Preservação de territórios culturais: os asilos-colônia Santo Ângelo (Mogi das Cruzes) e Aimorés (Bauru) e as cidades paulistas

Abstract

Between 1930 and 1960, the leprosy treatment policy by isolation, implemented in the state of São Paulo became a model for many Brazilian cities. The colony-asylums, hospital complexes created for this purpose, were designed to function in a network, so that they could cover all areas of the state from five colony-asylums: Santo Ângelo, Padre Bento, Pirapitingui, Cocais and Aimorés. These asylums - built between the 1920s and 1930s - were listed by Condephaat between 2016 and 2018. The history is connected to a chain of treatment institutions, which demanded a set study approach, but also a reading of the very territories where they are inserted, because it is understood that these complexes have not remained oblivious to local political and planning processes. Thus, the main objective of the research was to study the colony-asylums as complex equipment of urban-territorial scale. Based on a preliminary survey of the five listed asylums, two of them were selected for case studies, the Santo Ângelo (Mogi das Cruzes) and the Aimorés (Bauru), where we sought to evaluate the conditions of use, appropriation, and the current meanings of these complexes, both for their role in the territorial development of the municipalities where they are located and, especially, for the local populations. The research was based on analytical-historical and empirical methods. The result allowed the expansion of the discussion about the colony-asylums as cultural territories and to indicate new criteria of apprehension of the cultural meanings related to them, as a contribution to the reflection about the preservation of the so-called "marginal heritages".