assistance, to a standard that far exceeded the custom of the time, surpassing what was done in São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro.

Some examples of this trend are the Old City Hall, the Public Library, the Post and Telegraph Office, and the Tax Police Station, most of them built by the partnership between architect Theodor Wiederspahn, engineer Rudolf Ahrons, and decorator João Vicente Friedrichs, all of German origin.

[31][3] This urbanistic evolution accompanied the emergence of a new bourgeois culture stimulated by the influx of new migrants and immigrants, now including Jews, Spaniards, English, French, Platinians and others, by the introduction of new technologies in transportation and engineering, and by the consolidation of a capitalist elite, which made sociability and urban spaces more complex, exclusive and diverse.

Its program emphasized the circulation aspect, with the construction of wide avenues, boulevards and roundabouts, and for this, especially in the central area, dozens of old houses and decaying tenements that symbolized poverty and backwardness were knocked down; at the same time several other public facilities and services were built.

[40] Some of the most notorious names in local painting of the beginning of the century taught at the Institute, such as Oscar Boeira, Libindo Ferrás and João Fahrion, along with outside artists such as Eugênio Latour, Francis Pelichek and Luiz Maristany de Trias, preparing a mostly female student body.

[49] When the Revolution of 1930 broke out, which put Getúlio Vargas, a native of Rio Grande do Sul, in charge of the nation and marked the end of the Old Republic, the repercussions in Porto Alegre were dramatic, with several episodes of shootings and street confrontations, an indication that the local tradition of bellicosity was still very much alive through the use of authoritarian and violent practices by the public authorities.

The so-called Café Colombo Group was formed, composed of some of the most prominent characters of the cultural world of that time, such as Mario Quintana, Dante de Laytano, Walter Spalding, Barbosa Lessa, Theodomiro Tostes, Moysés Vellinho, Dyonélio Machado, Pedro Wayne, Telmo Vergara, Raul Bopp, Radamés Gnatalli, Fernando Corona, and Augusto Meyer.

The difficulties imposed on international trade created shortages of various goods, but, on the other hand, stimulated the emergence of new industries, mainly metallurgical, chemical and weaving, leading to the formation of new neighborhoods, especially in the north, in the floodplain area of the Gravataí River, filled with a population largely from the interior of the state attracted by the accelerated demand for labor.

At the time of Jânio's resignation on August 25, 1961, which generated an institutional crisis in Brazil, Brizola, now governor, began to articulate the Legality movement, in agreement with several political, union, and student leaders, organizing a large march, but on the 27th Rádio Gaúcha was silenced by a military intervention.

João Goulart, Jânio's successor, took populist measures that displeased the dominant sectors; the fear of Communism triumphed and Porto Alegre was the stage for important political movements that led to the military coup of 1964, commanded by then governor Ildo Meneghetti from the Piratini Palace.

[83] He had to face, on the other hand, the first public protest of an ecological nature in Porto Alegre, which had national repercussions;[84] the first mobilizations of society in defense of the historical heritage, of the continuity of urban memory, and of the preservation of traditional spaces for community socialization centered in historical areas and buildings, such as on the occasion of the threatened demolition of the Public Market,[85][86] and many complaints from the population because of the road works being simultaneously developed everywhere, which disrupted traffic and caused various losses to private economies, such as disputes over the amount paid for the numerous expropriations necessary to carry out the developments and the inconvenience caused by the compulsory transfer of many residents to other areas.

[90] While administrators, politicians, intellectuals and artists, historians, and journalists were each building their own versions of the events of the 1960s and 1970s, the social panorama of the city in this phase could not be complete without the existence of some precious reports from members of the lowest income population, the outcasts of history, for whom "civilization" was a distant thing.

In the 1970s, already living in Restinga in somewhat better conditions, she decided to narrate in writing, in a Portuguese dialect, her difficult life experience in Ilhota, marked by racial prejudice, poverty, disease, violence, under-housing and under-employment, lack of medical care and urban infrastructure, a situation that for many is still today the sad daily reality.

In 1978, the kidnapping of two Uruguayan political activists, Lilian Celiberti and Universindo Diaz, an act caught by two journalists, Luiz Cláudio Cunha and João Batista Scalco, from Veja magazine,[93] ended up having a bombastic effect on national public opinion, unleashing a lively polemic for a whole year, which served, as Heinz said, as.... .... a test of what limits society should impose on the authoritarian excesses of the repressive organs and their cover-up....

The CPI, installed on March 24, 1979 (to study the case), became the epicenter of one of the final political battles between those who sustained the political-authoritarian patrimony left over from the most difficult times of the dictatorship and an opposition that was no longer embarrassed by the multiplication of improbable versions and the covering up of authoritarian expedients.

The polemic led to a new reformulation of the legislation in the 1980s, when it was definitely understood that, in order to favor a harmonious general growth, it would be necessary to deepen the urbanistic issue by attracting other areas of knowledge to the discussion, making it possible to formulate more dynamic, realistic, and adaptable solutions to the increasingly fluid profile of the city, and taking into account aspects of collective memory, cultural identity, and human coexistence.

[104] Reflecting on the city's recent evolution, Charles Monteiro says that "Porto Alegre continues to face the challenges that the past and the present have bequeathed it, but there seems to be, more than in any previous period, a greater awareness and participation of civil society in the discussion and search for viable alternatives to confront all these urban problems".

Important elements were lost in it, such as the carved main altar; under the pretext of being too ruined, it was almost demolished, but society reacted, and all the subsequent polemic contributed to mark in everyone's conscience, citizens and public power, the value of memory, art, history and its material testimonies.

The main leaders of the contestatory activity of the time, people with different ideologies, who lived utopias transformed into lifestyles - such as punks, rockers, freaks, darks, along with artists, philosophers, and literati - from which would result the definition of identity of an entire generation, gathered in this place.

[116] On the other hand, traditional popular festivals such as the Farroupilha Week celebrations and the Procession of Our Lady of Navigators continue to attract large crowds, as do the LGBT Free Parades and the sunny Sundays at the Gasometer or along the Brique da Redenção, which become great moments of harmonious collective conviviality.