Carnaval, memória e identidade: registros e narrativas sobre a escola de samba Imperatriz da zona norte da cidade de Cruz Alta-RS

Abstract

This research, conducted within the Graduate Program in History at the Federal University of Pelotas (UFPel), under the research line Images: Between Iconography, Visual Culture, and Intermediality, with the support of the Coordination for the Improvement of Higher Education Personnel (CAPES) - Funding Code 001 – and as part of the OMEGA Research Group (Observatory of Memory, Education, Gesture, and Art) (UFPel/CNPq), analyzes the Imperatriz da Zona Norte Samba School and its influence on the carnival of the city of Cruz Alta, RS, focusing on its historical trajectory, its contributions to the carnavalesque practices, and its role in the production of individual and collective identities within the Zona Norte community and in the city’s carnival. An interdisciplinary approach is adopted, grounded in the History of the Present Time, Oral History, and Autoethnography, with the aim of understanding, through the revived memories of members of the samba school and the local carnival community, how the Imperatriz da Zona Norte contributed to the preservation of popular culture through street carnival. Moreover, the research seeks to identify and characterize key figures in the trajectory of Cruz Alta’s carnival, with emphasis on Imperatriz da Zona Norte, recording significant events and their impacts on the city’s carnavalesque context. The theoretical framework of this study includes authors such as Roberto Da Matta, José Leopoldi, Leila Blass, Renata de Sá Gonzalves, Zunilda Kauffmann, Álvaro Barreto, Isaura Queiroz, Maria Clementina Pereira Cunha, José Carlos Sebe, Rachel Valença, Monique Augras, Thiago Silva de Amorim Jesus, Pierre Bourdieu, Clifford Geertz, Stuart Hall, Peter Burke, Joel Candau, Eric Hobsbawm, among others. The results of this thesis suggest that the Imperatriz da Zona Norte Samba School, through the socio-political relationships it has established and its cultural and aesthetic contributions to carnavalesque practices, has played—and continues to play—a key role in the subjective, individual, and collective identity formation of the Zona Norte community, as well as in the (re)signification of the aesthetic and organizational paradigm of Cruz Alta’s street carnival, from its foundation in 1993 to the present day.