Aguadeiros e o abastecimento de água oitocentista : a trama para desafricanizar Salvador

Abstract

Either on barrels or ceramic pots, over the head or an animals’ back, the water carriers made water flow between streets, slopes and corners of the eighteen century Salvador, in a circuit in which the water that came from the earth reached the inside of homes by the hands of men and women, responsible for an indispensable urban service: water supply. But, being this black body, enslaved or free, their relevance was not recognized, was relegated to the lowest social level and marked by the stigma of being an unwanted, disease spreader and dangerous body. Dangerous because the series of insurrections that happened in Bahia in the first half of XIX century, following the victorious Haitian revolution (1791-1804), became a white nightmare. Trying to prevent what happened in Haiti from happening in Bahia, specially after the Malê Rebellion (1835), a series of drastic and discriminatory measures were taken against African men and women, who became a target of a political, social, economical and ideological plot aiming to de-Africanize Salvador. To reach such goal, a series of strategies were executed seeking to eliminate the existing dependence from African men and women, such as, hiring a private company for water piping. Considering that urban water regularization allows achieving multiple goals, many times in subjective ways, and associated with the de-Africanization context, it is conjectured that the founding of Queimado Company, the first potable water private company supplying it through fountains, water shops and “penas d’água” (a mobile part that controlled water outlet), from the channeling of Queimado River, was designed to eliminate the dependence of water carriers, and cause them to be expelled from the city.