Narratives in dispute: the sexed city and the “recovery” of the historic center of Salvador-Bahia

Abstract

In this article, the process of socio-spatial transformation in the Historic Center of Salvador, during the 20th century and early 21st century, is analyzed through the presence of bodies marked in society by their expressions of gender and sexuality in this space. Such presences bring out a set of actions and urban public policies, via police and patrimonial institution, that seek initially to delimit the territory of its existences and then to extinguish them totally from the region. In this process, the sexually dissident bodies in Salvador find in the community articulation and politics built in the urban daily life modes of resistance that insert them, in the absence of any state action, as active subjects in the production and social transformation of this space. In order to discuss this complex dispute historically materialized in the Historical Center of Salvador, we bring other narratives experienced by these bodies that portray the constant transformations of their territories in urban space, in counterpoint to the official discourses of the State.