Regimes raciais de propriedade: a formação do centro de Belo Horizonte

Resumen

This article examines the formation of downtown Belo Horizonte through the notion of racial regimes of property, proposed by Brenna Bhandar (2018). Drawing on a historical-documentary reconstruction of the making of the capital of Minas Gerais, the present work argues that urban planning, property law and territorial governance practices actively participated in the production of social, territorial and ontological categories. It contends that the periphery is part of the production logic of the modern city, simultaneously a condition of its material reproduction and the object of ongoing processes that delegitimize its ways of inhabiting. By articulating the case of Belo Horizonte with a critique of modern private property as an ontological technology, the article shows how the modern-colonial separation between body and land establishes differential regimes of value and belonging in the urban space. Finally, it aims to understand the production of space as a field of ontological dispute, in which not only forms of territorial ordering but also socially recognized modes of existence are defined.