BOCA MALDITA:

PERFORMANCES, TRIBALIZATION AND INVENTION OF TRADITIONS IN PUBLIC SPACE

Abstract

Boca Maldita is a symbolic institution in downtown Curitiba, significant in the city's identity. Observations, photographs, drawings and sound recordings were used for the analysis. The interpretation adopted the perspective of “invention of traditions”, endorsed by primary sources and works on the development of Curitiba. A qualitative reading was privileged, through the idea of appropriation and territoriality, the Maffesolian sociology, the anthropology of performance and participant observation techniques. A tradition was created and became part of the speeches as a fact, generating physical, sensory and behavioral changes. The territoriality is fluid, promoting extensions of the public space to the private and vice versa. Institutionalization goes beyond physical configuration or articulated logic. Ritualized practices consolidate in the lived space. The ‘tribe’ comes together and creates a ‘piece’, routinely reterritorialized. The community recognizes the tribe and its practices; tradition consolidates and becomes memory and history.