The formation of the Parque Peruche as a black territory

Abstract

This article aims to characterize the Parque Peruche, in the North Zone of São Paulo, as a black territory, since its occupation in the 1940s and 1950s. The neighborhood resulted from the division of Sítio do Mandaqui in the late 1930s and had as its first significant population contingent, black migrant families from Minas Gerais and cities from the countryside of São Paulo, and black groups from central neighborhoods of São Paulo, such as Bixiga, Barra Funda, Lavapés and Santa Cecília. In the research, we identified that the conformation of Peruche as a black territory was possible not only by the expressive presence of black residents, but also by the existence and action of socio-cultural organizations of the group in the neighborhood. During the first decades of occupation of Peruche, these institutions, and similar ones in Rio de Janeiro and Salvador, established an exchange of practices and knowledge. This indicates that the organization of black people in association with institutions from other states had already been taking place in the first decades of the twentieth century.