Cultivo, abolição, urbanismo: a Ladeira das Hortas no entre projetos de melhoramentos urbanos em Salvador

Abstract

This research begins by investigating the cultivation areas in Ladeira das Hortas, Salvador, as a strategic territory for understanding the relationships between cultivation, abolition, and urban transformations between the 19th and 20th centuries. Starting from the initial glimpse that free black cultivation may have existed there, the research demonstrates that the land was controlled by the Monastery of São Bento, shifting the focus to the analysis of the historical layers that shaped the place. Ladeira is examined between two urban improvement projects - Rua da Vala (1849) and Avenida Sete de Setembro (1912-1916) - revealing how discourses of health, fluidity and beautification operated as instruments of racialized modernization and the erasure of everyday practices, including cultivation. The study combines cartographic, documentary and oral sources to discuss the disappearance of the vegetable gardens and, at the same time, draws historical parallels about the ways of viewing and representing the Black presence in the city.